Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

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If you're looking for an introduction into engineering management, start with The Manager's Path, Camille Fournier. To people who have the same aspirations in engineering management I'd encourage you to read this instead https://abseil.

Not to mention, Sarah Drasner has worked in some pretty huge companies and as a high-level Google manager, has lots of wisdom to share. While it might benefit from a deeper exploration of diverse management styles, the practical insights it offers are invaluable for those new to the field.This book provides some organization for collaborating with networks of people, working together towards a common purpose. She’s an award-winning speaker, author of SVG Animations from O’Reilly, Vue core team emeritus, and co-organizer of ConcatenateConf. It's imperative that we as managers learn as much as we can and work on ourselves, so that our teams may enjoy a healthy working life and strong relationships. Engineering Management for the Rest of Us" neatly packs common themes that are part of manager's everyday reality, whether that manager is a freshly minted one, or one that has years of experience. The most appealing aspect of the book is that it focuses on situations and real world examples, presented from Sarah's own experiences and learnings.

As for key points and advice, I gained: align personal values, embrace curiosity, and strive to create clarity. The first part of building healthy teams is admitting you won't know everything, and this may be a time where you need to listen more than you talk. If you're hungry for more on the touched topics, you will find that the book provides plenty of opportunities to branch out, whether it's developing habit systems or building confidence in yourself and others. But it felt to me like the book goes broad and shallow, and it's not clear how useful it will be to budding managers. Engineering for the Management for the Rest of Us is a book that will gear you up for a journey into engineering management (or honestly kind of management, frankly) by highlighting a lot of common technical aspects of the career.In this session, Sarah shares the reasons for writing this book, alongside her lessons learned over the years and what she wishes she had known when she started out on her management journey so that you can reflect on your own leadership style and needs. Experienced managers can skip this book, but might find it useful to recommend to others just getting started. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning: Engineering is a field that’s continually evolving, so it’s important to promote a culture of learning within your team. He not only knew the author but also reads profusely so I knew the recommendation was going to be good.

The focus is primarily on understanding what it means to lead a team, collaborate and communicate, and organize work for the team and yourself. Sarah has done a good job of expanding the narratives by providing relevant references to other books and authors in between topics and chapters. I especially felt the chapter on how to run productive meetings and how to help others perform at their best will help me in my everyday work. The book goes from the macro to the micro- with topics ranging everywhere from "feedback" to "scoping down PRs".

I had already read (and I reread on a yearly basis) How to Win Friends and Influence People, so most of the ideas shared in the book are things I already practise.