Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

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Develop Effective Communication Skills: Drasner emphasizes that good communication is crucial for an engineering manager. This book won’t answer all the questions you might have as an engineering manager, but it covers a good deal of them and does an excellent job at that. In conclusion, Drasner’s book offers a pragmatic guide to the often-overlooked intricacies of engineering management. A lot of Engineering Managers and leaders studied for years and years to become the best Engineer they possibly could be.

I picked up the book because my mentor recommended it to me after I told him about my promotion at work.

The book is too basic and lacks depth in technical topics that would be useful for those with a background in engineering. It's easy but other than a few instances not particularly engaging to read, it stays a bit too much on the surface of too many things. If you're really new to a software engineering Team Lead or Engineering Manager role and don't have access to training, mentorship, or a supportive direct lead, this can be worth reading and building a further reading list out of. It can be very tough for those of us who didn’t go into Engineering with the distinct concept that we would become managers, but still want to do our best to support our teams. Even as someone who’s been in leadership roles for a while, I found valuable insights and reminders.

While it might benefit from a deeper exploration of diverse management styles, the practical insights it offers are invaluable for those new to the field. I've been in my software engineering manager role for a couple of years only, yet it feels like it's been much, much longer than that. Throughout the pages, the author references numerous insightful articles and recommends several valuable books, including "Culture Map", "Drive", "Accelerate", and "The Happiness Advantage". You can never be prepared enough for managing and leading people, but if you give it a good try, you'll be one step ahead of yourself.I recently finished reading "Engineering Management for the Rest of Us" and I have to say, it was a game-changer for me. I think it is the nature of this type of role, to be tricky to learn from others, ahead of time and out of context, because it largely depends on the environment you work in and the team you work with, the mission you work on, your personality and many other things in between. Nonetheless, the author’s choice to stick with what she knows best and her extensive experience does lend credibility to her arguments. I checked two of those assumptions, and I'm sure anyone that checks none of them would have a great time with this reading. This is not only an engineering book, trust, people caring and guiding is an human thing, if your are not a tech person and want to read it you may get confused in the code review chapter but totally worth it.