Engineering Management Reading
My pipeline of engineering management related reading.
Bird's eye view
"Engineering management" is not a skill. Any book about management is by default a collection of essays about a wide variety of topics. They are best for getting a bird's eye view of the work. I prefer books about specific management skill sets.
- Sarah Drasner, Engineering Management for the Rest of Us
- Will Larson, An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
- Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
Currently reading
- Various, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
- Various, HBR's 10 Must Reads for New Managers
Frequent recommendations
- Gary Keller, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results
- Micheal Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
- Abby Covert, How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody (available free online)
- Charles van Doren & Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
- Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking
- Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
- Thomas H. Davenport & Jinho Kim, Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics
- Vaughn Tan, The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food
- Ryan Singer, Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters (available free online)
Finished
- Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
- Patrick M. Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
- Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
- Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright, Thinking in Systems
- John Gall, The Systems Bible (FKA Systemantics)
- Chet Richards, Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business
- Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
- Chris Voss & Tahl Raz, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
- Jeff Lawson, Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century
- Étienne Garbugli, Solving Product: Reveal Gaps, Ignite Growth, and Accelerate Any Tech Product with Customer Research
- Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
- Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
- Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships
- Robert B. Cialdini , Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
- Cal Newport So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
- David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
- Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)
Tangential but useful
- Joew Coulombe, Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys
- Kathy Sierra, Badass: Making Users Awesome
- Greg Mckeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
- Alan Weiss, Value-Based Fees: How to Charge What You're Worth and Get What You Charge
Abandoned
- Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
- Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness
- Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
Want to Read
- Peter Block, Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
- Gary A. Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
- Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management
- Eric Nehrlich, You Have A Choice: Beyond Hard Work To Meaningful Impact
- Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results
- Abby Covert, Stuck? Diagrams Help
- Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management
- Eliyahu M. Goldratts, Goal: A Graphic Business Novel
- Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
- Michele Hansen, Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers
- Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
- Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less
- Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
- Hamilton Helmer, 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
- Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact
- Liz Wiseman, Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
- Joshua Seiden, Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success
Articles & Online Resources
- William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass, Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?
- Etienne de Bruin, The CTO’s Hidden Notebook
- Micheal Lopp, The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster
- Daniele Procida, Diátaxis: A systematic approach to technical documentation authoring.