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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:
  1. The Tech Lead EM
  2. The Team Lead EM
  3. The Delivery EM
  4. The Product EM
  5. The Lead of Leads EM
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
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

How Tos

Link Notes
Manager's Playbook Heuristics for effective management
Teach by asking questions Twitter thread from Gergely Orosz
Managing Remotely
  • Measure transparently
  • Get peer feedback regularly
  • Break the isolation
  • Mentor explicitly and implicitly
  • Turn your face into words
A Manager’s Guide to Holding Your Team Accountable If you struggle with holding people to account, try this

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
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 People

Link Notes
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
Managing Staff-plus engineers Incomplete list of helpful things you can do to support Staff-plus engineers
1-1 Topics
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

Plans

Link Notes
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
Your first 90 days as CTO or VP Engineering Tactical best practices for starting as a Chief Technology Officer or VP of Engineering

Progressing

Link Notes
4 Tips To Jump From Manager To Director What does it take to get to the Director level?
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
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