https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management
A collection of inspiring resources related to engineering management and tech leadership
https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management
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A collection of inspiring resources related to engineering management and tech leadership
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/charlax/engineering-management
- Owner: charlax
- License: mit
- Created: 2016-03-17T10:29:40.000Z (about 10 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2025-05-12T01:42:11.000Z (about 1 year ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-05-12T02:39:05.482Z (about 1 year ago)
- Topics: article, bias, culture, decisions, employee-handbook, engineering-management, leader, management
- Language: Shell
- Size: 2.38 MB
- Stars: 7,754
- Watchers: 263
- Forks: 641
- Open Issues: 1
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- License: LICENSE
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README
## Table of Contents
- [About this list](#about-this-list)
- [Books](#books)
- [Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders](#turn-the-ship-around-a-true-story-of-turning-followers-into-leaders)
- [Other generalist books](#other-generalist-books)
- [Book reading lists](#book-reading-lists)
- [What is engineering management?](#what-is-engineering-management)
- [General management resources](#general-management-resources)
- [Articles](#articles)
- [Tools](#tools)
- [Engineering Management Topics](#engineering-management-topics)
- [1-1](#1-1)
- [Antipatterns](#antipatterns)
- [Biases](#biases)
- [Brainstorming](#brainstorming)
- [Career growth and job ladder](#career-growth-and-job-ladder)
- [Change management](#change-management)
- [Code reviews](#code-reviews)
- [Communication](#communication)
- [Conflict resolution](#conflict-resolution)
- [CTO (Chief Technical Officer), VPoE and other levels](#cto-chief-technical-officer-vpoe-and-other-levels)
- [Data organization](#data-organization)
- [Culture](#culture)
- [Decisions](#decisions)
- [Delegation](#delegation)
- [Delivery](#delivery)
- [Developer productivity and devexp (developer experience)](#developer-productivity-and-devexp-developer-experience)
- [Diversity and inclusion](#diversity-and-inclusion)
- [Employee handbook](#employee-handbook)
- [Employee retention](#employee-retention)
- [Escalations](#escalations)
- [Executives](#executives)
- [FinOps (cost)](#finops-cost)
- [First-time manager](#first-time-manager)
- [Feedback](#feedback)
- [Hands-on](#hands-on)
- [Hiring](#hiring)
- [General](#general)
- [Hiring: interviews](#hiring-interviews)
- [Hiring: interview questions](#hiring-interview-questions)
- [Hiring: job postings](#hiring-job-postings)
- [Hiring: process](#hiring-process)
- [Hiring: résumé review](#hiring-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9-review)
- [Hiring: sourcing](#hiring-sourcing)
- [Hiring: take home exercises](#hiring-take-home-exercises)
- [Hiring: quotes](#hiring-quotes)
- [Incident prevention and response (on-call, outages)](#incident-prevention-and-response-on-call-outages)
- [Learning, retro, postmortem](#learning-retro-postmortem)
- [Management style](#management-style)
- [Meetings](#meetings)
- [Mentoring](#mentoring)
- [Mindset and attitude](#mindset-and-attitude)
- [Motivation](#motivation)
- [Onboarding new team members or yourself](#onboarding-new-team-members-or-yourself)
- [Organizational structure](#organizational-structure)
- [Performance management](#performance-management)
- [Personal productivity](#personal-productivity)
- [Planning (roadmap, goal setting, KPI, OKR, etc.)](#planning-roadmap-goal-setting-kpi-okr-etc)
- [Goals](#goals)
- [OKRs](#okrs)
- [Presentations, design and public speaking](#presentations-design-and-public-speaking)
- [Prioritization](#prioritization)
- [Problem solving](#problem-solving)
- [Processes for engineering](#processes-for-engineering)
- [Product management](#product-management)
- [Production and productivity](#production-and-productivity)
- [Project management](#project-management)
- [Estimating work (project management)](#estimating-work-project-management)
- [Quality](#quality)
- [Release management](#release-management)
- [Remote teams](#remote-teams)
- [RFCs (request for comments)](#rfcs-request-for-comments)
- [Scaling an organization](#scaling-an-organization)
- [Second level manager (2LM)](#second-level-manager-2lm)
- [Security](#security)
- [Soft skills, Emotional Quotient (EQ)](#soft-skills-emotional-quotient-eq)
- [Storytelling](#storytelling)
- [Strategy](#strategy)
- [Survey](#survey)
- [Talent management](#talent-management)
- [Team vision](#team-vision)
- [Technical strategy](#technical-strategy)
- [Team culture](#team-culture)
- [Team dynamics](#team-dynamics)
- [Training](#training)
- [Trust](#trust)
- [Work ethics & work/life balance](#work-ethics--worklife-balance)
- [Workshop facilitation](#workshop-facilitation)
- [Writing](#writing)
- [Other sources](#other-sources)
- [Other lists](#other-lists)
- [Movies](#movies)
- [TV Shows](#tv-shows)
- [Keeping up-to-date: blogs and newsletters](#keeping-up-to-date-blogs-and-newsletters)
- [Newsletter](#newsletter)
- [Blogs](#blogs)
- [Podcast](#podcast)
- [My other lists](#my-other-lists)
## About this list
Items:
- 🧰 : list of resources
- 📖 : book
- 🎞 : video/movie extract/movie
- 🎤 : slides/presentation
- 🎧 : podcast
- ⭐️ : must-read
## Books
More than any other field, management is full of fluffy books that could be summarized in one 100-word article. That being said, there's a number of excellent books, listed below.
### Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders
📖 [Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders](http://www.amazon.com/Turn-Ship-Around-Turning-Followers/dp/1591846404) is hands down my preferred management book.
This book made me truly understand what empowering local decision means. In particular, I liked how the author explains that the usual chain of command requires information to go up the chain, and decision to go down, which is insanely inefficient.
It provides great tools for managers to help their team members come up with their own decisions, in particular the notion of **deliberate action**. There's a also [a presentation](http://www.slideshare.net/micrimson/turn-the-ship-around-041614) that talks about the main concepts the author developed.
There are numerous cheesy management books and this is not one of them. The narration is great as well and the explanations are short, and to the point.
You can find a short summary in video [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psAXMqxwol8)
> “Control without competence is chaos.”
— L. David Marquet, Turn the Ship Around!
### Other generalist books
- 📖 [The Advantage, Enhanced Edition: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006ORWT3Y/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1), Patrick M. Lencioni.
- The only way for people to embrace a message is to hear it over a period of time, in a variety of different situations, and preferably from different people. That’s why great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else.
- The best way to do cascading communication is face-to-face and live. Seeing a leader and hearing the tone of his or her voice is critical for employees, as is being able to ask a question or two.
- But then again, most organizations are unhealthy precisely because they aren’t doing the basic things, which require discipline, persistence, and follow-through more than sophistication or intelligence.
- 📖 [Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager](https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engineering/dp/1484221575): "Read hilarious stories with serious lessons that Michael Lopp extracts from his varied and sometimes bizarre experiences as a manager at Apple, Pinterest, Palantir, Netscape, Symantec, Slack, and Borland. Many of the stories first appeared in primitive form in Lopp’s perennially popular blog, Rands in Repose."
- 📖 Oren Ellenbogen, [Leading Snowflakes: the Engineering Manager Handbook](http://leadingsnowflakes.com/): some truly great content and concrete ideas to move from maker to manager mode, code reviewing your management decisions, delegating tasks without losing quality or visibility.
- 📖 Adam Grant, [Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00AFPTSI0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1): "This gem is a joy to read, and it shatters the myth that greed is the path to success.", Robert Sutton.
- 📖 Ken Blanchard, [Lead Like Jesus: Lessons from the Greatest Leadership Role Model of All Time](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VF62IO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1).
- 📖 Andrew S. Grove, [High Output Management](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VACHOK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1). A landmark book by Intel CEO Andy Grove. Introduced many of the management best practices such as 1-1, OKR.
- Managerial leverage measures the impact of what managers do to increase the output of their teams.
- You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.
- Every hour of your day should be spent increasing the output or the value of the output of the people whom you’re responsible for.
- A common rule we should always try to heed is to detect and fix any problem in a production process at the lowest-value stage possible.
- A genuinely effective indicator will cover the output of the work unit and not simply the activity involved. Obviously, you measure a salesman by the orders he gets (output), not by the calls he makes (activity).
- A manager’s output = The output of his organization + The output of the neighboring organizations under his influence.
- League standings are kept by team, not by individual. Business—and this means not just the business of commerce but the business of education, the business of government, the business of medicine—is a team activity. And, always, it takes a team to win.
- Your decision-making depends finally on how well you comprehend the facts and issues facing your business. This is why information-gathering is so important in a manager’s life.
- The lack of a decision is the same as a negative decision; no green light is a red light, and work can stop for a whole organization.
- Delegation without follow-through is abdication.
- Any decision be worked out and reached at the lowest competent level. The reason is that this is where it will be made by people who are closest to the situation and know the most about it.
- Self-confidence mostly comes from a gut-level realization that nobody has ever died from making a wrong business decision, or taking inappropriate action, or being overruled.
- A successful MBO [management by objective] system needs only to answer two questions: 1. Where do I want to go? (The answer provides the objective.) 2. How will I pace myself to see if I am getting there? (The answer gives us milestones, or key results).
- The one thing an MBO system should provide par excellence is focus. This can only happen if we keep the number of objectives small. In practice, this is rare, and here, as elsewhere, we fall victim to our inability to say “no”—in this case, to too many objectives. We must realize—and act on the realization—that if we try to focus on everything, we focus on nothing. A few extremely well-chosen objectives impart a clear message about what we say “yes” to and what we say “no” to—which is what we must have if an MBO system is to work.
- Alfred Sloan summed up decades of experience at General Motors by saying, “Good management rests on a reconciliation of centralization and decentralization.” Or, we might say, on a balancing act to get the best combination of responsiveness and leverage.
- I would like to propose Grove’s Law: All large organizations with a common business purpose end up in a hybrid organizational form.
- When a person is not doing his job, there can only be two reasons for it. The person either can’t do it or won’t do it; he is either not capable or not motivated.
- That variable is the task-relevant maturity (TRM) of the subordinates, which is a combination of the degree of their achievement orientation and readiness to take responsibility, as well as their education, training, and experience.
- When the TRM is low, the most effective approach is one that offers very precise and detailed instructions, wherein the supervisor tells the subordinate what needs to be done, when, and how: in other words, a highly structured approach. As the TRM of the subordinate grows, the most effective style moves from the structured to one more given to communication, emotional support, and encouragement.
- The responsibility for teaching the subordinate must be assumed by his supervisor, and not paid for by the customers of his organization, internal or external.
- At all times you should force yourself to assess performance, not potential.
- A manager generally has two ways to raise the level of individual performance of his subordinates: by increasing motivation, the desire of each person to do his job well, and by increasing individual capability, which is where training comes in.
- 📖 Patrick Lencioni, [The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable](https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fable/dp/0787960756/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500281191&sr=1-1&keywords=dysfunctions).
- 📖 Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead, Laszlo Bock. A pretty interesting description of Google's processes. A bit long at times.
- 📖 [The Manager's Path](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/) , Camille Fournier. A very practical book with lots of down-to-earth advices.
- 📖 [Team Topologies](https://itrevolution.com/product/team-topologies/), from ITRevolution Press. Discusses the intricacies of managing Engineering Departments, and especially patterns for improving team interactions.
- 📖 [The Effective Executive](https://www.amazon.com/Effective-Executive-Definitive-Harperbusiness-Essentials/dp/0060833459) by Peter Drucker, Seminal Work in Management. Discusses challenges of management, especially managing Knowledge Workers. Proposes principles for effective decision-making and continued improvement of one's organization
- May also serve as grounding for growing beyond Engineering Management, as well as working with other departments.
There are some other more specific books quoted below.
Other books I haven't read:
- [Engineering Management for the Rest of Us](https://www.engmanagement.dev/)
- [ZachGoldberg/Startup-CTO-Handbook](https://github.com/ZachGoldberg/Startup-CTO-Handbook/blob/main/StartupCTOHandbook.md)
### Book reading lists
- [Jason Evanish's list](https://jasonevanish.com/books/) (Lighthouse founder) is quite comprehensive.
- [Holiday Book Recommendations for Engineering Managers, Software Engineers and Product Managers](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/holiday-tech-book-recommendations/#books-by-genre), Gergely Orosz
- [Most Recommended Books to Make You a Better Engineering Manager](https://managersclub.com/most-recommended-books-engineering-leaders/)
- [10 Must-Reads for Engineering Leaders](https://zaidesanton.substack.com/p/10-must-reads-for-engineering-leaders)
- [Your 12-month engineering manager MBA reading list](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anton-zaides_your-12-month-engineering-manager-mba-for-activity-7280274078215659520-rQWP/)
## What is engineering management?
Here are some generic resources:
- [Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management](https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/unintuitive-things-i-ve-learned-about-management-f2c42d68604b#.2z9av4pzs)
- Lars Dalgaard, [Thoughts on Building Weatherproof Companies](http://a16z.com/2016/03/25/building-weatherproof-companies/): while originally aimed at startups CEOs, this article from Andreessen Horowitz's blog is a very inspiring read on what it takes to scale your team.
### General management resources
- [14 Points for Management](https://deming.org/explore/fourteen-points) by W. Edwards Deming.
- [Keith Rabois on the Role of a COO, How to Hire and Why Transparency Matters](http://firstround.com/review/Keith-Rabois-on-the-role-of-a-COO-how-to-hire-and-why-transparency-matters/) includes some nice management nuggets.
- 🧰 [ksindi/managers-playbook: Heuristics for effective management](https://github.com/ksindi/managers-playbook)
- [The Evolution of Management](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3350548), Kate Matsudaira, ACM Queue. A great compilation of advices for all management levels.
- [Principles of Management](https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-principlesmanagement/) a nice introduction for all management aspects for new managers.
[Tal Bereznitskey](https://hackernoon.com/managing-engineers-in-less-than-200-characters-edb35e4199e4#.n8wruugqz)'s awesome definition for managing engineers:
> Hire motivated people. Trust them. Set high standards for everything. Lead by example. Get out of their way and let them be the heroes of the day. That’s it.
### Articles
- [The Quiet Crisis unfolding in Software Development](https://medium.com/@billjordan1/the-quiet-crisis-unfolding-in-software-development-cffbdafbf450#.uy7x227pc)
- [Mistakes of the First Twenty-five Years](articles/mistakes_25_years.md), in which Warren Buffet describes the "institutional imperative", or how an institution will amplify (not resist) a bad manager's irrational decisions.
- [44 engineering management lessons](http://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html) from the cofounder of RethinkDB. Very high-level, a pretty good summary.
- [21 management things I learned at Imgur](https://medium.com/@gerstenzang/21-management-things-i-learned-at-imgur-7abb72bdf8bf)
- [The Rands Test](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-rands-test/), Rands in Repose. The equivalent of [The Joel Test](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/) for management.
- Do you have a 1:1?
- Do you have a team meeting?
- Do you have status reports?
- Can you say No to your boss?
- Can you explain the strategy of the company to a stranger?
- Can you explain the current state of business?
- Does the guy/gal in charge regularly stand up in front of everyone and tell you what he/she is thinking? Are you buying it?
- Do you know what you want to do next? Does your boss?
- Do you have time to be strategic?
- Are you actively killing the Grapevine?
- [What are the signs that you have a great manager?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230133) : great discussion on Hacker News
- A great manager is at the service of their team.
- You don't really notice a great manager.
- Communicate context as high level and as complete as possible.
- [Managing people](https://klinger.io/posts/managing-people-%F0%9F%A4%AF)
- As a manager, everything is your fault
- You manage processes; you lead people
- Processes are expectations made explicit
- Trust through transparency
- Don't confuse autonomy and abandonment
- Avoid drive-by management
- Explicit > Implicit
- Expect to refactor your company every few months
- Chaos is felt less by the people creating it
- Expect more from managers that report from you
- [37 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said the Best Managers Never Actually Want to Be Managers. Science Says He Was Right](https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/37-years-ago-steve-jobs-said-best-managers-never-want-to-be-a-manager-science-says-he-was-right.html)
- "If your boss could do your job, you're more likely to be happy at work"
- [Group Dynamics: The Leader's Toolkit (Ed Batista)](https://www.edbatista.com/2022/09/group-dynamics-the-leaders-toolkit.html)
- [Some mistakes I made as a new manager](https://www.benkuhn.net/newmgr/)
- The trough of zero dopamine
- Staying on the critical path
- Managing the wrong amount
- Procrastinating on hard questions
- Indefinitely deferring maintenance
- Angsting instead of asking
- [How to grow as an Engineering Manager](https://medium.com/srivatsan-sridharan/how-to-grow-as-an-engineering-manager-687cad0bcac7), Srivatsan Sridharan
- Create new opportunities for your learning
- Choose an archetype:
- Inspirational leader
- Tough coach
- Business strategic
- Tech innovator
- Master orchestrator
- Savvy politician
- [Numbers To Know For Managing (Software Teams)](https://staysaasy.com/management/2023/03/20/numbers-to-manage-by.html)
- 4 - the number of minutes to spend on chit chat in the beginning of a meeting
- 5 - the number of comments on a document before you should ask to talk about the issue
- [Unexpected Anti-Patterns for Engineering Leaders](https://review.firstround.com/unexpected-anti-patterns-for-engineering-leaders-lessons-from-stripe-uber-carta/), Will Larson
- Unexpected anti-pattern #1: shying away from micromanagement
- Unexpected anti-pattern #2: pushing back on measuring flawed metrics
- Unexpected anti-pattern #3: serving as the umbrella for your team
- [Categories of leadership on technical teams](https://www.benkuhn.net/leadcats/)
- Overall direction
- People management
- Project management
- Technical leadership
- The “tech lead manager”
- Engineering manager / tech lead
- Product manager / tech lead
- People manager / research lead
### Tools
- [devtomanager.com](https://devtomanager.com/): first-hand advice from seasoned experts
## Engineering Management Topics
This is a list of inspiring articles related to engineering management. Those are usually short and concise articles that are packed with inspiring and concrete ideas. They have shaped my own management practice, and I hope they will inspire you as well.
I don't necessarily agree with everything listed here. Actually, you'll see that some of those articles have diametrically opposed opinions. I do believe those thought-provoking resources will help you in your manager journey.
### 1-1
- [On 1-1s](https://cate.blog/2016/11/05/on-11s/)
- [How to have an honest one-on-one with an employee](https://m.signalvnoise.com/how-to-have-an-honest-one-on-one-with-an-employee-24bbddeb0f47#.qpltxoa2b)
- [Tool: Hold effective 1:1 meetings](https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-coach-managers-to-coach/steps/hold-effective-1-1-meetings/)
- [21 Reasons You Should Start Having One on Ones with Your Team](https://jasonevanish.com/2014/05/21/21-reasons-you-should-start-having-one-on-ones-with-your-team/)
- [What is an Inquiring Leader?](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-inquiring-leader-marilee-adams)
- HBR, [How to Ask Better Questions](https://hbr.org/2009/05/real-leaders-ask.html)
- [Mentor vs Advisor vs Coach](http://baxterblog.typepad.com/blog/2012/11/mentor-vs-advisor-vs-coach.html)
- [How To Be Someone People Love To Talk To](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2015/02/love-to-talk/)
- 🧰 [Mega list of 1 on 1 meeting questions compiled from a variety to sources](https://github.com/VGraupera/1on1-questions)
- [130+ One on One Meeting Questions Great Managers Ask](https://getlighthouse.com/blog/one-on-one-meeting-questions-great-managers-ask/)
- Building rapport & trust
- Talking about career development
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Talking about ways to improve your team or your company
- Checking in on their general happiness
- Special questions for remote employees
- Leading your team through difficult times
- Being a coach to your team
- Skip level meeting questions
- The one on one meeting questions you need to ask every time
- [Why Your One-on-One’s Should Probably Be Longer](https://medium.com/vpe-coach/why-your-one-on-ones-should-probably-be-longer-cbf8961645fc)
- The “30 minute One-on-One” Anti-Pattern
- Change the day
- [5 Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Their Direct Reports](https://hbr.org/2022/01/5-questions-every-manager-needs-to-ask-their-direct-reports), HBR
- How would you like to grow within this organization?
- Do you feel a sense of purpose in your job?
- What do you need from me to do your best work?
- What are we currently not doing as a company that you feel we should do?
- Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
- [One on One Meeting Format Ideas](https://marcgg.com/blog/2021/03/27/one-on-one-format/)
### Antipatterns
- [Seven Deadly Diseases of Management](https://deming.org/explore/seven-deadly-diseases), Dr. Deming. Great video as well. I don't necessarily agree with everything but Deming is still one of the great management thinker.
### Biases
- 📖 [Thinking, Fast and Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow) by Daniel Kahneman and published in 2012 is already a classic. It offers a whirling tour into our biases and the limits of human judgment. Truly amazing read.
- [You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe), The Oatmeal (comics) about the backfire effect ("given evidence against their beliefs, people can reject the evidence and believe even more strongly", [confirmation bias - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias)).
Cognitive biases don't only apply to hiring... They can impact performance reviews, 1-1, team meetings, even small talk with colleagues.
- [Cognitive bias cheat sheet](https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18#.6temb6hyg)
- [A flowchart of cognitive biases](https://www.breakdown-notes.com/makemap/load/biases)
- [The Cognitive Bias Codex](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg)
### Brainstorming
- [Extreme questions to trigger new, better ideas](https://longform.asmartbear.com/posts/extreme-questions/), A Smart Bear
- The following prompts jostle you out of tiny thinking
- If you were forced to increase your prices by 10x, what would you have to do to justify it?
- If all our customers vanished, and we had to earn our growth and brand from scratch, what would we do?
- If you were never allowed to provide tech support, in any form, what would have to change?
- If our biggest competitor copied every single feature we have, how do we still win?
- What if we are forced to ship a full, completed (at least MVP) new feature, in just two weeks, that would delight and surprise some fraction of our customers.
- What if you were forced to charge customers in a completely different manner?
- No more synchronous meetings, ever again?
- If we could never talk to our customers again, how would we figure out what to build?
- What if it didn’t matter how unprofitable you were?
- What externality has the potential to kill the entire company?
> The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong.
— Francis Crick
### Career growth and job ladder
Also check the [charlax/professional-programming's Career Growth section](https://github.com/charlax/professional-programming/#career-growth).
- [Square’s Growth Framework for Engineers and Engineering Managers](https://developer.squareup.com/blog/squares-growth-framework-for-engineers-and-engineering-managers/)
- Have two tracks
- Becoming a manager is not a promotion
- Organized into two major sections: Scope & Impact and Behaviors
- No strict minimum requirements for years of experience at any given level
- Promotions are descriptive not prescriptive
- Promotion decisions are structured and rigorous
- [Titles are Toxic](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/titles-are-toxic/), Rands in Repose. A pretty interesting take on titles.
- [Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path](https://keavy.com/work/thriving-on-the-technical-leadership-path/)
- I’ve chosen to cultivate a path for myself that enables me to dig into complex technical and product problem spaces and help lead technical and strategic direction for my organization, as an engineer but not a manager.
- [Refactoring Our Engineering Skills Matrix](https://engine.expert360.com/refactoring-our-engineering-skills-matrix-b5314e2b0013)
- [How to waste your career, one comfortable year at a time](https://apoorvagovind.substack.com/p/how-to-waste-your-career-one-comfortable)
- 🎤 [Creating a Career Ladder for Engineers](https://speakerdeck.com/polotek/creating-a-career-ladder-for-engineers)
- [Medium Engineering Growth Framework](https://medium.com/s/engineering-growth-framework)
- [Engineering levels at Carta](https://medium.com/building-carta/engineering-levels-at-carta-d33db2a55a20)
- [Things We Learned Creating Technology Career Steps](https://engineering.atspotify.com/2016/02/22/things-we-learned-creating-technology-career-steps/) (Spotify)
- Behavior Versus Achievements
- [Engineering levels and progression](https://location.foursquare.com/resources/blog/developer/engineering-levels-and-progression/), Foursquare
- A pretty concise description of what's expected at different levels (L3, L4, etc.)
- [On Being A Senior Engineer](https://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/), Kitchen Soap
- [Keith Rabois on how to identify great talent](https://www.startuparchive.org/p/keith-rabois-on-how-to-identify-great-talent)
- “What you want to do with every single employee every single day is expand the scope of their responsibilities until it breaks… and that’s the role they should stay in.”
- If you see people frequently going up to a person's desk, it's a sign that that person can help them. Promote these people and give them more responsibility as fast as you can.
- [An impact-based level system for engineers](https://medium.com/@elliotgraebert/an-impact-based-level-system-for-engineering-organizations-2e0f9bee20e6)
- Level 1 — Scoped Tasks
- Level 2 — Scoped Projects
- Level 3 — Unscoped Projects
- Level 4 — Team Force Multiplier
- Level 5 — Group Force Multiplier
- Level 6 — Company Force Multiplier
Curated examples of job ladder/career development matrix:
- ⭐️ [RentTheRunway's Software Development/Leadership Ladder](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k4sO6pyCl_YYnf0PAXSBcX776rNcTjSOqDxZ5SDty-4/edit#gid=0)
- [Songkick](https://www.songkick.com/downloads/growth-framework/sk-growth-framework.pdf): concise, clear and includes examples.
- [Gitlab](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/careers/matrix/)
- Medium, [Engineering Growth Framework](https://medium.com/s/engineering-growth-framework), Medium pulls back the curtain on how they do career growth.
- [Medium's skills spreadsheet](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EO-Dbsayn8Nz9Ii3MKcwRbt-EIJ2MjQdpoyhh0tBdZk/edit#gid=1098466721): mixes all rubrics regardless of role
- [Khan Academy](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qr0d05X5-AsyDYqKRCfgGGcWSshTMd_vfTggfhDpbls/edit)
- Skills: maximise impact, be open, empathise and respect, have conviction, seek engineering maturity.
- Levels: beginning skillful, skillful, more skillful, super skillful, ludicrously skillful
- [CircleCI](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/131XZCEb8LoXqy79WWrhCX4sBnGhCM1nAIz4feFZJsEo/edit#gid=0): detailed and complete
- [Dropbox](https://dropbox.github.io/dbx-career-framework/overview.html)
- [progression-framework/frameworks/engineering](https://github.com/monzo/progression-framework/tree/master/frameworks/engineering)
- [jorgef/engineeringladders](https://github.com/jorgef/engineeringladders)
- [Fog Creek Professional Ladder – Joel on Software](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2009/02/13/fog-creek-professional-ladder/)
- [Square](https://developer.squareup.com/blog/squares-growth-framework-for-engineers-and-engineering-managers/) ([competencies](https://assets.ctfassets.net/1wryd5vd9xez/6bDnTwb4H7bfiFvg55ldRR/b1cb8514f0afd0a4050991d35ccbac03/Square_Software_Engineering_Career_Ladder.pdf))
- [career-ladders](https://career-ladders.dev/engineering/)
List of lists:
- [30+ Engineering Career Ladders](https://nidup.io/garden/engineering-career-ladders?s=09)
- [Another list of career pathways](https://www.progression.fyi/) by a [Progression, a tool to define and measure career growth](https://progressionapp.com/)
Concepts:
- [Four stages of competence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence), Wikipedia
### Change management
- 🎧 [At The Table with Patrick Lencioni: 50. Let the Haters Hate](https://atthetable-patricklencioni.libsyn.com/50-let-the-haters-hate)
- [Nemawashi](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemawashi) (Wikipedia): "an informal process of quietly laying the foundation for some proposed changed".
- [Why the status quo is so hard to change in engineering teams](https://www.okayhq.com/blog/status-quo-is-so-hard-to-change-in-engineering-teams)
- Process-related Learned Helplessness
- Complexity-related Learned Helplessness
- Resignation by a thousand cuts
- Declare process bankruptcy
### Code reviews
See my [professional-programming section about code reviews](https://github.com/charlax/professional-programming#code-reviews)
### Communication
- [Tough News: We’ve Made 10 Layoffs. How We Got Here, the Financial Details and How We’re Moving Forward](https://open.buffer.com/layoffs-and-moving-forward/): a great post by Joel Gascoigne (CEO & Founder of Buffer) sharing some pretty tough news to the team and to the world. Great transparency, great message, great ownership. A model to follow.
- [How To Pitch A Product](http://avc.com/2010/08/how-to-pitch-a-product/), AVC.
- [Ken Norton’s Discipline of No](https://blog.mixpanel.com/2016/09/20/learning-to-say-no-with-ken-norton/). #attitude #habits.
- [Nonviolent communication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication) (Wikipedia)
- [Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful](https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d#.7mqxmkpz9)
- [Breaking Bad News](http://boz.com/articles/bad-news.html)
- [Operations and Internal Communication Strategies For Effective CEOs](https://www.sametab.com/blog/operations-and-internal-communication-strategies-for-effective-ceos)
- Narratives (not facts) are what move people
- The why always before the what
- Alignment is not one-way only
- Repeat, repeat, repeat
- Consider writing a personal weekly newsletter
- [Tools for better thinking](https://untools.co/)
- Decision matrix
- Ladder of inference
- First principles
- [How To Say No](https://www.starterstory.com/how-to-say-no). Templates for saying no to written interviews, going to an event, doing free work...
- 🎧 [At The Table with Patrick Lencioni: 59. Don't Make Me Repeat Myself](https://atthetable-patricklencioni.libsyn.com/59-dont-make-me-repeat-myself)
- [How to Disagree](http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), Paul Graham
- Disagreement hierarchy 0: name calling
- DH1: ad hominem
- DH2: responding to tone
- DH3: contradiction
- DH4: counterargument
- DH5: refutation
- DH6: refuting the central point
- Analyzing your own level of disagreement can help with unintentional intellectual dishonesty.
- When you have something real to say, being mean gets in the way
- [Apple Pie Position](https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1628567045800591361), Shreyas Doshi
- A statement that instantly elevates the person who is saying it and is simultaneously hard for anyone else to push back on, and so everyone avoids the personal risk and just nods “yes”, even though its actual value in this specific situation might be relatively low, zero, or even negative.
- E.g., "We need to define the success metrics for X"
- E.g., "We need a better go-to-market motion to improve product adoption"
- [How to Communicate When Trust Is Low (Without Digging Yourself Into A Deeper Hole)](https://charity.wtf/2023/08/17/how-to-communicate-when-trust-is-low-without-digging-yourself-into-a-deeper-hole/)
- Acknowledge it is hard
- Speak tentatively
- Try to sound friendly, take a breath
- "The story in my head"
- Engineer positive interactions (the magic ratio for healthy relationships is at least five positive interactions for every one negative interaction)
- Communicate positive intent
- Give people the opening to do better
- Value the effort
- [Why You Should Send a Weekly Summary Email](https://jefago.medium.com/why-you-should-send-a-weekly-summary-email-1c556149ed42)
### Conflict resolution
- 🎞 [Disagree and commit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZw2cg8AXDw)
### CTO (Chief Technical Officer), VPoE and other levels
See also the section about [Organizational structure](#organizational-structure)
- Martin Casado, [Hire a VP of Engineering](https://a16z.com/2017/05/26/hiring-vp-engineering-why-what/) on the Andreessen Horowitz blog
- The most important function of a VP of engineering is to build out the engineering team and set a startup’s engineering culture.
- Competent engineering management should therefore be able to push the team towards more practical, incremental designs that can garner useful external feedback quickly — without compromising the long-term generality of the system. The VP’s role here is not producing the architecture, but ensuring that incremental release is a real requirement in the design process.
- Strong engineering management tends to give their teams enough ownership and latitude that they are happy and fulfilled in driving the product forward.
- AVC, [VP Engineering Vs CTO](https://avc.com/2011/10/vp-engineering-vs-cto/)
- Mark Suster, [Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?](https://bothsidesofthetable.com/want-to-know-the-difference-between-a-cto-and-a-vp-engineering-4fc3750c596b#.gw)
- 🎤 [CTO vs VP Engineering Balancing Innovation](https://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/cto-vs-vp-of-engineering), Bryan Cantrill, Jason Hoffman
- Will Larson, [Your first 90 days as CTO or VP Engineering.](https://lethain.com/first-ninety-days-cto-vpe/)
- Durable improvements depend on creating systems that create changes, not performing tactical actions that create the ephemeral appearance of improvement.
- Figure out if something is really wrong and needs immediate attention.
- Shadow customer meetings, partner meetings or user testing.
- Find your business analytics and how to query them.
- Shadow existing interviews, onboarding and closing calls.
- Kickoff engineering brand efforts.
- Build a trivial change and deploy it.
- [The 7 roles of a CTO](https://oded.substack.com/p/the-7-roles-of-a-cto)
- Executive
- Representative
- People manager (sometimes)
- Hands on developer (sometimes)
- Owns security and IT
- Salesperson
- Does whatever it takes
- [Advice for new directors](https://www.rubick.com/advice-for-new-directors/)
- A lot of your job is training managers
- Biggest skill to learn: sensing your organization
- You’ll need a new perspective
- You should focus on systems
- Beware the distortions of power
- You’re judged by the difference you make on your organization.
- [Your CTO Should Actually Be Technical](https://blog.southparkcommons.com/your-cto-should-actually-be-technical/)
- Exceptional technical ability is the only way for CTOs/VPEs to be true judges of quality.
- It allows them to make highly educated tradeoffs
- [5 Things Founders, Investors and Recruiters Should Know about the CTO role](https://medium.com/cto-as-a-service/5-things-founders-investors-and-recruiters-should-know-about-the-cto-role-a65d7bb66264)
- “The CTO’s primary job is to make sure the company’s technology strategy serves its business strategy” — Eric Ries.
- As a CTO, you don’t work in the box, because your task is to examine the box and make it better.
- The CTO might code, but only on POCs and prototypes.
- [What It Really Means to be a Manager, Director, or VP](https://kellblog.com/2015/03/08/career-development-what-it-really-means-to-be-a-manager-director-or-vp/)
- Managers are paid to drive results with some supports
- Directors are paid to drive results with little or no supervision ("set and forget")
- VPs are paid to make the plan. (no "get-out-of-jail-free" card because "the CEO approved the plan")
### Data organization
- [Building a data team at a mid-stage startup: a short story](https://erikbern.com/2021/07/07/the-data-team-a-short-story.html)
- [Building The Analytics Team At Wish](https://medium.com/wish-engineering/scaling-analytics-at-wish-619eacb97d16) (a four-part series of articles)
- Rebuilding The Data Pipeline
- Building The Data Warehouse
- Deploying Business Intelligence Tooling
- Data engineering should build a system that allows analysts to produce their own pipelines.
- Strong interviewers need to have flexible questions that react to signals from the candidates.
- [Engineers Shouldn’t Write ETL: A Guide to Building a High Functioning Data Science Department](https://multithreaded.stitchfix.com/blog/2016/03/16/engineers-shouldnt-write-etl/)
- You Probably Don’t Have Big Data
- Nobody enjoys writing and maintaining data pipelines or ETL. It’s the industry’s ultimate hot potato.
- Give data scientists ownership of the ETL end-to-end
- Engineers design new Lego blocks that data scientists assemble in creative ways to create new data science.
- It is absolutely essential for platform engineers to stay ahead of the data science teams
- Engineers should see themselves as being “Tony Stark’s tailor”, building the armor that prevents data scientists from falling into pitfalls that yield unscalable or unreliable solutions.
- We [should be ok with] sacrificing technical efficiency for velocity and autonomy
### Culture
- [The maze is in the mouse](https://medium.com/@pravse/the-maze-is-in-the-mouse-980c57cfd61a) lays out how Google's culture impeded its results and execution.
- "It is a soft peacetime culture where nothing is worth fighting for."
- Google employees get very little done because they are trapped in a maze of processes.
- The culture focuses on consensus ("respect each other") and risk-avoidance at the expense of heroism or value-creating ideas/bets.
- Each employee's mission is not about the customer but about serving a VP or a technical belief/process.
- Most managers are [peacetime managers](https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceo-wartime-ceo/) and lack a sense of urgency.
- There is a general lack of humility regarding the internal tech stack. The delusion of exceptionalism means that employees believe everything they do is perfect.
- "Strategy is rarely articulated clearly (that would be career risk)"
### Decisions
- [Square Defangs Difficult Decisions with this System — Here’s How](http://firstround.com/review/square-defangs-difficult-decisions-with-this-system-heres-how/)
- [How to simplify complex decisions by cleaving the facts](https://blog.asmartbear.com/complex-decisions.html), Jason Cohen.
- [Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (113 Models Explained)](https://www.fs.blog/mental-models/)
- [How to Make a Big Decision](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/opinion/sunday/how-make-big-decision.html), the NYT.
- [Principles for Decision-Making in a Flat Organization](https://doist.com/blog/decision-making-flat-organization/)
- We risk more when we delay decisions in an attempt to reach total consensus.
- If there is a good enough solution X, don’t ask people what they think about it. Instead, ask everyone if they can live with it and if not, why.
- Consensus is the path, not the destination.
- [Principles.dev - Software Engineering Principles](https://principles.dev/)
- [Guiding principle: consent over consensus](https://jchyip.medium.com/guiding-principle-consent-over-consensus-8aee08540d62)
- [Tools for better thinking](https://untools.co/): Situation-Behavior-Impact, conflict resolution diagram, Ishikawa diagram, Einsenhower matrix, second order thinking, decision matrix, etc.
- [Balancing Engineering Cultures: Debate Everything vs. Just Tell Me What To Build](https://www.fishmanafnewsletter.com/p/balancing-engineering-cultures-debate-vs-do)
- To get out of "debate everything"
- Help people operate in the "gray area"
- Introduce the "FG" scale to streamline debates
- Incentivize outcomes
- To get out of "just build it"
- Incentivize outcomes and feedback
- Provide context and venue to discuss
- Codify expectations (product and eng)
- [Ask Questions, Repeat The Hard Parts, and Listen](https://randsinrepose.com/archives/ask-questions-repeat-the-hard-parts-and-listen/), Rands in Repose: a good framework for letting your team make decisions autonomously. "My job is to teach you not to need me"
- [Be good-argument-driven, not data-driven](https://twitchard.github.io/posts/2022-08-26-metrics-schmetrics.html)
- [Principles for decision-making in a flat organization](https://async.twist.com/decision-making-flat-organization/)
- [Second-order Thinking](https://read.perspectiveship.com/p/second-order-thinking)
> Arguments you should avoid using - that are logical fallacies
> “Because it’s always been done this way.”
> “Because we tried it before, and it didn’t work.”
> “Because company X uses this.”
> “Because {important person} said so.”
>
> Reason on tradeoffs, constraints, opportunities instead.
>
> – Gergely Orosz
### Delegation
- [The Counterintuitive Art of Leading by Letting Go](http://99u.com/articles/43081/the-counter-intuitive-art-of-leading-by-letting-go)
- Against micromanagement: "After you plant a seed in the ground, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing", William Coyne, Head of R&D at 3M.
- [Your Small Imprecise Ask Is a Big Waste of Their Time](https://staysaasy.com/startups/2023/11/10/imprecise-asks.html)
> The 70/10/80 Principle of delegation: “Find someone who can do what you do at 70% the success rate. Teach them the extra 10% and be okay with 80%.”
### Delivery
- [A primer on engineering delivery metrics](https://leaddev.com/scaling-software-systems/primer-engineering-delivery-metrics)
- [Engineering productivity can be measured - just not how you'd expect](https://www.okayhq.com/blog/engineering-productivity-can-be-measured). Interesting take.
- Non-measurement unfairly rewards people with charisma while productive but less-persuasive engineers wallow in frustration.
- Measure Blockers at the Team Level
### Developer productivity and devexp (developer experience)
*See also the "Personal productivity" section in this page.*
- [DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3595878), ACM Queue. Defines the components of developer productivity, as well as metrics.
- Flow state
- Feedback loops
- Cognitive load
- [How To Get Buy-in for DevEx Initiatives: Strategies From GitHub, Notion, and More](https://getdx.com/resources/devex-executive-buy-in)
- Categorize projects into themes that resonate with leadership
- Play the long game: avoid having a single-minded agenda
- Start by identifying “the thorn” in your leadership’s side
- Quantify the business value of projects
- [Measuring Developer Productivity via Humans](https://martinfowler.com/articles/measuring-developer-productivity-humans.html), Martin Fowler
### Diversity and inclusion
- 📖 [Breaking Through Bias: Communication Techniques for Women to Succeed at Work](https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Through-Bias-Communication-Techniques/dp/B01F93NFP4)
- Most men believe that they have no biases against women and that the organizations in which they work treat women and men equally. If senior-level men read this book, they will realize that neither of these beliefs is correct.
- 📖 [Thinking, Fast and Slow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow), Wikipedia
- 🎞 [2 Minutes Book Summary: Thinking Fast and Slow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ivtvPVkFkw&ab_channel=Lifehack)
- [Guess Who Doesn’t Fit In at Work](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/opinion/sunday/guess-who-doesnt-fit-in-at-work.html)
- [List of cognitive biases on Wikipedia](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)
- 🎞 [Making the Unconscious Conscious](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW5s_-Nl3JE) (Google Video)
Hiring:
- [Why Hiring for "Culture Fit" Hurts Your Culture](http://www.paperplanes.de/2015/6/11/why-hiring-for-culture-fit-hurts-your-culture.html)
- [Xavier Niel explains 42: the coding university without teachers, books, or tuition](http://venturebeat.com/2016/06/16/xavier-niel-explains-42-the-coding-university-without-teachers-books-or-tuition/): a thought-provoking take on CS diplomas.
- [A Quick Puzzle to Test Your Problem Solving](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/03/upshot/a-quick-puzzle-to-test-your-problem-solving.html?_r=0)... and a great way to learn about confirmation bias (which is not only applicable to hiring but also to testing).
- 🎞 [Hiring women at Klarna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWYNst72ucI)
### Employee handbook
- [Clef's employee handbook](https://github.com/clef/handbook) has been open sourced on Github.
- [Gitlab's handbook](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/)
- [Valve's handbook](http://www.valvesoftware.com/company/Valve_Handbook_LowRes.pdf)
- [Inaka's handbook](https://github.com/inaka/guidelines)
- [Basecamp's handbook](https://github.com/basecamp/handbook)
- [Mattermost's handbook](https://docs.mattermost.com/guides/core.html)
- [Strapi's handbook](https://handbook.strapi.io)
### Employee retention
- [Theory-building and why employee churn is lethal to software companies](https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2022/theory-building/)
- "The death of a program happens when the programmer team possessing its theory is dissolved." Programming as Theory Building by Peter Naur, 1985.
- Software is the insights of the development team made manifest.
- Most code documentation becomes useful after you have built the theory in your mind
- The most reliable method a programmer has for building an accurate ‘theory’ of a piece of software is to have been there when it was first written ("first generation programmer")
- Too many second-generation developers and the first generation gets overwhelmed, and work stalls.
- Too few second-generation developers and there is no renewal—each developer that leaves the team is a potential catastrophe.
- Team stability is vital for software development
### Escalations
- [Learn how to escalate issues](http://www.goodproductmanager.com/2007/05/09/learn-how-to-escalate-issues/)
- [Mental frameworks for making decisions](http://nathanbarry.com/mental-frameworks/): how to handle escalations as a manager.
- [Inspection and the limits of trust](https://lethain.com/inspection/)
### Executives
- [The One Key to Dealing with Senior Executives: Answer the Question!](https://kellblog.com/2012/01/17/the-one-key-to-dealing-with-senior-executives-answer-the-question/)
### FinOps (cost)
- [Efficiency: Managing Infrastructure Costs](https://infraeng.dev/efficiency/)
### First-time manager
- [How to Ensure a New Manager Succeeds](https://getlighthouse.com/blog/new-manager-how-to-help-succeed/)
- [Six Recipes for Software Managers](http://eng.localytics.com/six-recipes-for-software-managers/)
- 1-1
- Team surveys
- A safe environment
- An informed department
- Resilient teams
- Self improvement
- [The Problem with Tech Leads](https://medium.com/@Bar_Code/the-problem-with-tech-leads-a840af1f511c#.ay11fv7u9)
- [Trained Engineers - Overnight Managers (or, The Art Of Not Destroying Your Company)](http://sysadvent.blogspot.nl/2016/12/day-16-trained-engineers-overnight.html)
- [A Manager’s FAQ](https://medium.com/eshares-blog/a-managers-faq-35858a229f84#.u1iu04owe)
- [This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers](http://firstround.com/review/this-90-day-plan-turns-engineers-into-remarkable-managers/)
- [The New Manager Death Spiral](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-new-manager-death-spiral/), Rands in Repose.
- [Learnings from six months as a first-time manager](https://www.dein.fr/posts/2014-01-29-learnings-from-six-months-as-a-first-time)
- [How to fail as a new engineering manager](https://blog.usejournal.com/how-to-fail-as-a-new-engineering-manager-30b5fb617a)
- [Choosing the Management Track](https://blog.danielna.com/choosing-the-management-track/)
- You won’t code anymore.
- Management forces you to care more about everything.
- Management creates an unavoidable power hierarchy.
- You need to be technical enough to intervene.
- Companies ultimately succeed or fail by their coordinated execution, culture and leadership.
- [The best leaders are great individual contributors, not professional managers](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33843160), an insightful thread on Hacker News
- [17 Reasons NOT To Be A Manager](https://charity.wtf/2019/09/08/reasons-not-to-be-a-manager/)
### Feedback
See the Performance section too.
- 📖 [Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss](http://firstround.com/review/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss/)
- 📖 [Amazon.com: Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High](https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-Second-ebook-dp-B005K0AYH4/dp/B005K0AYH4/ref=mt_kindle?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=) by Kerry Patterson.
- So the first step to achieving the results we really want is to fix the problem of believing that others are the source of all that ails us. It’s our dogmatic conviction that “if we could just fix those losers, all would go better” that keeps us from taking action that could lead to dialogue and progress. Which is why it’s no surprise that those who are best at dialogue tend to turn this logic around. They believe the best way to work on “us” is to start with “me.”
- Respect is like air. As long as it’s present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it’s all that people can think about.
- “One dull pencil is worth six sharp minds.” Don’t leave your hard work to memory. If you’ve gone to the effort to complete a crucial conversation, don’t fritter away all the meaning you created by trusting your memories. Write down the details of conclusions, decisions, and assignments.
- [A Primer on Giving Critical Feedback](http://www.tombartel.de//2016/05/21/a-primer-on-giving-critical-feedback/)
- Feedback goes both ways: [Tool: Try Google’s Manager Feedback Survey](https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/managers-give-feedback-to-managers/steps/try-googles-manager-feedback-survey/)
- [Negative feedback antipatterns](https://www.dein.fr/posts/2016-12-02-negative-feedback-antipatterns)
- [The Open Feedback Circle (OFC)](https://medium.com/@padminipyapali/open-feedback-circle-a69601ea5dfd), a great idea by Padmini Pyapali.
- We met once a month, sat around a table, and shared feedback with each other in front of our other teammates. This gathering took feedback exchange from being a biannual activity we dreaded to a monthly ritual we looked forward to.
- Vulnerability Cultivates Trust
- [Simon Sinek: Purpose should be prioritized over metrics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhuKJWm1_fQ&ab_channel=DenkProducties)
- Targets are great. But how targets are reached matters too. A team that would meet its target two months later should be rewarded more than a team that reach its target at the expense of morale and quality.
- SEALs measure performance and trust. They would rather have a medium performance high trust person on the team than a high performance low trust person.
- Simon's team runs team peer reviews. One person shares their top three weaknesses, the team can comment but they can only say thank you, then they do the same for their strength.
- [The manager I hated and the lesson he taught me](https://www.blog4ems.com/p/the-manager-i-hated)
### Hands-on
- [Should managers still code?](https://theengineeringmanager.substack.com/p/should-managers-still-code)
- If you mean being the primary implementer of features, then probably not. If you mean being an integral part of how your team produces code, then yes, absolutely. I recommend it highly.
- [Being in the details](https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/managing-managers/being-in-the-details/)
### Hiring
#### General
- 📖 [Hiring The Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets & Science Of Hiring Technical People](https://www.amazon.com/Hiring-Knowledge-Workers-Techies-Nerds/dp/0932633595), Johanna Rothman. A solution-oriented book.
- Train your interview team to apply a limited-consensus approach to hiring. When groups use limited consensus, not everyone may agree with the decision, but each person should be satisfied enough with a particular candidate’s suitability not to block the decision to hire him or her.
- What if the vetoer is someone I don’t want to keep in the organization?” The answer to this is simple: In the interview process, only involve employees whose work you respect and value. If an employee isn’t successful in his or her technical position, don’t make that employee part of the interview team.
- Make sure members of your team interview an internal candidate the same way they would interview an external candidate.
- Know why you’re hiring more people. Define your problems to define your hiring strategy.
- Sometimes, the main reason a hiring manager doesn’t hire a candidate is that he or she has a gut feeling that the person just won’t fit well with the culture. But a “gut feeling” is not a good reason not to hire someone, so train yourself to articulate culture-fit differences.
- I personally do not consider certification to mean anything much when I am hiring someone for a technical position. Because the knowledge tested is functional-skills book knowledge, make sure you understand what the person must do to maintain his or her certification and the value of that certification to your environment.
- Too often, internal recruiters look for tool and technology expertise or for advanced academic degrees, rather than for functional skill or for product-domain experience.
- If you feel the need to take notes, take them on paper, never on a computer. My reason for this is that when you use a computer, you have to sit behind a screen, which creates a barrier between you and the candidate.
- Promising an unconditional promotion is not just risky; it is stupid. Circumstances within the company can change; the employee may not perform up to expectations; the economy may tank.
- A good example of [offer letter](https://medium.com/@henrysward/a-better-offer-letter-4e9bf61a7365#.md4rm1zlp) from eShares.
- [We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else](http://blog.codinghorror.com/we-hire-the-best-just-like-everyone-else/), Jeff Atwood.
- ⭐️ [How to Hire](https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-hire-34f4ded5f176#.jxkz3wrs3): one of the best articles about hiring.
- Hire for Strength vs Lack of Weakness
- Hire for Trajectory vs Experience
- Hire Doers vs Tellers
- Hire Learners vs Experts
- Hire Different vs Similar
- Always pass on ego
- ⭐️ [The hiring post](http://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/): another truly awesome post about hiring by Thomas Ptacek.
- [This is why you never end up hiring good developers](http://qz.com/258066/this-is-why-you-dont-hire-good-developers/)
- Many interview techniques test skills that are at best irrelevant to real working life;
- You want somebody who knows enough to do the job right now;
- Or somebody smart and motivated enough that they can learn the job quickly;
- You want somebody who keeps getting better at what they do;
- Your interview should be a collaborative conversations, not a combative interrogation;
- You also want somebody who you will enjoy working with;
- It’s important to separate “enjoy working with” from “enjoy hanging out with;”
- Don’t hire assholes, no matter how good they are;
- If your team isn’t diverse, your team is worse than it needed to be;
- Accept that hiring takes a really long time and is really, really hard.
- [Engineering Management - Hiring](http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management-hiring.html) explains why hiring should be your top priority.
- [When we only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest](http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/)
- [How to Hire](https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-to-hire), Patty McCord (built HR function at Netflix).
- [Trouble hiring senior engineers? It's probably you](https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/trouble-hiring/).
- When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling.
- [I've been an engineer and a recruiter. Hiring is broken.](http://blog.alinelerner.com/ive-been-an-engineer-and-a-recruiter-hiring-is-broken-heres-why-and-heres-what-it-should-be-like-instead/)
- 🎧 [How to Get the Ideal Team Player](https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/301/)
- [6 qualities that make a great engineer](https://www.intercom.com/blog/traits-of-exceptional-engineers/)
- Ambitious and determined
- Habitually simplify
- Can debug anything, quickly
- Help others be great
- Know what’s valuable
- Are creative and positive
- [How to hire low experience, high potential people](https://worktopia.substack.com/p/how-to-hire-low-experience-high-potential)
- [Dumb and gets things done](https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-things-done/)
- Joel Spolsky says that the ideal programmer is someone who is smart and gets things done. But what about people who are dumb and get things done?
- Leaders need to make things happen. Teachers need to teach. Programmers need to write code. These basic skills are necessary, but they are not enough.
#### Hiring: interviews
- [Vanquish whiteboard interview puzzles with test-driven development](http://www.codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview-puzzles/), Jocelyn Goldfein.
- Joel Spolsky, [The Phone Screen](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePhoneScreen.html)
- 🎞 [The pursuit of happyness' interview scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHXKitKAT1E)
- [Real talk: the technical interview is broken](https://medium.com/@CODE2040/real-talk-the-technical-interview-is-broken-b84b8375dccb#.vxuvtrhad)
- [Finding a Tech Leadership Job in Silicon Alley](https://medium.com/@Bar_Code/finding-a-tech-leadership-job-in-silicon-alley-3631e97ff33e#.2w4yzwtgx) (interviewing seen from the candidate experience point of view).
- [How I Interview](https://rkoutnik.com/articles/How-I-Interview.html)
- [What if companies interviewed translators the way they interview coders?](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/welcome-to-the-software-interview-ee673bc5ef6) - a great counter example of how interview can be disconnected from one's actual job.
- 🎞 [Monthy Python: a terrible candidate experience](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4iFzweRf3E)
- [Your interviews shouldn’t be spoilable](https://medium.com/@rafeco/your-interviews-shouldnt-be-spoilable-c9088ecea1ee)
- How much should you share with the candidate? As much as an ethical person would share with a friend who they referred for the job.
- If an interview can be spoiled, it means that the answers can be memorized.
- Your spoilable interview is going to get spoiled. Some referred candidates are going to get the answers from their friends.
- If foreknowledge doesn’t reduce the quality of your interviews, it means that you have to change your questions less often
- [Becoming a good technical interviewer - Dashlane Blog](https://blog.dashlane.com/becoming-a-good-technical-interviewer/)
- Interviewing should always be a pleasant experience for the candidate
- The fine balance between guiding and giving the solution
- I’m interviewing someone much more senior than I am. What if I don’t understand their solution?
- [6 red flags I saw while doing 60+ technical interviews in 30 days](https://blog.interviewing.io/6-red-flags-i-saw-while-doing-60-technical-interviews-in-30-days/)
- Your interviewer is only open to solving the problem ONE way
- Undue pressure to accept an offer letter
- Not enough clarity about your role
- Consistent lack of interest or low morale from interviewers
- Your interviewers aren’t prepared for the interview
- Lack of a clear direction on where the company is headed
- [How to hire engineering talent without the BS](https://jes.al/2023/03/how-to-hire-engineering-talent-without-the-bs/)
- Antipatterns: memory, speed
- Best practices: upfront, realistic, structured, guided, empathetic,
Specifics about hiring engineering managers:
- [Cracking the Engineering Manager interview — Part 1](https://medium.com/srivatsan-sridharan/cracking-the-engineering-manager-interview-part-1-adb0b63c7f2f)
- [Hunting for Rock Star Engineering Managers](https://hackernoon.com/hunting-for-rock-star-engineering-managers-9ef9c3716b02)
- [VP of Engineering interview](https://karimfanous.medium.com/how-do-you-interview-a-vp-of-engineering-81deddf6daa2)
- What is the reasonable interaction between PM and Engineering?
- How do you increase your team’s throughput?
- How do you scale an engineering team?
- How does engineering support sales?
- What’s interesting to you about this company? What do you think you can add to the team?
- What can you do to accelerate product delivery?
#### Hiring: interview questions
- [45 sample behavioral questions for interview with developer](https://devskiller.com/45-behavioral-questions-to-use-during-non-technical-interview-with-developers/)
- [30 most common behavioral interview questions](https://www.themuse.com/advice/30-behavioral-interview-questions-you-should-be-ready-to-answer)
- [Behavioral interviews](http://career.egr.uh.edu/sites/career.egr.uh.edu/files/files/behavioral-interview.pdf)
- 🧰 [MaximAbramchuck/awesome-interview-questions](https://github.com/MaximAbramchuck/awesome-interview-questions): a list of list of interview questions.
- [40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know](https://firstround.com/review/40-favorite-interview-questions-from-some-of-the-sharpest-folks-we-know/), First Round Review
- What do you want to do differently in your next role?
- Imagine yourself in three years. What do you hope will be different about you then compared to now?
- Among the people you've worked with, who do you admire and why?
- What are you really good at, but never want to do anymore?
- How did you prepare for this interview?
- What do you believe you can achieve with us personally or professionally that you can't anywhere else in the world?
- When was the last time you changed your mind about something important?
- What’s one misconception your coworkers have about you?
- What was the last thing you nerded out on?
- What are 10 ways to speed up Domino’s pizza delivery?
- [How to create a good problem-solving interview](https://blog.dashlane.com/how-to-create-a-good-problem-solving-interview/)
- What to look for: methodology, communication, programming skills
- Don’t aim for complexity
- Interview your coworkers
- Standardize your interview
- [5 coding interview questions I hate](https://blog.thoughtspile.tech/2022/03/21/bad-tech-interview/)
- Trivia
- Specifics
- Obfuscated questions
- Unspecified behavior
- [Bug squash: An underrated interview question](https://blog.jez.io/bugsquash/)
#### Hiring: job postings
- [Software Engineer Job Descriptions that Attract the Best Developers](https://www.codementor.io/blog/software-engineer-job-descriptions-that-attract-the-best-developers-241lev4cs8)
- [How to communicate why your startup is worth joining](https://wasp-lang.dev/blog/2022/08/15/how-to-communicate-why-your-startup-is-worth-joining)
- Lots of great ideas.
#### Hiring: process
- [Medium’s engineering interview process](https://medium.engineering/mediums-engineering-interview-process-b8d6b67927c4#.hwjb9hizh): Medium open sourced their hiring process.
- Gitlab, [Hiring Principles](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/hiring/principles/). Their whole process is also open sourced.
- [How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers](https://startupandrew.com/posts/how-firebase-interviewed-software-engineers/)
- We looked for candidates who were friendly, smart, and motivated
- We looked for generalist, pragmatic problem solvers
- [No engineer has ever sued a company because of constructive post-interview feedback. So why don't employers do it?](http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/)
- Be clear that it’s a no-go.
- When you give suggestions, be specific and constructive.
- Make recommendations. Is there a book they could read?
#### Hiring: résumé review
- [When Is Short Tenure a Red Flag?](https://jacobian.org/2022/oct/14/when-is-short-tenure-a-red-flag/)
- [What we look for in a resume](https://huyenchip.com/2023/01/24/what-we-look-for-in-a-candidate.html)
#### Hiring: sourcing
- [How To Hire Engineers: Step 1, Sourcing](https://medium.com/@jocelyngoldfein/how-to-hire-engineers-step-1-sourcing-f388fddc63fd#.fwtgweq0e)
- [The Case For Language-Agnostic Hiring](https://alphalist.com/blog/the-case-for-language-agnostic-hiring)
- Good Programmers Can Adapt to Any Language
- Hire Broad-minded Devs- Not Ones Boxed Into a Specific Language
- Encourage Knowledge Sharing Among Devs
#### Hiring: take home exercises
- [How GitHub does take home technical interviews](https://github.blog/2022-03-31-how-github-does-take-home-technical-interviews/)
- [guardian/coding-exercises](https://github.com/guardian/coding-exercises)
- [Take-home vs whiteboard coding: The problem is bad interviews](https://andrewrondeau.com/blog/2020/04/take-home-vs-whiteboard-coding-the-problem-is-bad-interviews)
- [Live Coding Interviews](https://garrettdimon.com/journal/posts/live-coding-interviews) describes ways in which a live coding interview won't give you accurate signals.
#### Hiring: quotes
> If you can 'hire tough,' you can 'manage easy'.
Sue Tetzlaff, The Employee Experience: A Capstone Guide to Peak Performance
> I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
Lawrence Bossidy, GE
> I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.
Lee Iacocca, Ford
> You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world... but it requires people to make the dream a reality.
Walt Disney
> Hire character. Train skill.
Peter Schutz, Porsche
> In technology, it's about the people. Getting the best people, retaining them, nurturing a creative environment, and helping to find a way to innovate.
Marissa Mayer
> I'd rather interview 50 people and not hire anyone than hire the wrong person.
Jeff Bezos
> Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.
Michael Jordan, American former professional basketball player
> Often the best solution to a management problem is the right person.
Edwin Booz
> Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
Warren Buffet
> One cannot hire a hand; the whole man always comes with it.
Peter Drucker
> If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.
Red Adair
### Incident prevention and response (on-call, outages)
Also see my [professional-programming list](https://github.com/charlax/professional-programming/#incident-response-oncall-alerting-outages-firefighting-postmortem)
- [Handling Incidents and Outages](https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/06/handling-incidents-outages/)
- [When the Sky Falls](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/when-the-sky-falls/), Rands in Repose
- 🎞 [Incident Analysis: How *Learning* is Different Than *Fixing*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw_ASI-rk1s&ab_channel=DevSecCon) ([slides](https://speakerdeck.com/jallspaw/incident-analysis-how-star-learning-star-is-different-than-star-fixing-star?slide=8
### Learning, retro, postmortem
See my [professional-programming section about incident-response](https://github.com/charlax/professional-programming)
- [This is How Effective Leaders Move Beyond Blame](http://firstround.com/review/this-is-how-effective-leaders-move-beyond-blame/)
- A great description of what blamelessness actually means: [How is team-member-1 doing?](https://about.gitlab.com/2017/03/17/how-is-team-member-1-doing/) (team-member-1 is the name of the person that "gave the unfortunate command to delete our primary database" during the global Gitlab outage in Feb 2017.
- [Debriefing Facilitation Guide](https://extfiles.etsy.com/DebriefingFacilitationGuide.pdf): Etsy's guide to debriefing & incident review.
- [General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis Email About Being 'Too Busy To Read' Is A Must-Read](http://www.businessinsider.com/viral-james-mattis-email-reading-marines-2013-5): "by reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men."
- [You can increase your intelligence: 5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/you-can-increase-your-intelligence-5-ways-to-maximize-your-cognitive-potential/): forgive the clickbait link, it's actually a good article.
- [Startup Graveyard – History Shouldn't Have to Repeat Itself](http://startupgraveyard.io/)
- [Design critiques at Figma](https://www.figma.com/blog/design-critiques-at-figma/?ref=uxdesignweekly)
- Pick the right format: standard, brainstorms, small groups, silent,
printed, etc.
- Use smaller rooms
- Buy a timer and keep diligent time
- Remember to critique OUTSIDE of weekly meetings
Quotes:
- "Excellence is achieved by the mastery of fundamentals", Vince Lombardi, considered to be one of the best coaches in NFL history.
### Management style
- [Humane Development](https://ernie.io/2014/12/17/humane-development/): "we are humans working with humans to develop software for the benefit of humans."
- [Leadership is making a comeback](https://www.reaktor.com/blog/leadership-is-making-a-comeback/) : interesting article that proposes a model where the leader is neither a servant nor a hero, but a host.
- [Management Philosophy](https://www.3002.ca/2017/06/management-philosophy.html)
- [12 "Manager READMEs" from Silicon Valley’s Top Tech Companies](https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valleys-top-tech-companies-26588a660afe)
- 🎞 [What is your philosophy on leadership? How do you inspire your team to do their best?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQhns5AwAkA): beautiful sequence between Nelson Mandela (played by Morgan Freeman) and François Pienaar (Matt Damon).
- [Why Software Development Requires Servant Leaders](https://adl.io/essays/why-software-development-requires-servant-leaders/)
- Andreessen Horowitz, [Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO](https://a16z.com/2011/04/14/peacetime-ceo-wartime-ceo/)
- Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win.
- [Excerpts from One From Many, Dee Hock](https://twitter.com/zackkanter/status/1272200276015853569), Zack Kanter on Twitter.
- Your first responsibility as a manager is to manage yourself: your integrity, character, ethics, knowledge, wisdom, temperament, words and acts.
- The second responsibility is to manage those who have authority over us.
- The third responsibility is to manage your peers: without their respect and confidence, nothing can be accomplished.
- The fourth responsibility is to manage those whom we have authority.
- You can't manage your bosses, peers, regulators etc. But you can understand them, motivate them, influence them, forgive them.
- "It is from failure that amazing growth and grace so often come, provided only that one can recognise it, admit it, learn from it, rise above it, and try again. True leadership presumes a standard quite beyond human perfectibility and that is quite alright, for joy and satisfaction are in the pursuit of an objective, not in its realization."
- [Managing Staff-plus engineers](https://lethain.com/managing-staff-plus-engineers/)
- [An Engineering Team where Everyone is a Leader](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/a-team-where-everyone-is-a-leader/), Gergely Orosz.
- One project, one engineering lead
- Mentoring, then coaching the first few leaders
- Transparency and accountability via weekly, written updates
- [All You Need to Become a Servant Leader](https://effyai.substack.com/p/all-you-need-to-become-a-servant)
- Examples of servant leaders and book recommendations
- You need: empathy, self-awareness, active listening, trust, transparency
- [Developing leadership styles](https://lethain.com/developing-leadership-styles/), Will Larson, Includes mechanics and examples.
- Leading with policy
- Leading from consensus
- Leading with conviction
- [From good to great: A capability framework for building exceptional product engineering teams](https://buriti.ca/from-good-to-great-a-capability-framework-for-building-exceptional-product-engineering-teams-a8ca4e9e8f47)
Quote:
> If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
>
> – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
> Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
>
> – Peter Drucker
> The people who work for you have three resources: time, energy, and give-a-fuck. Time is the cheapest. It replenishes one hour every hour. Energy is more expensive. When you're out you need lots of time off to recharge. Once give-a-fuck is burned, it's gone forever.
>
> – @leftoblique
### Meetings
- [On Better Meetings](http://larahogan.me/blog/better-meetings/): Lara Hogan shares tips about ensuring efficient meetings.
- 🎞 [Almost Live! - Middle Management Suck-Ups](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUIQX5esnNo): a great example of a terrible ineffective meeting.
- [Run Better Meetings with This Expert-Level Advice](http://firstround.com/review/first-round-reviews-6-must-reads-to-run-fast-efficient-meetings/), First Round Review
- [Engineering Team Meeting: Format & Topic Ideas](https://marcgg.com/blog/2020/04/06/engineering-team-meeting-ideas/): lots of great ideas to start it.
- [The Document Culture of Amazon](https://www.justingarrison.com/blog/2021-03-15-the-document-culture-of-amazon/)
- Documents help eliminate many biases, for or against, the person who wrote the document.
- There’s no “can you see my screen”, background noise, or call audio disconnects while understanding the main content for the meeting.
- [Cancel your meetings if you can live with the outcome](https://andygrunwald.com/blog/cancel-your-meetings-if-you-can-live-with-the-outcome/)
- ["My new favorite team ritual: A weekly meeting called "Fight Club" where you meet with your leadership team with the intention of having a conflict.](https://twitter.com/lennysan/status/1754554023318106596)
- [Meetings *are* the work.](https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/meetings-are-the-work-9e429dde6aa3)
- [Embrace Silence](https://tech.forter.com/embrace-silence.html)
- [Simple Sabotage](https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Sabotage-Detecting-Behaviors-Undermine/dp/0062371606) "A Modern Field Manual for Detecting and Rooting Out Everyday Behaviors That Undermine Your Workplace". Covers anti-patterns of collaborative behavior, and provides specific recommendations for fixing these when they occur in meetings.
### Mentoring
- [The Conjoined Triangles of Senior-Level Development](http://frontside.io/blog/2016/07/07/the-conjoined-triangles-of-senior-level-development.html) looks into how to define a senior engineer.
- [30 questions to ask your mentor](https://blog.get-merit.com/30-questions-to-ask-a-mentor/)
- [Advice is Cheap — Context is Priceless](http://firstround.com/review/advice-is-cheap-context-is-priceless/)
- [Developers mentoring other developers: practices I've seen work well](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/developers-mentoring-other-developers/), Gergey Orosz
- Provide context and perspective
- Leverage your network to help the mentee
- Be supportive
- Avoid giving answers on a silver plate
- Tailor your approach for technical vs non-technical topics
- People learn best when they help themselves
- [Your Strengths Are Your Weaknesses](https://terriblesoftware.org/2025/03/31/your-strengths-are-your-weaknesses/)
- The qualities we celebrate in our team members are usually the same ones causing our biggest headaches.
- We want self-aware engineers who understand their natural tendencies and can adjust them based on what each situation demands.
### Mindset and attitude
- [Taking Ownership Is The Most Effective Way to Get What You Want](http://www.theeffectiveengineer.com/blog/take-ownership-of-your-goals)
- [Shreyas Doshi on Twitter: "Good managers, what they do, how they think & act](https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1290685921348562948)
- Good managers are skilled at asking questions that give their team members a new perspective on the problem and reach the right solution on their own.
- Good managers address context first, then content.
- Good managers know that, above all else, they are agents of their company. Their default mode is to make and facilitate company-optimal choices.
- Good managers know that fixing broader company culture is an important part of their role as a designated leader within the company.
- Good managers understand that the long game is all about people.
- Good managers don’t have just one go-to management style nor do they have a notion of “THE ideal employee”.
- Good managers can discern good intent from bad.
- [Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "you can’t show me a task that is beneath me." Do what is required not what is desired](https://x.com/Codie_Sanchez/status/1794457275802787841)
> It's only when the tide goes out that you learn who's been swimming naked.
> – Warren Buffet
> @farbood: Doing the right thing, is direction. Doing things right, is speed.
> @jasonfried: You don’t get to call yourself a leader. That’s up to other people.
### Motivation
- 🎞 [Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) (summary of Daniel Pink's book).
- The [two-factor theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_theory) (Wikipedia) "states that there are certain factors in the workplace that cause job satisfaction, while a separate set of factors cause dissatisfaction."
- [Bored People Quit](http://randsinrepose.com/archives/bored-people-quit/), Rands in Repose
- [The Development Abstraction Layer](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-abstraction-layer-2/), Joel on Software
Quotes:
- "The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now", Chinese proverb.
- "A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are made for.", John A Shedd.
### Onboarding new team members or yourself
- [How to quickly (and successfully) onboard engineers](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/07/21/quickly-onboarding-engineers-successfully/), GitLab
- 🎞 [5 Onboarding Fiascos From the Movies](https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/recruiting-humor-and-fun/2016/the-worst-new-hire-first-days-in-movies-that-you-should-never-let-happen-in-your-company)
- [Onboarding - Mattermost Handbook](https://handbook.mattermost.com/operations/workplace/people/working-at-mattermost/onboarding)
- [Gitlab's engineering onboarding list](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/people-group/people-operations/employment-templates/blob/master/.gitlab/issue_templates/onboarding.md)
- [How To Use Your Unfair Advantage To Create an Unforgettable First Day For New Hires](https://lnbogen.com/2013/04/11/how-to-use-your-unfair-advantage-to-create-an-unforgettable-first-day-for-new-hires/), Oren Ellenbogen
- [Engineering Onboarding Processes at Medium](https://medium.engineering/engineering-onboarding-processes-at-medium-368095116ac3), Medium
- [A Career Cold Start Algorithm](https://boz.com/articles/career-cold-start), Andrew Bosworth. How to run your first 1-1s on a new team.
- For the first 25 minutes: ask them to tell you everything they think you should know.
- For the next 3 minutes: ask about the biggest challenges the team has right now.
- In the final 2 minutes: ask who else you should talk to. Write down every name they give you.
- [Onboarding](https://martinfowler.com/articles/bottlenecks-of-scaleups/06-onboarding.html), MartinFowler.com
- [Ask HN: How to onboard yourself to a new product/industry in a new job?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39777223)
### Organizational structure
See also [Data organization](#data-organization)
- Martin Fowler's [Team organization](https://martinfowler.com/tags/team%20organization.html) articles
- [Conway's Law](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ConwaysLaw.html), Martin Fowler
- "Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.", Melvin Conway
- [Conway’s Law in Team Topologies](https://medium.com/@fwynyk/conways-law-in-team-topolgies-did-you-really-get-it-69c1a4d702af)
- The Reverse or Inverse Conway Maneuver implies that we should design our teams (not the software yet) to “match” the required software architecture.
- [Spotify’s Failed #SquadGoals](https://www.jeremiahlee.com/posts/failed-squad-goals/)
- Engineering managers in this model had little responsibility beyond the career development of the people they managed.
- There was no single person accountable for the engineering team’s delivery or who could negotiate prioritization of work at an equivalent level of responsibility.
- Autonomy requires alignment. Company priorities must be defined by leadership. Autonomy does not mean teams get to do whatever they want.
- Business units, departments, teams, and managers more effectively communicate organization structure roles and responsibilities than Spotify’s synonyms and are not attached to a way of working that failed their creator.
- [Independence,autonomy,too many small teams](https://kislayverma.com/organizations/independence-autonomy-and-too-many-small-teams/)
- Every autonomous team is expected to generate direct business value all by itself, without a lot of overlap with other teams.
- The team should be able to meets its goals independently (i.e. without reliance on or interference from other teams).
- Coordination, also known as alignment, communication, shared roadmap, Gantt chart and many other positive sounding names, is the arch-enemy of the autonomous team.
- 🎞 [Monoliths vs Microservices is Missing the Point—Start with Team Cognitive Load](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haejb5rzKsM&ab_channel=ITRevolution) by the authors of team topologies.
- [Organizing software teams](https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-structure-teams-for-building-better-software-products-91e4dea021d) (Team Topologies Book Summary)
- There should be no shared ownership of components, libraries, or code.
- If you have microservices but are still waiting to do end-to-end testing of a combination of services, you have a distributed monolith (a distributed monolith is when all changes in a service require updates to other services).
- Use software boundaries defined by business-domain bounded contexts
- Teams composed of only people with single functional expertise should be avoided at all costs.
- Four fundamental team topologies: stream-aligned, enabling, complicated subsystem, platform.
- [Structure Eats Strategy](https://janbosch.com/blog/index.php/2017/11/25/structure-eats-strategy/)
- BAPO: the B (business) should define the A (architecture) which is the starting point for the P (process), on which the O (organization) is based.
- Most companies are not BAPO but instead they are OPAB: the existing organization is used as a basis for the definition of convenience-driven processes, which in turn leads to an accidental architecture.
- [Infrastructure Platform Engineering Organizational structures and models](https://www.alashiban.com/you-may-not-need-that-costly-time-consuming-infra-re-org/): an incredible article about how to structure the infra team.
- Describes the 4 canonical org models and their pros & cons:
- Product org with embed infra teams
- Shared cloud engineering team
- Infra org
- Infra-platform org
- Concludes that in the end expertise should be encoded in software solutions & automation
- [Architects, Anti-Patterns, and Organizational F*ery](https://charity.wtf/2023/03/09/architects-anti-patterns-and-organizational-fuckery/)
- [Team Topologies](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TeamTopologies.html), great book summary by Martin Fowler.
- The primary benefit of a platform is to reduce the cognitive load on stream-aligned teams
- [Beyond the Holacracy Hype](https://hbr.org/2016/07/beyond-the-holacracy-hype)
- [Organizational boundary problems: too many cooks or not enough kitchens?](https://medium.com/@ElizAyer/organizational-boundary-problems-too-many-cooks-or-not-enough-kitchens-2ddedc6de26a). A lot of useful resources to design organizations.
- [How and why we built our startup around small teams](https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/the-magic-of-small-engineering-teams)
- [Bad idea: Platforms automatically improve productivity](https://jchyip.medium.com/bad-idea-platforms-automatically-improve-productivity-ed8f15ce2c41)
- Platforms as products improve productivity; “because I said so” platforms do not.
- [Small teams](https://posthog.com/handbook/company/small-teams), Posthog Employee Handbook
### Performance management
- [Firing people](https://zachholman.com/talk/firing-people): Zach Holman's talk about his experience being fired from Github offers some great insights into a process that is rarely talked about.
- [It’s Never Too Early to Fire](https://a16z.com/2017/05/24/on-firing-why-when-how/), Andreessen Horowitz.
- [Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time](https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/performance-reviews-are-a-waste-of-time-87c88d7553b4): a good contrarian take on formal performance reviews
- [The How and Why of Performance Review Calibration](https://lattice.com/library/the-how-and-why-of-performance-review-calibration)
- [9 Box Grid: A Practitioner’s Guide](https://www.aihr.com/blog/9-box-grid/)
- [How to Effectively Manage Low Performers: The CARES Framework](https://blog.novatools.org/how-to-effectively-manage-low-performers-the-cares-framework-702e00732e8d): Communicate, Accountability, Roadmap, Execution, Support.
- [Unlocking performance management for start-ups and scale-ups](https://leaddev.com/process/unlocking-performance-management-start-ups-and-scale-ups)
- `Team performance = f(results, behaviors)`
- [Hey, wait – is employee performance really Gaussian distributed??](https://timdellinger.substack.com/p/hey-wait-is-employee-performance)
- Article argues that it's Pareto-distributed instead.
- [The Worst Programmer I Know](https://dannorth.net/the-worst-programmer/): don’t try to measure the individual contribution of a unit in a complex adaptive system, because the premise of the question is flawed
### Personal productivity
*See also: Developer productivity section*
About productivity in general:
- [43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero](http://www.43folders.com/izero): how to get and maintain your email inbox at a sane level.
- [CannotMeasureProductivity](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CannotMeasureProductivity.html), Martin Fowler (about how you cannot measure developer productivity.
- 🎧 [How to Change Your Behavior](https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/change-your-behavior-bj-fogg/), Coaching for Leaders
- It’s a myth that it takes 21 or 66 days to create a habit. Repetition doesn't create habits. Emotions create habits.
- Create a tiny habit through an ABC process: anchor moment, a tiny behavior, and instant celebration.
- Avoid raising the bar on the tiny behavior. Do more if you want to, but don’t change the standard.
- ['Touch it once' method for tasks can boost productivity](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/21/touch-it-once-method-for-tasks-can-boost-productivity.html)
- As soon as you touch something, you immediately act on it.
- [The Ultimate Guide to Personal Productivity Methods](https://todoist.com/inspiration/personal-productivity-methods), Todoist
- [Evidence-based advice on how to be successful in any jobs](https://80000hours.org/career-guide/how-to-be-successful/): most self-help advices are not research-based. The ones listed in this article are.
- [The Complete Guide to Deep Work](https://todoist.com/inspiration/deep-work)
- The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy.
- Choose Your Deep Work Strategy
- Build a Deep Work Routine
- Discipline #1: Focus on the Wildly Important
- Discipline #2: Act on the Lead Measures
- Discipline #4: Create a Cadence of Accountability
- Our Ability for Deep Work is Finite
- The Craftsman Approach to Tool Selection
- Stop Using Social Media
- Get Your Boss on Board With Deep Work
- [Every productivity thought I've ever had, as concisely as possible](https://guzey.com/productivity/)
- Context intentionality as the key difference between home and every other place on planet earth
- Rules are about exceptions
- [100 Tips for a Better Life](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7hFeMWC6Y5eaSixbD/100-tips-for-a-better-life)
- Deficiencies do not make you special. The older you get, the more your inability to cook will be a red flag for people.
- History remembers those who got to market first. Getting your creation out into the world is more important than getting it perfect.
- Discipline is superior to motivation. The former can be trained, the latter is fleeting. You won’t be able to accomplish great things if you’re only relying on motivation.
- You do not live in a video game. There are no pop-up warnings if you’re about to do something foolish, or if you’ve been going in the wrong direction for too long. You have to create your own warnings.
- Cultivate a reputation for being dependable. Good reputations are valuable because they’re rare (easily destroyed and hard to rebuild). You don’t have to brew the most amazing coffee if your customers know the coffee will always be hot.
- Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out.
- [The Top 9 Productivity Myths That Just Aren't True](https://todoist.com/inspiration/top-myths-productivity), Todoist
- [Build tools around workflows, not workflows around tools](https://thesephist.com/posts/tools/)
- [Rethinking Best Practices](https://willgallego.com/2021/08/14/rethinking-best-practices/)
- [The Cult of Done Manifesto](https://medium.com/@bre/the-cult-of-done-manifesto-724ca1c2ff13)
- [Asking questions the right way](https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/asking-right-questions/)
- [How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably](https://blog.stephsmith.io/how-to-be-great/)
> @shreyas: Don’t be fooled by Best Practices. By the time something is labeled and advertised as a Best Practice, it is just average. Following these practices only suggests you won’t be left behind, not that you will lead the pack. Best Practices are actually Average Practices.
Automation:
- [Focus by Automation](https://myme.no/posts/2024-03-19-focus-by-automation.html)
About GTD:
- 📖 David Allen, [Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity](https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280): while it could be much shorter, this book is probably the best way to learn about the GTD methodology.
- [Productivity 101: A Primer to the Getting Things Done (GTD) Philosophy](http://lifehacker.com/productivity-101-a-primer-to-the-getting-things-done-1551880955): a great summary of GTD.
- [Zen Habits](https://zenhabits.net/): a blog you can follow to get productivity tips and tricks.
- [Zen To Done (ZTD)](https://zenhabits.net/zen-to-done-ztd-the-ultimate-simple-productivity-system/): a simpler productivity system.
- 🏙 [2011 GTD Getting Things Done](https://speakerdeck.com/krunchtime/2011-getting-things-done)
About calendars:
- [Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule](http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html), Paul Graham
- [Why Are Maker Schedules So Rare?](http://calnewport.com/blog/2017/04/05/why-are-maker-schedules-so-rare/)
- [Busy to Death](https://barryoreilly.com/2017/05/31/busy-to-death/): a good story involving W. Edwards Deming.
- [Makers, Don't Let Yourself Be Forced Into the 'Manager Schedule'](https://blog.nuclino.com/makers-don-t-let-yourself-be-forced-into-the-manager-schedule)
- Research shows that it takes as long as 30 minutes for makers to get into the flow
- Use maker-manager office hours
- Communication can happen at a quieter asynchronous frequency in the form of thoughtful, written discussions rather than soul-sucking meetings or erratic one-line-at-a-time chat messages
- Build a team knowledge base to minimize repetitive questions and allow self-onboarding.
- [Your non-linear problem of 90% utilization](https://blog.asmartbear.com/utilization.html), Jason Cohen: why constantly running at 90% utilization is actually counter-productive.
- [Your Calendar = Your Priorities](https://cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-4952-your-calendar-your-priorities)
- [Advice for time management as a manager](https://www.benkuhn.net/tmgr/)
About distractions:
- [How to stop being "terminally online"](https://nights.bearblog.dev/how-to-stop-being-terminally-online/)
- Determine why you're terminally online
- Examine your biases
- Rationalize your FOMO
- Accept yourself as you are
- Stop being so ironic
- Take it slow
- Find other ways to contact people
- Expand your definition of the Internet
- Find other news site
- Use an RSS feed
- Find ways to help
- Find a hobby
- Limit to career usage
- Have faith
> "Do what you love until you love to Do" I often think about the “Read what you love until you love to read” comment from @naval, and this is a good generalization. My experience has been that it is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated; you have to believe you can Do before you embark on an effort. – John Carmack
In terms of task management software, I can't recommend [Things](https://culturedcode.com/things/) enough (macOS and iOS only). It is a delightful piece of software that gets out of the way and lets you focus on your tasks.
### Planning (roadmap, goal setting, KPI, OKR, etc.)
- [Top 10 Reasons for Slow Velocity](https://svpg.com/top-10-reasons-for-slow-velocity/)
- [The Heilmeier Catechism](https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism): a crafted a set of questions to help DARPA officials think through and evaluate proposed research programs.
- [The Fundamentals of Roadmapping](https://medium.com/@austinfish/the-fundamentals-of-roadmapping-f465f5ac733)
- With constant innovation