Managing Humans was hilarious and definitely insightful. I saw myself in some of the stories he mentions lol.

Also check out the book: Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager

Excellent book! Adding Managing Humans to that.

https://randsinrepose.com/books/

That is such a good article! Managing Humans (book written by him) is also a good resource for managers. I loved that book!

http://www.managinghumans.com/

And the author of the first book I bought on the topic: "Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager"

I think the book Managing Humans is a wonderful book on management.

http://www.managinghumans.com/

Manager's Path by Camille Fournier is IMO the most practical book on engineering management in recent memory. Managing Humans by Michael Lopp is pretty good too.

This is not so much a software book per se but Managing Humans by Michael Lopp is a great read and very worthwhile for anyone working as part of a software team regardless of whether the person is the manager or the developer.

Rands. At the very least, his blog: http://randsinrepose.com. But, his book - Managing Humans - is great as well: http://www.managinghumans.com.

Being a horrible boss and being a successful executive are different things. Steve Jobs was a horrible boss by all accounts. The first chapter of Managing Humans addresses exactly this point.

Managing Humans by rands https://managinghumans.com/

There is not a better book on managing software engineers than this imo.

Hahah, Managing Humans is great. I saw someone reading it on Muni, read it over their shoulder for a few stops, and bought it later that day.

How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie (not specific to management, but required reading for understanding and communicating with people)

Managing Humans by Michael Lopp

Peopleware by Tom DeMarco & Tim Lister

Couple recommendations that are popular with people who've been managing for a while:

- Managing Humans by Michael Lopp

- The Managers Path by Camille Fournier

- Radical Candor by Kim Scott

I think the netflix culture deck is also helpful: https://igormroz.com/documents/netflix_culture.pdf

And if you want to peak at how other managers manage check this out:
https://hackernoon.com/12-manager-readmes-from-silicon-valle...

Or check out this podcast on the topic:
https://anchor.fm/soapbox/episodes/6-Melissa-and-Johnathan-N...

Maybe as a common mistake, I read a number of "management" books before accepting the promotion. The one that stuck with me was Managing Humans by Michael Lopp. That is much more people skills and some planning.

Budgeting seems to differ significantly by company culture and practices, but is probably the easiest to get help with from peer managers or your accounting department.

Politics I have no idea.

I liked Bossidy's "Execution" and "Facing Reality", like all such books they wander a bit but they have some good insights. "Managing Humans" was okay but I guess I may have come to it a bit later in my managing experience so it seemed pretty obvious. "The 5 dysfunctions of the team" is useful for understanding how to look at root causes of teams that become dysfunctional, can be depressing when you recognize your own team in its pages :-). And not a management book per se but "The Sociopath Next Door" was a useful read because it better helped me understand and identify people who were very different than I am in terms of their emotional investment in things.

http://softwareleadweekly.com/ - A weekly newsletter, as well as Slack group - great resource.

Books:

- Leaders Eat Last

- Managing Humans

- What Got You Here, Won't Get You There

- Radical Focus

- Leading Snowflakes: The Engineering Manager Handbook

- The Manager's Path

- The Coaching Habit

- Thanks for the Feedback

To add a few that span outside entrepreneurship, but are of course very valuable to entrepreneurs:

Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love (http://www.amazon.com/Inspired-Create-Products-Customers-Lov...) - The best if not only required reading for product management

Peopleware (http://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-S...) - Great read on managing and understanding people as it relates to organizations

Managing Humans (http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engi...) - Obviously on management, you can read much on this http://randsinrepose.com/, though the book does a great job of consolidating it

I want to speak to one aspect of the wonderful article:

Listening to weak signals.

I'm about to do a shameless promotion for a book I have nothing to do with, but a book that has been a guiding light for me: Michael Lopp's Managing Humans

When I was reading the article I couldn't help but think of Lopp's advice about regular one-on-one meetings with each of the people on your team.

I think this is one of the points that Lopp intends for managers to be listening to during those meetings.

They aren't so much for feedback from the manager (as they are often treated), but more as opportunities for the manager to listen.

If I understand the book correctly, those one-on-one meetings are exactly the place where the managers are supposed to be listening for the "weak signals."

I am not an expert in every area of development, and yet I have somehow been inserted into a management role.

As Lopp explains very clearly, this happens often, and the single biggest thing you can do when that happens is care about being a manager. It's a different skill set than being an IC.

Recognize that, but don't get totally caught up in that. I don't think Lopp would disagree with anything in this article. I think, in fact, that following Lopp's ideas would lead to far fewer cases of WTF than what we see in the wild.

So far I have read:

- Left of Bang.

- The Obstacle is the way.

- The Daily Stoic.

- High-Output Management.

- The Effective Engineer.

- Managing Humans.

- Introducing Go.

Currently going through "Designing Data Intensive Applications" and some other data-related free ebooks from O'Reilly.

Up next on my list for the rest of the year:

- Hadoop: The Definitive Guide.

- The Manager's Path.

- Anti-Fragile.

- A Guide to the Good Life.

- The Denial of Death.

- Man's Search for Meaning.

EDIT: list formatting.

A few recommendations from me and peers in my company who highly value some of the following:

- "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp very insightful and easy to read.

- "Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations" by Dr Nicole Forsgren brings a long research on how to organize teams for success.

- "The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change" by Camille Fournier which I especially recommend for new managers.

Lastly, and this time not tech-specific, but by far my best read of 2019:
"Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell" written by Eric Schmidt & others.

I read Managing Humans a while back, when I was a programmer, and liked it. Then, a year later, after I'd started working as a manager, I read it again and found it amazing. Seriously, having seen how things work as an actual manager, I was able to relate much more to all his stories and characters, which are spot-on, and got a lot of help from this book.

I think there is something between ordering people around and wishy washy orders that works with an anti-authoritarian framework.

The mainstream way of dealing with this is to work using OKRs and telling your team what to achieve rather than what to do (there are many advantages to this, not just the pure outcome of handing power down). When you start doing this the tables start to turn. You will get questions that you have to answer. Because everyone is now required to understand what they really work in and what the best way to get there is. You can help them find the best way, but you will rarely have the optimal answer. If you want your team to succeed you have to help them instead of ordering them around.

And that's really what I think managers are. Really they are interfaces to other teams and org levels and their objective, mentors and to some level curators / gardeners (you don't order plants around to make them grow. No, you find out what conditions they need and do your best to provide them).

You are right, there are many books out there. The one that I like to give my leads is: Managing Humans

See randsinrepose.com - blog by Michael Lopp and his book Managing Humans - http://amzn.com/1430243147

I read Managing Humans twice, both before starting to manage a team, and after having managed a team for a year. The book was great both times, but the second time, when I had more experience, it was insanely better. Suddenly, everything talked about in the book made sense - I had real-life people and situations straight out of the book, and I could understand exactly what Rands was saying.

My advice - read the book. It's amazingly accurate. Then read it again once you have experience; you'll be able to appreciate it a whole lot more.

Things i learn't the hard way on transition from a Founder to Product Manager being a non technical guy:

Firstly understand the transition means a lot of unlearning, sometimes with parts that you hold dear to you. My advice to you is to be honest with yourself, your team and stakeholders about the same. Makes it easier on all of the folks and eases the transition.

3 Circles of X: As you start going up the ladder, your focus is on a birds eye view of three circles:
Your Customers/Markets, Your Products and Your Team. You are here since you get the bigger picture and you need to help your team do all of their core functions with as little hassle as possible. I came to terms with myself when i started thinking of myself as a lubricant, and it all made sense.

Tons of people go through this, find people that have recently gone through the transition and talk your problems out. Also probably give Managing Humans by Michael Lopp a read.

Hope this helps!

Managing Humans by Michael Lopp

http://managinghumans.com/

Contrary to what many people think, few of us have managers who can consistently and successfully lay out the optimal career path and help us achieve it. I'd say there are three main reasons:

1. It's really hard to do.

2. Few people have themselves been trained on management.

3. Faced with 1 and 2, people focus on their own, more familiar personal deliverables.

Therefore, if you want things to change, you'll probably have to make some specific suggestions. And to do that, you should do some homework. I highly recommend starting with Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Engi...) or maybe The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (http://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/00...). Spend an hour or two with each book and you'll have a better idea what can be done, and why.

What you're finding is that working as both a full-time manager and full-time engineer is very difficult, borderline impossible. Eventually, you'll have to choose. An increasing number of small companies are starting to understand this reality, and allow their top people to grow into either technical leadership or management leadership roles. Expecting both, simultaneously, is not realistic.

Does the book cover how to get the position in the first place? I've read countless books (Like "The Managers Path" and "Managing Humans"), blog articles, etc, and tried many strategies, but it never seems to happen. Usually for the catch-22 reason of not having managing experience.

I've even had past managers they had no worries about me having the skills or knowledge to do it... but it still doesn't happen.

Check out Managing Humans by Michael Lopp. Or, as @jennyp mentioned, check out his blog - rands in repose. His book is basically a collection of blog posts.

Another book that was recommended for new managers is https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118911954/ -

Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others by Byham and Wellins

Radical Candor by Kim Scott

Not books, but other resources that might be useful:

https://www.tombartel.de/#blog

http://softwareleadweekly.com/ - also comes as a weekly email with links to different articles

https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass

What is your role within the company?

Beware of the Halo effect [1]. For example, people are biased towards their first and last impression. That's why you/everyone should write stuff down regularly, so you can at least try to offer more objective and balanced feedback, and not just on the first thing that comes to mind.

I would recommend the book "Managing Humans", which originated from a blog [2]. It has good content on how to talk to people, and which mistakes to look out for. I found it quite entertaining. I believe you can read all content online.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
[2] http://randsinrepose.com/archives/youre-not-listening/

"What more valuable allocation of your time could there be than in talking directly to people?"

Taking action, based on the what you've learned while talking directly to people.

A manager's output is the the output of the teams under his or her supervision or influence[1]. That means you have to find the highest-leverage activities: sometimes that's a one-on-one conversation, up, down or sideways. Sometimes it means sitting down and drafting an email or other written document that compiles all the little details you've learned into something meaningful and actionable for the people around you. Sometimes it's about being in front of a group and enabling a conversation that you're not directly at the center of, but which wouldn't happen well without you present.

Which isn't to say your manager at the time was right to dismiss your concerns, or was doing the most high-leverage things they could do. But the perspective might be useful.

[1] High Output Management, Andy Grove (former CEO of Intel). One of several great management books that help clarify "what management is and is not". And if you have never read anything in the genre, I'd start with Managing Humans, by Michael Lopp (randsinrepose.com). Life-changing for me when I was trying to figure out the same thing, before I started doing it myself.

In regard to management:

- The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr and George Spafford (IT Revolution Press, 2013)

- Manage It! by Johanna Rothman (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2007)

- Team Geek by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman (O' Reilly, 2012)

- Managing Humans by Michael Lopp (Apress, 2012)