Engineering Manager Resources

Welcome to the Engineer Manager Resources repository! This curated list is designed for anyone in the engineering field who aspires to grow in leadership and enhance their "soft" skills. Whether you're a manager, an aspiring leader, or an individual contributor looking to improve your interpersonal skills, you'll find valuable resources here.

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What You’ll Find

This repository contains a comprehensive collection of articles, books, podcasts, and other resources that cover various aspects of engineering leadership, including:

• Communication: Tips and strategies for effective communication within your team and organization.
• Team Building: Best practices for creating and nurturing a cohesive, high-performing team.
• Mentorship: Guidance on mentoring others and finding mentors to support your own growth.
• Conflict Resolution: Techniques for managing and resolving conflicts in a constructive manner.
• Emotional Intelligence: Insights into understanding and managing your emotions and those of others.
• Productivity: Methods to enhance personal and team productivity.
• Career Development: Resources to help you advance your career and achieve your professional goals.
• Diversity and Inclusion: Strategies for fostering an inclusive work environment that values diversity.## Why This MattersLeadership and soft skills are crucial for creating a positive and productive work environment. These skills not only help in managing teams effectively but also in building strong relationships, fostering innovation, and driving success in any organization.

Courses

• Engineering Management Interview Course - This Try Exponent course on engineering leadership has a lot of useful topics to help prepare anyone for interviewing for an engineering manager role.
• Engineering Management Fundamentals 101 - Frontend Masters - Jem provides great insights into why you might want to be a manager and what it's like being a new manager
• Enterprise Engineering Management 102 - Frontend Masters - This is a course I did to share insights into how to approach dealing with feedback, conflict, hiring, team success, and change management
• Building Influence for Engineers and EMs - Learn the 3 key skills you need to be an impactful leader in your engineering org

Mentoring

• Plato
• SCORE
• Tech Leader Mentoring Group
• The Mentoring Club - A non-profit mentoring group.

Books

• Talking with Tech Leads: From Novices to Practitioners
• Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• The Advantage
• Managing Humans
• Thanks for the Feedback - A great book for understanding how to best provide and receive feedback.
• Good Boss, Bad Boss
• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business - This is a great book if you work with people from other countries.
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
• How to Win Friends & Infl​uence People - This is a great book for helping you to lead and influence others.
• Search Inside Yourself
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• Rising Strong
• What Works for Women at Work
• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
• Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
• Influence: How and Why People Agree to Things
• Crucial Conversations
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
• Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams
• Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
• The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
• Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders - A good book for leaders on how to give control rather than taking control and creating leaders rather than forging followers.
• The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change
• Building Great Startup Teams
• Leading Snowflakes: The Engineering Manager Handbook
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
• Quiet Leadership
• HBR's 10 Must Reads on Managing Yourself - A book with HBR's 10 must read articles on managing yourself.
• Originals - How Non-Conformists Move the World
• What Every Body Is Saying
• What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How successful people become even more successful
• Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley - Provides insight into D&I history
• Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead - Work at Google
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking - A book with helpful information on leading introverts
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable - This book highlights what causes a dysfunctional team and how you can improve a team's relationships
• Everybody Matters - This is an excellent book for how to think about treating people in your organization with more empathy
• Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework - The book helps understand software delivery metrics and how to measure them to organize software teams around the value stream