Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

If anyone is considering moving into engineering management, you'd do well to look not just at the how but the why. If it's for status/salary rather than the change in nature of the work be very careful about making the move.

You need to really want to manage and develop people (with all the idiosyncracies that real human beings come with!), and to communicate, co-ordinate, and delegate for a living.

Some will love this, others hate it. But don't view it as a natural progression that will work for everyone.

To expand on your last point, I've found 90% of the success of your team is largely based on your team's ability to self-promote. I like to "talk up" my senior people when they're not in the room. This is the "upwards" part as a manager's influence is largely restricted to the management class. Most engineers roll their eyes and discount about 50% of what a manager outside their team says, so you likely won't be able to build credibility with them yourself no matter what you do.

The "outwards" part is teaching your team the right ways to evangelize to people on other teams at levels below you. They'll almost certainly be interacting with engineers on other teams, and the quality of these interactions is greatly enhanced with a combination of good documentation and good presentation skills.

This is so important that it doesn't really matter how good of a job your team does as long as they can talk about it in a positive way and work effectively with other teams. All of your "good engineering practices" should be geared towards enabling this kind of culture because the technical deficiencies in your code don't really matter.

Congratulations on getting published!

I've bought the book and read until the Delegation chapter.

Up until now I find that the topics are interesting and the writing is very direct and unpretentious which I appreciate.

I also like the approach you took of wrapping it in a story, I think it makes the topic a lot less dry.

At the same time I feel that it doesn't go into the detail I would like.

For instance I feel that the “How to Measure Your Output as a Manager” is a bit hand waved by using Andy Grove's equation. This is a topic I struggle with because I sometimes feel that I don't produce anything as a manager and that is frustrating.

Nonetheless, the chapters I've read are fine as a starting point and appreciate that you suggest additional literature to deepen the topics.

Overall I'm positive about the book, would buy again :)

That's a good question. I'm English and I work for a UK company. I had some reviewers at the 50% stage who were from European companies and they didn't say anything specific about this, but I'd be interested to learn more about the US tech scene being quite alien - I haven't experienced it myself.