Management

General Traits

Link	Notes
re:Work	re:Work is a collection of practices, research, and ideas from Google and others to help you put people first
Pat Kua 5 Engineering Manager Archetypes	5 Engineering Manager archetypes commonly found in the industry: The Tech Lead EM The Team Lead EM The Delivery EM The Product EM The Lead of Leads EM
Evaluating Managers: 5 heuristics to measure managerial impact	Execution: Does your team consistently deliver promises or excuses? Every quarter, ask external collaborators to rate your team's execution on a scale of 1 – 10 Collect this sentiment from your manager, skip-level manager, peers, and partners in other roles (e.g., PM, design, support, etc.) People management: Is your team a revolving door? Or a nursery where careers blossom? Team development: Does your team have two years of experience or one year of experience repeated twice? Strategic vision: Where do you see your team in a quarter, six months, and a year? Amorphous targets that continuously flip-flop are a perfect recipe for demotivation, frustration, and distrust Organizational Influence: When did your team last contribute to the larger organization?
The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers	Empower your team to act like an owner Be vulnerable and self-aware Turn into a trusted thought partner Lead with empathy Challenge folks with kindness Celebrate and up-level the small moments Keep an eye on long-term growth
Phil Venables Management 101	Communicate a vision - repeatedly, often and with context Have regular 1-1's with your direct reports - and have them set the agenda Build a library of positive (emblems) and negative (shrines of failure) case studies Have regular skip level meetings Be part of some priority projects Be a customer Coaching points Boot camps Remind people not to follow the 90 day rule Have “Forums” every year Team communications Worship your goals - OKRs, etc. but don't make them false gods Invite input - constantly Invite other people to your team meetings Make your people visible / actively promote them Find ways to work within your personality Work hard to make social events inclusive Work hard against your diversity blind spots Get reverse mentored Hire people better than you Automate everything that can be Enthuse small wins, to you they might be small but to everyone else they could be huge Don't forget the human things

How Tos

Link	Notes
Manager's Playbook	Heuristics for effective management
This 90-Day Plan Turns Engineers into Remarkable Managers	90-day plan for developers who transition into management. In this exclusive article, he breaks down this plan to help engineering leaders set their priorities, gain their footing, and assess their own performance so they can grow fast and start empowering others
Gergely Orosz Staying Hands-On, as an Engineering Manager or a Tech Lead	The importance of onboarding like a software engineer, activities to stay hands-on, and the reality of writing code
Gergely Orosz Checklist for (New) Engineering Managers	Areas first-time managers need to master to get up to speed
Gergely Orosz Teach by asking questions	Twitter thread from Gergely Orosz
Useful engineering management artifacts	Career development plan Title Ladder Team Charter Engineering Strategy Team Roadmaps Decision Brief Product Brief Engineering/Tech Brief
Managing Remotely	Measure transparently Get peer feedback regularly Break the isolation Mentor explicitly and implicitly Turn your face into words

Managing Projects

Link	Notes
Gergely Orosz A Checklist For First-Time Engineering Managers	Team building and teaching Deliver results Collaborate and connect Vision Professional growth
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule	For someone on the maker's schedule, having a meeting is like throwing an exception. It doesn't merely cause you to switch from one task to another; it changes the mode in which you work
Your Small Imprecise Ask Is a Big Waste of Their Time	Imprecise asks from managers and leaders cause a disproportionate amount of turmoil and wheel-spinning If you are a manager: Clarify the expected time investment Be clear about how it should be prioritized Distinguish between whether you're looking for prior art or new art Tell people exactly what you're going to use the information for so that they can calibrate effort levels If you are an IC: Ask for how much time they think is appropriate Don't assume everyone else knows what's going on Do not, DO NOT, assume they are too busy to answer clarifying questions as you work on the ask
What do good Engineering Managers do? They taste the soup	The default mode of an engineering manager's work should NOT be to dive deep into every possible (implementation) detail - it's just not feasible
Guiding critical projects without micromanaging	Being outcomes-driven is the work getting done, with good quality, in reasonable time, without burning out the people involved
Managing unexpected work requests when your team is busy	Tactic 1: Ask where this request falls in the priority of everything your team is doing Tactic 2: Explain the context of your work and ask why the new request is important Tactic 3: Use the request as evidence to bolster support for other unscheduled projects
We Tried That	A common logical fallacy is claiming something won’t work because a previous attempt failed

Managing People

Templates

1:1 TemplateFeedback Template

Team Member

1. Accountability (goals and actions)
   1. Last week
      1. For each of your stated actions from last week, did you get them done—yes or no?
         1. If no, what blocked you?
         2. What habit can you adopt so that you don't encounter that obstacle again?
   2. Next week
      1. For each of your OKRs, what one action can you take to advance toward each of them?
2. Coaching (issues and solutions)
   1. Show your OKRs in traffic-light fashion (green, yellow, red)
   2. Show your KPIs in traffic-light fashion
   3. If I were to dig into these updates, what would I discover in your department that is:
      1. Good?
      2. Not good?
   4. Please list any other issues that you see in the company, with peers, with the product, in your own life, etc.
3. Transparency (feedback)
   1. What did you like that I did as manager?
   2. What do you wish that I would do differently as manager?
   3. Please think of the feedback that you are afraid to give me because you think that it will hurt my feelings. Please give me that feedback.

Manager

1. Get feedback from your report
2. Give feedback to your report
3. Update the team member's goals

1. Ask for permission
2. State the trigger behavior or event (fact)
3. State how that trigger behavior makes you feel in terms of anger, sadness, and fear (feeling)
4. State the thoughts, opinions, and judgments (story) you have around this situation
5. Make a request of what you would like to see. Try to frame it as positive action (“Do x”) rather than a negative (“Don't do y”)
6. Ask if the person accepts the feedback and the request

Link	Notes
Effective Linge Management	Hands-on line management is made up of several things: How to cause work to be done at your company What motivates people What prevents execution How to model someone's behavior so you understand the prior two
What It's Like To Work With Me As Your Manager	What I'm like, what it's like to work for me,what influenced me as a leader, and what I value
Things your manager might not know	Your manager doesn't (and can't!) know every single detail about what you do in your job, and being aware of what they might not know and giving them the information they need to do their job well makes everyone's job a lot easier
A Manager's Guide to Holding Your Team Accountable	If you struggle with holding people to account, try this
Numbers To Know For Managing (Software Teams)	Anchors that can help orient a manager when a number of other variables are in flux
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors	Doing all the technical design work yourself Doing all of the project management yourself Neglecting to Give Feedback Hoarding information Focusing Too Much On Your Personal Output
(People on) Nice Teams Finish Last	One of the most common management mistakes is not providing clarity when people are wrong on important, invested efforts
Pat Kua How Many People Can Someone Lead?	Many factors affect the final number, including their leadership scope, other leadership roles, the experience level of the leader, the experience level of the team, and the level of organisational bureaucracy
Managing High Performers	Manage Them! Don't take them for granted Set clear expectations Do give critical feedback Do pay them unreasonably Don't expect them to be everything Fix any behavioral issues early Know when they've stopped being a high performer
1-1 Topics	My Approach to 1-on-1s 1on1-questions
How Hard Should Your Employer Work To Retain You?	You should stay at your job as long as it fulfills your career priorities The company should employ you as long as it's a good fit Your manager should try to make this a great career opportunity for you, for as long as possible Your manager should also be honest if you could find better opportunities elsewhere There are two types of disproportionally critical employees: superstars and SPOFs
Management Mantras	Don't Do Me Any Favors Employees Don't Get Charity I Can Fix It Management Happens Every Day
9 Questions to Ask When You Start to Notice Underperformance	How's your energy level these days? How's your workload and bandwidth lately? I've noticed some things falling through the cracks lately, like [INSERT SPECIFIC EXAMPLES]. How might we work together to address this moving forward? I'd love to be as helpful as I can here. Can I clarify priorities, take something off your plate, or provide more context on anything? What feels harder lately than it should? What feels clear or unclear to you? What part of the project feels draining for you right now? What part of the project feels energizing for you? Do you have any pointers for how I've been communicating?

Hiring

Link	Notes
Gergely Orosz Hiring Software Engineers	What do good hiring processes look like and how do we build them?
Gergely Orosz Retaining Software Engineers and Engineering Managers	As an engineering manager, what are things in my control that I can do to retain software engineers?
Gergely Orosz Job Ads to Hire Software Engineers: My Advice	Advice on how to write a job posting that is more likely to get qualified applicants in the current, hot hiring market
How to collaborate with Claude during our hiring process	Here's when and how to use Claude (or other AI tools) when applying to and interviewing with Anthropic

Progressing

Link	Notes
Engineering Manager to Director: what it takes?	How to get ready for a director level as much as possible when you are in an engineering manager role
How to be a successful manager of managers	You need a way to measure how your leaders are leading, and you need to model leadership success yourself Project-based framework: The Delegated Project The Leverage Project The Impact Project The Innovation Project
Three crucial skills that leaders must develop to become executives	These skills include taking (almost irrational) career risk, learning to scale by trusting your team, and developing advanced soft skills