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Extreme Ownership by Willink and Babin has taught me about good leadership.

Great book about leadership and entertaining.

Good ones are also:
"Duty" (Robert Gates)
"Call Sign Chaos" (Mattis)
"Extreme Ownership"

The one about Mattis has a very long list of book recommendations at the end.

12 rules for life - Jordan Peterson

Rethinking Money - Bernard Lietaer and Jaequi Dunne

Jocko Willink's "Extreme Ownership"

https://www.principles.com/

2. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink

Team of teams by Gen. Stan McChrystal

Both of these are required reading for understanding how humans work together.

Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Leif Babin and Jocko Willink

- So Good They Can't Ignore You
- Deep Work
- Hackers by Steven Levy (perhaps my favorite book)
- Learning How To Learn
- The Person and the Situation
- The Art of Money Getting
- Make It Stick
- The Algorithm Design Manual
- Moonwalking With Einstein
- Extreme Ownership

[1] https://echelonfront.com/extreme-ownership/

Edit: Link added

The Cat In The Hat - 200 times

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - 85 times

But seriously, im on my third re-read of Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, In my opinion its the best book about leadership ever written.

While it does slow me down a tad, I can type fine.

Not military, but AFAIK the type of leadership depends on the branch. Extreme Ownership is a book written by a navy seal with some pretty solid advice on leadership.

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek -> https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/B...

2. Do the right thing.

3. Do it fast.

Great books on this: Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing About Hard Things", Andy Grove's "Only The Paranoid Survive", Jocko Wilink & Leif Babin's "Extreme Ownership".

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...).

    Software Requirements - Karl Wiegers

    Programming TypeScript - Boris Cherny

    Associate Cloud Engineer Study - Dan Sullivan

    Design Patterns - Gang of Four

    Refactoring - Kent Beck, Martin Fowler

    Programming Pearls - Jon Bentley

    Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture - Martin Fowler

    The Pragmatic Programmer - David Thomas, Andrew Hunt

    CSS: The Definitive Guide - Eric A. Meyer, Estelle Weyl

    Working Effectively with Legacy Code - Michael Feathers

    Head First Design Patterns - Eric Freeman, Bert Bates

    Code Complete - Steve McConnell

    Peopleware - Tim Lister, Tom DeMarco

    Clean Code - Robert C. Martin

    The Clean Coder - Robert C. Martin

    Clean Architecture - Robert C. Martin

    Don't Make Me Think - Steve Krug

    Functional Design Patterns for Express.js - Jonathan Lee Martin

    The Surrender Experiment - Michael A. Singer

    Principles - Ray Dalio

    The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

    The Effective Executive - Peter F. Drucker

    Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill

    Extreme Ownership - Jocko Willink, Leif Babin

    Influence - Robert B. Cialdini

    The Startup Way - Eric Ries

    The Lean Startup - Eric Ries

    12 Rules for Life - Jordan B. Peterson

    Measure What Matters - John Doerr, Larry Page

    The Fish That Ate the Whale - Rich Cohen

    The E-Myth Revisited - Michael E. Gerber

    The Score Takes Care of Itself - Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh

    Management - Peter F. Drucker

    Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows

    Blue Ocean Strategy - W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne

- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, a refreshing perspective on life values. [1]

[0] https://www.audible.com/pd/Extreme-Ownership-Audiobook/B015T...

[1] https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Subtle-Art-of-Not-Giving-a-F-...

In each chapter one of the authors tells a first person account of leadership on the battlefield, then they go on to relate that to business leadership with specific examples from their business consultations. Very engaging, and I think the leadership lessons they teach spot-on.

https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs/dp/B...

Whether or not you need them today or not, whether you want to be in a leadership role soon or not, they are essential for anyone seeking to progress and you can’t start too soon.

There are many many ways to approach this and I’ll just offer two book titles that I believe would be beneficial.

1. Start with Why
2. Extreme Ownership

Also Extreme Ownership [1] and Dichotomy of Leadership [2] by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.

All of these books had tremendous impact on me as a leader and I highly recommend them.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Leaders-Eat-Last-Together-Others/dp/B...

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-eboo...

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Dichotomy-Leadership-Balancing-Challe...

Extreme Ownership - I also really enjoyed this book. I listened to the audio and it was read by the authors. Both Navy Seals, the stories they used about their time in war was very eye opening. The concepts are all about leadership, and if you a manager or part of a team, you will get some benefit.

Getting Things Done - 2001 edition, very practical approach to organizing everything on your plate. I will probably re-read this again.

Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying; A Guide for Kids and Teens - a great book that has great tips on learning for kids and adults.

A Philosophy of Software Design - still reading it, I really am enjoying it so far. I like the big picture approach it takes to discussing software design and complexity.

Mindset - I just started this book. So far it is just explaining the general concept in different ways. I am hoping the latter part will get into some practical tips and methods.

1. Read the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. I'm not the first to suggest this book but it has fundamentally shaped how I work and how I interact with others.

2. Try to write. I'd start with writing your "Manager Readme" file even if you don't plan to share it with anyone. Defining expectations is critical and it's start with understanding your own psyche. What is important to you? What are your expectations for someone? The internet is filled with examples of Manager Readme's along with posts that are totally for this idea and totally against. You can find mine without too much trouble if you check my comment history and find my GitHub.

Good luck.

"Tools of Titans" - Tim Ferriss : This book can be seen a summary of 15 most popular non-fiction books. There are a lot of guests in this book with a diverse back ground. There is wide wisdom you can pick on every page of this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31823677-tools-of-titans

This book is about the lessons learned on leadership by two Navy Seal Officers and how they are applied in business. It learned me to take ownership on what is happening, always work together, keep it simple, focus on a single priority, and give ownership.

Turn the ship around! by L. David Marquet

This book tells the story of a submarine captain that turns his subordinates into leaders and his submarine goes on becoming the best submarine in the US Navy. It learned me to move authority to information, train competence, and the power of clear communication.

You can find more good books at https://www.norberhuis.nl/books/

But again, the language is only a fraction of it. It's how you handle situations. When you change your approach to problems then your language changes as well. I'd highly recommend reading some books. The two I've read in the past month and really liked where "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
and "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and Patrick Lencioni
Both books give examples of how they handled situations, and you begin seeing patterns in the speech they use.

Maybe Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink would interest you. For example, he talks about playing the long game. Those petty office politics will maybe make you win in the short-term, but in the long run I have much more confidence in Jocko's take on work.

Sorry you suffered that experience though, hope you made it out of there.

Similarly themed is Extreme Ownership, which covers leadership in chaotic situstions.

Militaries are designed to deal with the chaos of war, and a lot of principles apply to the chaos of software engineering too.

- The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson. It's helping me focus only on the things I really want.

- Deep Work by Cal Newport. I have almost no social media now, and I value uninterrupted time greatly.

- Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Quite sobering honestly. I realize I'm spoiled AF.

- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. I'm more conscientious of my (and my close friends') plans and I try to help them as much as possible. No excuses. Also the military discipline/mindset is really inspiring.

- Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss. I haven't finished it but this is what I read before sleeping, I can just flip the page anywhere and I read something cool

Author here. Thanks! That's a great suggestion. As you can tell, right now the site and the mailing list is the most minimal of an implementation. We want to build a network, connect and mentor one another through the simplest and easiest mechanism possible - email. Once we have a medium-sized community with dozens of experts, we plan to add community managed content. Perhaps through a wiki?

I'll share the books and articles that have positively affected my career. These aren't tried and true and maybe dozens of people would disagree about their value but here they are, for what they are worth:

Management:

  - High output management (Grove, 1995)
  - Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win (Useem)
  - It’s your Ship  (Abrashoff)
  - The score takes care of itself  (Walsh)
  - The Hard Thing About Hard Things  (Horowitz)
  - Where good ideas come from  (Johnson)
  - Extreme Ownership (Navy Seals) — (Willink)
  - Work Rules — (Bock)
  - 5 Dysfunctions of a team — (Lencioni)
  - Give and Take (Grant)
  - This is what impactful Engineering leadership looks like - http://firstround.com/review/this-is-what-impactful-engineering-leadership-looks-like/
  - Notes on startup engineering management for young bloods - http://www.elidedbranches.com/2015/10/notes-on-startup-engineering-management.html?m=1

  - Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk (Duval, Matyas, Glover, 2007)
  - Continuous Delivery: Release Software Releases through Build, Test and Deployment Automation (Humble, Farley, 2010)
  - Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change, 2nd Edition (The XP Series) (Beck, Andres)
  - SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
  - Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
  - Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
  - Refactoring Databases - Evolutionary Database Design (Ambler, Sadalage, 2006)

I saw this to my preteen kids - when thinking about a job you want to do something where you are making things, not just performing a service.

It is hard to reorient. What works for one person does nto necc work for all.

For me "Extreme Ownership" was helpful (book by Willink and Babin) plus the podcast spun off from it. Some good ideas on how to live a more disciplined and free life.

Sometimes you need a toehold. For me it has been waking up before 5AM and doing something disciplined (somedays just making my bed).

If you are going to do it, read a ton of books. Minimum in my opinion are:
1. The Managers Path -- general advise
2. Coaching Habit -- for performing 1 on 1s
3. Extreme Ownership -- for building an effective culture that delivers results.

Pg had that essay about maker time and manager time that is spot on. Transitioning to a manager role is a different skill set.

I would highly recommend the following two books

The Coaching Habit by Stanier

and

Extreme Ownership by Willink and Babin ( audio version is amazing )

Extreme Ownership: Jocko Willink - entertaining listening in the car, perhaps no so much if you tried to read it. An impressive balance of storytelling and principles. (6/10)

Maximum City: Suketu Mehta - as someone who has lived in Mumbai for nearly five years, this book captured the pulse of the supercity as no other has. Able to describe the inherent beauty of modern India without resorting to the typical cliched western neuroses about the place. (8/10)

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics: Carlo Rovelli - Got recommended this book multiple times. Brief and succinct so Carlo must be commended for that. As a pop-science book it kind of paled in comparison to Bill Bryson's "Complete History" (6/10)

Rebels: Aris Roussinos - A raw, honest and powerful book that tells a story about many of the world's conflict zones from the perspective of someone who may get shot themselves. Refreshing and beautifully upsetting all at once. (7/10)

Mere Christianity: C.S. Lewis - A broad spectrum of thoughts about meaning and purpose that have obviously been considered for many years and then condensed in a very succinct way (8/10)

Business Adventures: John Brooks - A recommendation by Buffet and Gates, entertaining read with business principles built in (7/10)

Tools of Titans: Tim Ferriss - Obviously written for those of us who have allowed our attention spans to be destroyed by the constant sugary stimulation of the internet, Tim nails the balance of useful thoughts and observations from a broad array of guests while keeping it succinct and entertaining. (7/10)

Fundamentally about being agile, adaptable, transparent, collaborative and decentralised. You could say it's about digital transformation but on a military scale. An excellent companion to some other books mentioned here, such as Deep Work (this book is a constructive counterpoint in many ways), Extreme Ownership, and Ego is the Enemy.

https://mcchrystalgroup.com/teamofteams/

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...

I'm not deeply-read on the topic, but here are a few others I've liked …

· Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business by Chet Richards. This one in particular analyzes heavily blitzkrieg tactics, and how disorientation and morale are some of the most effective "weapons." Has many good cross-references.

· The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Military strategy and conflict philosophy. Basically, the philosophy that undergirds the blitzkrieg: lots on gaining advantage, using morale, turning "deficiencies" in to advantages, etc.

· Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. It's rah-rah and a bit repetitive, but has some good bits on team dynamics, element of surprise—if nothing else, an interesting glimpse in to the dynamics of high-functioning military units.

So far, Grunt has touched on military uniform fashion design and its role in psyche … we'll see where else it goes, but an enjoyable read thus far.

The real reason is more practical though. Working on a side project, and with a partner and animals, it's been hard to get things done in the evenings. She doesn't get up with me when I get up early, so I've got a couple of undisturbed hours to grind on the project. Plus, it feels really damned good to have a feeling of accomplishment every morning before heading to the office; no matter how many useless meetings and stupid shit happens, I've already move the needle on something!

They break down the communication with your team into a principle you want to strive for. Then you're shown an example of how that happens in the real world.

Once you've seen the patterns, you notice them everywhere, and you begin to unravel the issues, one hurdle at a time. It's like seeing a great design pattern, seeing where it fits and how to apply it, except now you're doing it with communication instead of code.

I think this might help you "find a mechanic you can trust" and get to the heart of what it takes to lead your team.

Leaders eat Last by Simon Sinek

Books by Adam Grant and his podcast. He is a brilliant organizational behavioral psychologist from Wharton. Even his Thursday advice tweets are great.

I highly recommend two of his podcast episodes. One on trust which featured an international team of astronauts that had to bond for a major mission in a very short time. The second on all stars and humility about an NBA player with 2 championship rings who makes everyone else on his team perform better when he's on the floor.

The transition is not so hard. Think of it as another programming language, another architecture.

Your team is like a machine. You are not in it. You don't work in it. You build it. You improve and iterate on it. Your job is to look at it from the outside and see what can be improved.

You also have to make sure that information flows from top to bottom well. The lowest intern needs to understand that strategic goals and focus of the team. That's really what motivating is.

As tech management, one of the most effective thing you can do is to train the ones below you.

You should take complete responsibility for what happens in your team. One of your junior programmers breaks the product? Sexual harassment? A core member ragequitting? Your fault.

Ben Horowitz's The Hard Things About Hard Things is what I'd recommend most on engineering leadership. Extreme Ownership by Wilink, Jocko is a good book on general leadership. Do avoid a lot of the things on Business Insider, Forbes, or other business blogs.

How to Win Friends and Influence People
https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People-eboo...

The Phoenix Project
https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

Don't worry about "tech specific". Core leadership principles are universal. The first two books on the list show the principles, and the mindset you should approach them with to be successful.

The 3rd book will help set the tone for leading in a modern tech environment, and what kind of business decisions you should prioritize.

- Get some exercise, this might also help you make new friends. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26978184/
- Eat healthy foods. There is growing evidence of a relationship between gut microbial metabolism and mental health. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-018-0337-x https://www.nature.com/news/the-tantalizing-links-between-gu...

This will take some time.
If you still feel crushed by your job then think about doing something else. You're still very young, you have lots of options.

If you have the time, read some books to gain perspective, to widen your horizon. Use what works for you. Examples:
- Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
- Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson
- Waking Up by Sam Harris

Or listen to some podcasts, e.g., Joe Rogan has vastly different people on his show. You can get a lot of ideas from them.

My answer is that you can plan for work to be done on a deadline but you can't negotiate when it will be done with the people doing the work. It's going to take as long as it takes. It's poor management that sets unrealistic expectations and demands results.

You can plan for work by using data. You get data by tracking effort estimated versus completed and triaging bugs. You prioritize goals instead of setting deadlines. You measure and refine.

It sounds counter-intuitive to business people who think in terms of, I just sold customer X the product and they need it delivered by Y so that we can get the team paid by Z. This is where poor management decisions can sink your team. If Y is decided by the sales or management team with the customer and they didn't consult their engineering team... then they're working on another planet. The goal of processes like this are not to eliminate Y but to set reasonable expectations and objectives.

As I like to remind my business owners: you can have something that works -- it may not be the whole kit -- or you can have nothing at all. Winning is about prioritizing objectives.

One book I've read recently that taught me a lot about management is Extreme Ownership[0]. I think there's a lot of cross-over from this book into Agile methodologies that I think non-technical stakeholders can really understand.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme-ownersh...

Extreme Ownership - As I have advanced in my career, it became clear that leadership and communication are the keys to success. EO (and related books by the same author) provides so many varied benefits, but the largest for me was to detach, check my ego, and control my emotions. Thinking in this manner has literally changed every relationship I have for the better.

The hard part is figuring out the one thing. Tim Ferris talks about this a lot - finding the one thing that makes other things you want to do either irrelevant or so much easier. This concept has lots of names. Jocko Willinks books Extreme Ownership puts it simply as "prioritize and execute".

Anytime I feel overwhelmed with the amount I have to do what I have really done is not prioritize.

And yes, it is not easy and requires daily discipline.

Some of the comments in this thread say that military orders and life and death situations don't apply in the business world. But that isn't what this book is about, the advice is really the opposite of giving orders the must be followed without question. And the lessons are explained in ways that clearly relate to business management.

This alone is why 90% of people will not choose to work at a startup. You will work long hours, for crap pay, and you'll be waiting in line if there is an exit.

The odds of there being an exit worth anything to anyone other than a founder are small enough to not even worth considering.

If you are a founder you're gambling on your chances. There are ways to mitigate the risk but there's no sure thing.

Don't start a startup if you do not have the financial security to basically lose everything you put in.

Don't start a startup if you have family that depends on your income. You could choose to eat ramen and sleep on the floor of a college dorm room. Your kids (and CPS) might not appreciate it.

I agree the motivation is very important. I disagree that you cannot find the same motivation in a more stable organization (or can't motivate yourself). I recently finished reading, Extreme Ownership [0], and I bring that with me to work. People need to be responsible for outcomes: that's not unique to startups. You can also find that motivation internally and share it with your colleagues as you go.

[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs-ebook...

  - Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon by Valley John Carreyrou
  - Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep by Matthew Walker
  - The Magicians by Lev Grossman
  - Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE by Phil Knight
  - How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
  - Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World by Hans Rosling
  - Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
  - Deep Work by Cal Newport
  - Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
  - The Phoenix Project by D.M. Cain
  - 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
  - Thinking in Systems: A Primer by Tia T. Farmer
  - Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson
  - Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
  - Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
  - Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferon
  - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson
  - Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall
  - Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
  - Atomic Habits by James Clear