Another great one is "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier - https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/97814...

Highest recommendation for The Manager's Path: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/97814...

Also excellent but require some translation to a tech setting: Becoming a Manager (Hill) and Managing (Mintzberg)

The Prince - Machiavello. Just kidding, if you are in the technology business I strongly reccomend The Manager's Path. It is a very good book to learn how people interacts with the leaders and how to manage your own leadership.

I would suggest a book called "The Manager's Path", it is a very popular book suggested by the stack overflow community.

https://toptalkedbooks.com/books/Ze2lQw/The-Managers-Path-A-...

I have a collection of books for CTOs on my website that you might enjoy: https://www.briansnotes.io/audience/cto/

The Manager's Path is another I highly recommend. That book provides the most detail I've seen about the career path to CTO and changing expectations along the way.

I’m still relatively early in my career, but I’ve greatly enjoyed The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/97814...) as a way to learn more about mentorship, leadership, and management in tech.

I would not recommend anyone An Elegant Puzzle. No disrespect to the author's writing ability and no discredit to his experience. I thought the book had no flow (it was a curated collection of his blog posts, or something like that). He described in detail the decisions he made or things he learned but since he didn't explain any context about the company at the time I could not figure out how any of it was relevant to me. And I've worked everywhere in companies of varying size between F500 and Series A.

I do agree The Manager's Path is a good one though.

Some other favorites are High Output Management by Andy Grove, Managing Transitions by William Bridges, The Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno, Measure What Matters by John Doerr, Peopleware by Tom DeMarco, The Innovator's Dilemma, etc.

This was a nice succinct writeup. On the topic, here are some books I'd recommend for ICs making the jump to a manager role (or thinking about it):

1. The Making of a Manager (https://www.amazon.com/Making-Manager-What-Everyone-Looks-eb...)

2. The Manager's Path (https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Grow...)

3. Crucial Conversations (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes-...)

4. The Coaching Habit (https://www.amazon.com/Coaching-Habit-Less-Change-Forever-eb...)

5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Len...)

I'm still due to read High Output Management (https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove-e...) and Extreme Ownership (https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-eboo...).

Ask HN: Just made Director, now what? | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14937290 (Aug 2017, only 38 comments)

Book recommendations:

>gtf21: Would recommend very highly: (1) Andrew Grove's "High Output Management" (controversial recommendation) https://amzn.com/dp/B015VACHOK/ $13.99 2015;4+stars;153 reviews

>killjoywashere: I like Lazlo Bock's book, Work Rules! https://amzn.com/dp/B00MEMMVB8/ $16.99 2015;4+stars;295 reviews

>helper: Maybe read "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier. https://amzn.com/dp/B06XP3GJ7F/ $16.19 2017;4+stars;30 reviews

>simonhamp: I'd highly recommend reading Radical Candor by Kim Scott. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KTIEFEE/ $12.99 2017;4+stars;138 reviews

Podcast recomendation:

>gtf21: Manager Tools "Basics" podcasts, especially on 1x1s and feedback https://www.manager-tools.com/manager-tools-basics

I'm not a CTO (yet?) but I've begin to grok some of the stuff involved in managing teams of engineers. 'The Manager's Path' by Camille Fournier was really helpful. Lots of very practical advice for all sorts of technical leaders: senior ICs, front-line managers, managers-of-managers, CTOs.

The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox Cabane. The premise of this book is that you can change your psychology to become more of a people person, by cultivating confidence, warmth and the ability to focus. It was recommended by someone on Hacker News six or seven years ago and I wish I remembered who it was so I could thank them. This book changed my life more than any other.

Apprenticeship Patterns by Adewale Oshineye and Dave Hoover: A set of "design patterns" for your career as a software engineer. I read this relatively late on, when my career was in a bit of a rut, and I credit it for giving me the motivation and the tools to get out of that rut. I wish I'd found it earlier.

Other brilliant non-technical books: The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, Mastering Communication At Work by Jon Wortmann and Ethan Becker, Mindset by Carol Dweck, Drive by Daniel Pink, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.

Some brilliant books focussing a bit more on tech and code craft: Growing Object Oriented Software, Guided by Tests ("The GOOS Book") by Nat Pryce and Steve Freeman, Refactoring by Martin Fowler, Clean Code and Clean Architecture by Bob Martin.

I would recommend that you read a book a week, every week, for the rest of your life. :)

Just start with the ones in the article and Amazon/Kindle will get good at recommending books.

Here's some books recently read on my Kindle:

  - No Rules Rules
  - Never Split The Difference
  - The Manager's Path
  - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
  - Ultralearning
  - The Hard Thing About Hard Things
  - What You Do is Who You Are
  - User Story Mapping
  - Inspired
  - The Lean Product Playbook
  - Competing Against Luck
  - Domain Driven Design
  - Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
  - Data-Driven Marketing
  - Designing Data-Intensive Applications
  - Monetizing Innovation
  - Super Thinking
  - The Great Mental Models
  - Nonviolent Communication
  - High Growth Handbook
  - Powerful
  - Trillion Dollar Coach

I think The Missing README goes quite well with Will Larson's "Staff Engineer" and Camille Fournier's "The Manager's Path". These three book will take you from entry-level engineer, through a staff/technical lead, all the way to management at the SVP of Engineering level.

For a more alternative view (not sure if it still counts as alternative as it's pretty well accepted, but in my experience not that well adopted, but the "rewards and incentives are bad, monitoring is bad, trust and autonomy is good" line)

* Drive, by Daniel Pink

* Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohen

* Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I wrote about some of these ideas here [0]

For a more traditional approach

* High Output Management, by Andy Grove

* The Manager's Path, by Camille Fournier

* The Thing about Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

Not specifically about management, but in general, if you haven't read Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind", you should do that first. This is the book that has changed the way I think and understand people the most, and has indirectly helped me more with management than all of the management focussed books combined.

And I just finished "The Mythical Man Month" which is definitely still a must-read decades after it was first published (get the 20th anniversary edition as it has a nice summary at the end, including where the author thinks he was right and where he admits freely what he got wrong).

[0] https://www.codementor.io/garethdwyer/enter-the-zone-fight-i...

Were you a team member on this team before you were promoted to lead? If so, it's going to be a tough road ahead because you are going from a peer / co-worker relationship to a manager & direct report relationship. These are tough transitions to make, and a reason the military will often transfer someone who is newly put into a leadership position.

Have you started to train yourself as a lead / manager? A couple of resources I've found useful in the switch have been Manager Tools [0] (book, site, and podcast) as well as The Manager's Path [1].

While his shtick can be a bit thick at times, I enjoyed Extreme Ownership by Willink [2], if only because it codified a lot of thoughts I've had for a long time. I've worked with a lot of military and defence so the stories and life views he teaches through didn't throw me, but I know it does for some people so YMMV.

I have found that the Manager's Tools suggestion that the single best thing you can do is have weekly one-on-ones with your team to be true. It can be tough, especially if you still have a lot of your IC responsibilities alongside your new team lead roles, but it is truly remarkable how much more insight you can get into what your team is thinking from holding these sessions. This is they crystal ball you are looking for. And remember, the weeklies are about your team members, not about you (refer to manager tools).

[0] https://www.manager-tools.com/products/effective-manager-boo...

[1] https://www.amazon.ca/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growt...

[2] https://www.amazon.ca/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs/dp/12...

> The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change: Every single book list should include Camille’s book. It is a great read for managers and non-managers and has given me the tools for knowing what is normal and what is not.

Ugh.. no. If there was a book I read this year which read as if it was written for the sake of writing a book, it was 'The Manager's Path'. It was a series of insipid blog posts consisting of frequent itemizations of 'truths'. So many repetitions that I legit thought I mis-touched my kindle when turning pages a couple of times as I felt I read the same paragraph twice across a couple of chapters. Looking at the table of contents it looks as if it's fairly organized but when you're reading it, it's mostly all over the place. Also, if you spent more than a couple of years in the industry nothing in the book should be a surprise.

I was so hyped before reading the book as literally everyone recommended it but honestly it fell short for a generic non-fiction read.

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

Congrats on the transition! I have several books to recommend that I all read are on my bookshelf, some with reviews[1]. YMMV vary but these were the most helpful for me:

1. The First 90 Days - a good reminder that when you transition, it's like starting a new job

2. Become and Effective Software Engineering Manager - a hands-on book for people transitioning to management, starting at a new company or looking to make more of an org-wide impact.

3. The Manager's Path - a short reference handbook for managers at all levels.

4. The Goal - written in the '80s, yet a timeless novel on what management is about, may that be a manager of a team, an organization or an industrial plant.

Also, I wrote a post about my learnings on transitioning from engineer to manager that has some good comments on HN[2]

[1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/my-reading-list/#engineer...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326652

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.

Thanks for these. I've got Behind Closed Doors on order from a previous recommendation in this thread, but The Manager's Path appears to be especially apt!

I've read the MSMS essay a few years ago, but had completely forgotten about it. The scheduling problem is actually something I've been struggling with the past few months in the run-up to this new role. When everything is urgent and you're the only one who can fulfill certain data requests, it's difficult to maintain progress on your own projects.

I suppose link compilations like this have some value some times. But if you clicked on it because you're new to EM and keen, here are a few books that are much more helpful IMO:

- The Manager's Path, by Camille Fournier

- An Elegant Puzzle, by Will Larson

- Team Topologies, by Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais

- Thinking in Systems, by Donella Meadows

- Also see: references cited in the above and other works by same authors

Disclaimer: Not a seasoned EM and definitely not the first to recommend these on HN.