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...).

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 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.

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.