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# Engineering Team Management

**repo:** [kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-management](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-management)  
**category:** [[business|Business]]
**related:** [[engineering-strategy|Engineering Strategy]]

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<p align="center">
  <i>The manager's function is not to make people work, but to make it possible for people to work.</i><br>
  — Tom DeMarco<sup id="intro-quote-ref"><a href="#intro-quote-def">[1]</a></sup>
</p>

A curated [![Awesome](https://awesome.re/badge-flat.svg)](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome) list **for software developers to transition to an engineering management role**. Compiles advice, anecdotes, knowledge tidbits, discussions, industry small-talks and rants. A bibliography of sort, gathered the last few years while [transitioning my career from a software engineer to an engineer's manager](https://devtomanager.com/interviews/kevin-deldycke/). And later from a manager to a manager's managers (you all love recursion right? ʘ‿ʘ).

- You're a developer and wonders what it feels like to be a manager?
- You just started your first position as the leader of a team?
- You're stuck into the day-to-day operations of the job?
- How can I [move](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/move) up to the next level?

You'll find answers in this guide! It stands out from generic leadership and management literature, by providing uncompromising insights and practical advice. It will bootstrap your journey into the management career track, from a technical background.

This list helps in the transition to management, with a progression from general to specifics. It starts with an overview of the role, then describes its requirements, and its position relative to others. Then we details the day-to-day tools of the trade, both organizational and behavioral. At last we discuss some of the dark sides of the job.

## Contents

- [Engineering to Management Transition](#engineering-to-management-transition)
- [Building Teams](#building-teams)
- [Roles](#roles)
  - [Executives](#executives)
  - [CTO & VP of Engineering](#cto--vp-of-engineering)
  - [Engineering Managers](#engineering-managers)
  - [Engineers](#engineers)
  - [Consultants](#consultants)
- [Recruitment](#recruitment)
  - [Job Boards](#job-boards)
  - [Hiring Process](#hiring-process)
  - [Interview](#interview)
  - [Coding Challenge](#coding-challenge)
  - [Negotiation](#negotiation)
- [Onboarding](#onboarding)
- [Motivation](#motivation)
  - [Happiness](#happiness)
  - [Procrastination](#procrastination)
- [Culture](#culture)
- [Cognitive Tools](#cognitive-tools)
  - [Collections](#collections)
  - [Explaining](#explaining)
  - [Problem Solving](#problem-solving)
  - [Systems](#systems)
  - [Brainstorming](#brainstorming)
  - [Behavioral](#behavioral)
- [Team Dynamics](#team-dynamics)
- [Engineering](#engineering)
  - [The Technical Engineering Manager](#the-technical-engineering-manager)
  - [Systems Complexity](#systems-complexity)
  - [Technology](#technology)
  - [Engineering Practices](#engineering-practices)
  - [Technical Debt](#technical-debt)
- [Remote Work](#remote-work)
- [Meetings](#meetings)
  - [1 on 1](#1-on-1)
  - [Standups](#standups)
- [Facilities](#facilities)
- [Product Management](#product-management)
  - [Hiring PMs](#hiring-pms)
  - [Product-Market Fit](#product-market-fit)
  - [Product Strategy](#product-strategy)
  - [User-Centered Design](#user-centered-design)
  - [Product Marketing](#product-marketing)
- [Project Management](#project-management)
  - [Specifications](#specifications)
  - [Estimations](#estimations)
  - [Tickets](#tickets)
  - [Delivery](#delivery)
- [Agile](#agile)
- [Key Performance Indicator (KPI)](#key-performance-indicator-kpi)
- [Objectives and Key Results (OKR)](#objectives-and-key-results-okr)
- [Training](#training)
- [Communication](#communication)
  - [Knowledge](#knowledge)
  - [Reading](#reading)
  - [Documentation](#documentation)
  - [Writing](#writing)
  - [Style](#style)
  - [Presentations](#presentations)
- [Career](#career)
  - [Promotion](#promotion)
  - [Performance Reviews](#performance-reviews)
- [Compensation](#compensation)
  - [Salary](#salary)
  - [Equity](#equity)
- [Politics](#politics)
- [Re-organizations](#re-organizations)
  - [Team-level](#team-level)
  - [Company-level](#company-level)
  - [Acquisition](#acquisition)
- [Health](#health)
  - [Holidays](#holidays)
  - [Stress](#stress)
  - [Burnout](#burnout)
- [Setbacks and Failures](#setbacks-and-failures)
- [Exits](#exits)

## Engineering to Management Transition

The first step. The hardest. How to requalify oneself from an Individual Contributor (IC) to a front-line manager.

- You always been a developer. Being offered [a management position is not a promotion. It is a change in career](https://fractio.nl/2014/09/19/not-a-promotion-a-career-change/).

- [17 Reasons not to be a Manager](https://charity.wtf/2019/09/08/reasons-not-to-be-a-manager/) - An article to [discourage the faint-hearted recruits](https://youtu.be/b07887ZzKiw?t=40).

- [Advice to New Managers: Don't Joke About Firing People](https://staysaasy.com/engineering/2020/06/09/Don%27t-Joke.html) - “The second you became their manager you forfeited the right to joke around in any capacity about their employment at the company.”

- [Advice to new managers](https://x.com/ValaAfshar/status/966125964861280256) - 9 fundamental principles of the behavior required to be a great manager.

- [Mistakes I've Made as an Engineering Manager](https://css-tricks.com/mistakes-ive-made-as-an-engineering-manager/) - Mistakes: “1) Thinking people give feedback the way they want to receive it; 2) Trying to do everything yourself; 3) Communicating something one time is enough; 4) You have to have everything together all the time.”

- [Why It's Easier to Manage 4 People Than It Is to Manage 1 Person](https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/07/24/Managing-One-Person.html) - “Avoid at all costs the combination of: new manager, 1 report, report is new-to-industry, manager is not a subject-matter expert.”

- [Going from Developer to Manager. What should I know or learn?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18823616)

- [How to be a Manager – A step-by-step guide to leading a team](https://getweeklyupdate.com/manager-guide) - A full, detailed guide on modern management practices.

- [On being an Engineering Manager](https://ruiper.es/posts/engineer-manager-2017/) - Some of these points needs nuance, but others are a good taste of things to come for first-time managers.

- [Responsibility vs. accountability](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21892816) - The biggest difference between manager (accountable) and engineers (responsible): “'Bad things' happen for the person accountable, whereas the person responsible can [move](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/move) on to the next project.”

- “A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision.” - An [IBM slide from 1979](https://x.com/mit_csail/status/1604884273789603842).

- “It is a job where your goal is to try disappoint people most slowly.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18222488)).

- “So the trick is basically to put them (your direct reports) in charge, not you. You have the supporting role, they can request things from you. But the goal needs to be very clear.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23973859)) - A recipe on how to work with your direct reports, from a section of [7 habits of highly effective people](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1982137274?&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=5920a3d486de941b37430f948d377bc9&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl).

- [The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0688103804?&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=704eff2e2cddae6d97ef082a6f25bafd&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) - The author use a parable in which problems are monkeys. Unexperienced managers let monkeys being transferred to them, accumulates on their back and compounds. From this, the book teach you how to change from taking on responsibilities to delegating them so you don't become a bottleneck.

## Building Teams

You got the title and the pay grade. Congratulation! This doesn't make you a manager yet. Whether you inherit an already existing team or have to start from scratch, you'll need to practice the art of building (and consolidating) them.

- [Building and Motivating Engineering Teams](http://www.elidedbranches.com/2016/11/building-and-motivating-engineering.html) - What DO engineers want? Money, purpose and respect.

- [What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team](https://web.archive.org/web/20250601205421/https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html) - “Google's data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work. (…) The behaviors that create psychological safety — conversational turn-taking and empathy — are part of the same unwritten rules we often turn to, as individuals, when we need to establish a bond.”

- [Paper we love: Software Engineering Organizations](https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love/tree/master/software_engineering_orgs) - “The practice of software engineering, and its history is, itself, a complex study in humanity, coordination, and communication.”

- [Developer Tropes: "Google does it"](https://tomaytotomato.com/developer-tropes-2/) - It's [cargo-cultish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) to imitate the big names in our industry as a path to success. Instead, the take home from this article “would be that managers and other leaders should be like ecologists; who measure, observe and nurture their ecosystems. Doing so will help build a unique workplace that will yield great results.”

## Roles

On the profiles, attitude, behaviors, and expectations between developers, managers and executives.

### Executives

Executives are the senior/highest management layers of a company. They reports to a board of directors in bigger companies, or directly to the shareholders in smaller ones. Leadership is expected at this level. As a manager these are the people you report to.

- [What do executives do, anyway?](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190926) - Paraphrasing [Andy Grove's book, High Output Management](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394532341?&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=f80a2e0610594cad92d301c587380f0a&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), “the job of an executive is: to define and enforce culture and values for their whole organization, and to ratify good decisions.” The article also details the failures modes of a CEO: forcing his own decisions downstream, or various ways of not resolving conflicts.

- [Executives ratify decisions made on the spot](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18089716) - Tolstoy's thesis to business.

- [Army Leadership and the Profession](https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/adp6_22.pdf) - Establishes and describes what leaders should be and do.

- [US Air Force's Strategic Leadership Studies](https://web.archive.org/web/20190308062113/http://leadership.au.af.mil/sls-skil.htm) - A reference of leadership's competencies and skills.

- [What Only the CEO Can Do](https://archive.ph/CcScN) - “1. Defining and interpreting the meaningful "outside" of the company; 2. Answering the two-part question: What business are we in and what business are we not in? 3. Balancing sufficient yield in the present with necessary investment in the future; 4. Shaping the values and [standards](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/standards) of the organization.”

- [How CEOs Manage Time](https://archive.ph/S32wu) - A study on what CEO of large companies spent their time on, and how. Opens a new window into what leadership is all about and into its many components and dimensions.

- [Operations and Internal Communication Strategies For Effective CEOs](https://archive.ph/9DkfA) - After insisting on the importance of context and narratives, the author provide an interesting template (good for inspiration) of ritual and recurring internal communication devices.

- [Regis McKenna's talk at Silicon Valley Leaders Symposium](https://youtu.be/5Z13NI0SuyA?t=2026) - “These are the things we (marketers) used to do with individuals and bodies. They've all become automated. The CIO is the marketing chief now.”

- [Narcissistic CEOs Weaken Collaboration and Integrity](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/narcissistic-ceos-weaken-collaboration-integrity) - “The prototypic visionary leader profile is so similar to that of a narcissist, if boards aren't careful, they're going to end up choosing people who are narcissistic as CEOs”.

- “Hiring isn't the challenge. The challenge is finding people who can be effective while working for executives whose only qualifications and training are narcissistic levels of self confidence.” ([source](https://x.com/kellan/status/1205113384632500224)).

- “The CEO positions himself as a controlling, micromanaging individual at the center of everything. This makes it possible for the CEO to intercept financials and other crucial numbers en route to people who might catch on.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24519247)) - Or how fraud can endure at the top level. That's generally why you need a board of directors as an oversight.

### CTO & VP of Engineering

In tech companies these roles are critical, and the frontier between the two is often blurry.

- [CTO vs VP Engineering: What's the Difference?](https://www.ivyexec.com/career-advice/2015/cto-versus-vp-engineering-whats-the-difference/) - CTO manage a small staff of hackers. VP of Engineering lead an organization of engineers.

- [Want to Know the Difference Between a CTO and a VP Engineering?](https://bothsidesofthetable.com/want-to-know-the-difference-between-a-cto-and-a-vp-engineering-4fc3750c596b) - Another way to look at thing: placing these roles along the “Process Orientation” and “Technical Capability” quadrants.

- [The different skills needed to be a successful CTO](https://madewithlove.be/one-job-many-roles-the-different-skills-needed-to-be-a-successful-cto/) - The premise is a little misleading, as what is detailed there is the journey, in a startup, of the technical founder growing with the company to become a CTO. At which point the position described in the article is not CTO, but VP of Engineering.

- [Hiring a VP of Engineering? Use This Framework](https://review.firstround.com/hiring-a-vp-of-engineering-use-this-framework-from-shopifys-vpe-to-get-it-right/) - “*How do I hire a VP of Engineering?* After more than 20 years, eight companies, and thousands of hires, I'm starting to suspect this may be the wrong question. A better one is, *What is a VP of Engineering?*”

- [“That's usually about the time I nope right out of the interview”](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19188246) - Bad signs of a CTO trying to recruit an engineering manager, or the perils of not believing in hierarchies.

### Engineering Managers

Managers came in all form and shape, and the title and daily activities varies a lot depending on companies. When developers directly reports to you, you'll find yourself at the first management level: you are a front-line engineering manager.

- [What are the signs that you have a great manager?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20230133) - “The irony is that you don't really notice a great manager.”

- [Identify what makes a great manager](https://rework.withgoogle.com/en/guides/managers-identify-what-makes-a-great-manager#learn-about-googles-manager-research) - Google tried to prove managers don't matter. Instead, it discovered [10 Traits of the Very Best Ones](https://archive.ph/1USa4).

- [As a product manager, how do you earn the respect and trust of your team?](https://web.archive.org/web/20220115172555/https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1124938723093766144)

- [Good Boss, Bad Boss: A Peek Inside the Minds of the Best (and Worst)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmBSh1FGQyY) - A good boss: gets rid of rotten apples (no asshole rule) and protects people from idiocy from on high.

- “One of your roles is to act as an information filter in both directions” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19187593)) - Some [tips](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/tips) on how to balance which kind of information needs to be shared or muted.

- [Great PMs don't spend their time on solutions](https://web.archive.org/web/20250511211605/https://www.intercom.com/blog/great-product-managers-dont-spend-time-on-solutions/) - Not on solutions, no. But on customer's problems.

- [Things I have learnt as the software engineering lead of a multinational](https://minnenratta.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/things-i-have-learnt-as-the-software-engineering-lead-of-a-multinational/) - Some interesting points here, some others needs to be challenged.

- [Surprising Things About Working at Well-Known Tech Unicorns](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/surprising-things-about-working-at-tech-unicorns/) - Echoes my own experience on differences between expectations and reality in high growth and visible companies from the point of view of an engineering manager.

- [100+ Lessons Learned for Project Managers](https://llis.nasa.gov/lesson/1956) - 122 aphorisms providind insights into NASA project management success. Covers design, decision-making, managing staff, working with superiors and contractors.

- [Engineering Manager Resources](https://github.com/ryanburgess/engineer-manager) - Huge list, but need some curation.

- [A vitally important part of the job: being a crap shield](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802483) - “A lot of the work of an EM is wading into the slurry pit with a shovel so your team are free to get the job done”.

### Engineers

- [Programmer Moneyball: Challenging the Myth of Individual Programmer Productivity](https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/sei_blog/2020/01/programmer-moneyball-challenging-the-myth-of-individual-programmer-[productivity](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/work/productivity).html) - “Since software project managers have limited ability to evaluate individual developer capability, they should rely on a productive environment and developing talent.”

- “10x developers (…) rapidly become 1x developers (or worse) if you don't let them make their own architectural choices” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5496914)).

- [7 absolute truths I unlearned as junior developer](https://monicalent.com/blog/2019/06/03/absolute-truths-unlearned-as-junior-developer/) - “1. I'm a senior developer; 2. Everyone writes tests; 3. We're so far behind everyone else (a.k.a. tech FOMO); 4. Code quality matters most; 5. Everything must be documented; 6. Technical debt is bad; 7. Seniority means being the best at programming”.

- [On Being A Senior Engineer](https://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/) - “I expect a 'senior' engineer to be a *mature* engineer.”

- [Things I Learnt from a Senior Software Engineer](https://neilkakkar.com/things-I-learnt-from-a-senior-dev.html) - “I sat next to a senior software engineer for a year. Here's what I learnt.”

- [5 Things I've Learned in 20 Years of Programming](https://daedtech.com/5-things-ive-learned-in-20-years-of-programming/) - “A programmer with 5 years of experienced has more industry tenure than half of the entire industry.” Also see this follow-up comment of [10 things I've learned after 35 years](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21612990).

- [Devs I really enjoy pairing with](https://x.com/ScribblingOn/status/1002598672444448768) - “Don't act like know-it-all; Openly admit if they don't know something; Try to figure stuff out together”.

- [All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people](https://medium.com/@bellmar/all-the-best-engineering-advice-i-stole-from-non-technical-people-eb7f90ca2f5f) - “It's intriguing that the stuff that really seems to make a difference in the quality of software never seems to be about software.”

- [What Makes A Great Software Engineer?](https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/papers/Li2015GreatEngineers.pdf) - Doesn't conclude on a definitive answer to the question, but details a model based on 53 attributes (!). Still a good source referencing other [papers](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/computer-science/papers) on the topic.

- [What makes a Senior Dev](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11341567) - “Time, man. You gotta do your fucking time.”

- [The different engineering levels at Google](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627229) - From L3 to L8: a quick description of what makes an engineer at each level.

- [How I operated as a Staff engineer at Heroku](https://amyunger.com/blog/2020/09/10/staff-engineer-at-[heroku](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/platforms/heroku).html) - A great window into the somewhat nebulous title of Staff Engineer, also called Principal Engineer or Software Architect at times. I.e. a role in which you are a technical expert, but know how to solve non-obvious engineering issues, most of the time because they are rooted in social, communications and hierarchical complexities.

- [StaffEng](https://staffeng.com) - Once you've reached the Senior Software Engineer level, you're at the crossroad. Either you pursue engineering management or continue down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer. This isa collection of guides about the later position.

- [10 Admirable Attributes of a Great Technical Lead](https://betterprogramming.pub/10-admirable-attributes-of-a-great-technical-lead-251d13a8843b) - “They are smart yet kind. Knowledgeable, yet humble. Busy, yet approachable.”

### Consultants

- “A consultant is someone 4 pages ahead in the manual” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20786286)).

- “The value that most orgs get from a consultant (…) is the political cover to make changes they knew they should make all along, but didn't have the social capital or the focus to make those changes” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21714791)). And that's the reason bureaucracies and highly political organizations are fertile grounds for consultants.

- [The Prosperous Software Consultant](https://dabit3.medium.com/the-prosperous-software-consultant-5dc8d705c5dd) - This article let you understand how an independent consultant operates.

## Recruitment

You're in a competitive sector in which talents are in high demand. Be prepared as a manager to spend a lot of time recruiting people, either to expand your team or fill-in open positions. The dynamics gets interesting too, as you are now on both sides of the hiring process: as a candidate to get a job, and as a recruiter to staff up your team.

### Job Boards

By targeting the right place to post your job offer to, you're increasing your chances of targeting the right candidates.

- [Awesome Job Boards](https://github.com/tramcar/awesome-job-boards) - [Niche job boards](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/work/niche-job-boards) by domains, technology, roles and area.

- [Hiring Without Whiteboards](https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards) - List of companies without the kind of CS trivia questions that are associated with bad interview practices.

### Hiring Process

High-growth company will all need to industrialize the hiring process at one point.

- [Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_I_Never_Hire_Brilliant_Men) - 5 simple rules for hiring men, from 1924. Things haven't changed a lot in a century.

- [A Good Tech Resume](https://thetechresume.com/A_Good_Tech_Resume.pdf) - A compilation of advice and example, but containing a good description of a typical hiring pipeline.

- [Job Interviewing Guide](https://www.homerun.co/artofwork/guides/job-interviewing) - A detailed description of a hiring process, a great source of [inspiration](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/inspiration) for when your company gets big enough to start to formalize things up.

- [Open Sourced Interview Process](https://github.com/cockroachlabs/open-sourced-interview-process) - Cockroach Labs published their process “to create familiarity for candidates and account for bias, resulting in a better candidate experience and hiring decisions.”

- [Rethinking the Hiring Process](https://www.karllhughes.com/posts/rethinking-hiring) - “[Testing](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/testing/testing) programmers at something they aren't actually expected to be good at and expecting to learn something about how they would work at your company is delusional, and I think these kind of interviews only serve to make the hiring team feel smarter and ensure better outcomes for engineers with traditional CS backgrounds.”

### Interview

List of questions that can be used when vetting potential candidates, and topics to draw inspiration from to be used as conversation starters.

- [The Technical Interview is an Ego Trip](https://web.archive.org/web/20221101193146/https://kowsheek.com/the-technical-interview-is-an-ego-trip/) - Starts with anecdote of developers using a job interview as a vehicle to demonstrate their superiority. Then the author details a reasonable interview process that is trying to not waste anyone's time.

- [The Intangible Skills You Can't Interview For](https://staysaasy.com/leadership/2021/04/12/the-intangible-skills-you-cant-interview-for.html) - “1) Cut-Through on Crappy Tasks; 2) Knowing How to Finish; 3) Knowing How to Start; 4) Giving (And Receiving) Diagonal Feedback; 5) Harnessing the Value of Intangibles.”

- [Back-End Developer Interview Questions](https://github.com/arialdomartini/Back-End-Developer-Interview-Questions) - A great source of [inspiration](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/inspiration).

- [Engineering Leadership Interviews](https://github.com/kaushikb9/em-interviews) - An outline on how to recruit for engineering manager roles.

- [Reverse interview](https://github.com/viraptor/reverse-interview) - Questions to ask the company during your interview. Be prepared to answer them as a manager.

- [Culture Queries](https://www.keyvalues.com/culture-queries) - A sample of question to ask in job interviews to try to understand the values of a company.

- [Book Summary of "Who: The A Method for Hiring"](https://medium.com/mbreads/book-summary-who-c4a437d8ae3a) - The essential of [*Who*, a popular book](https://www.amazon.com/Who-Geoff-Smart/dp/0345504194?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1686402298&sr=1-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=d4a63bc5d11e6d00d942c293a640e2c1&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) on recruiting executives.

- “It's true that not all developers make positive contributions, however, I think that blaming "lowering hiring [standards](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/standards)" (…) is a complete red herring.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13209317)) - Examples in which developers that might pass tough job interview just fine are bringing negative value later.

### Coding Challenge

The absence of coding exercise will left the door open to fraud. OTOH, if elitist challenges decrease the number of false-positive, you will pass on perfectly capable and great developers. Now it is your job as manager to find balance between these two extremes, and set the tone on how to have the candidate demonstrate coding skills.

- [How to Freaking Find Great Developers By Having Them Read Code](https://web.archive.org/web/20230416055512/https://freakingrectangle.com/2022/04/15/how-to-freaking-hire-great-developers/) - “Instead of writing code, consider having the candidate read existing code and talk about how it works. 1) Reading code is 95% of what a developer does as part of their job. 2) A candidate can tell you a lot about their programming skill in the first five minutes of reading. 3) Stress is your enemy because it raises adrenaline which lowers IQ by several points, causing you to miss good candidates.”

- [Organizational Skills Beat Algorithmic Wizardry](https://prog21.dadgum.com/177.html) - “When it comes to writing code, the number one most important skill is how to keep a tangle of features from collapsing under the weight of its own complexity.”

- [The Horrifically Dystopian World of Software Engineering Interviews](https://web.archive.org/web/20210911031845/https://www.jarednelsen.dev/posts/The-horrifically-dystopian-world-of-software-engineering-interviews) - The dark side on relying too much on algorithm challenges.

- [Fizz Buzz Test](https://wiki.c2.com/?FizzBuzzTest) - “Designed to help filter out the 99.5% of programming job candidates who can't seem to program their way out of a wet paper bag.”

- [FizzBuzz 2.0: Pragmatic Programming Questions for Software Engineers](https://web.archive.org/web/20211020130141/https://triplebyte.com/blog/fizzbuzz-2-0-pragmatic-programming-questions-for-software-engineers) - Five multiple-choice questions to easily separate the real software engineers from the [rest](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/rest).

- [FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition](https://github.com/EnterpriseQualityCoding/FizzBuzzEnterpriseEdition) - A satire of over-engineering for the sake of enterprise-grade software.

- [Awesome Interviews](https://github.com/MaximAbramchuck/awesome-interview-questions) - A huge [database](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/databases/database) of questions sorted by topic to get [inspiration](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/inspiration) from.

### Negotiation

A critical step to close up the hiring process.

- [How Not to Bomb Your Offer Negotiation](https://haseebq.com/how-not-to-bomb-your-offer-negotiation/) - “A good negotiator is empathetic and collaborative. They don't try to control you or issue ultimatums. Rather, they try to think creatively about how to fulfill both your and their needs.”

- [How to answer the “What's your current salary?” job interview question](https://web.archive.org/web/20190228034111/https://42hire.com/how-to-answer-the-whats-your-current-salary-job-interview-question-486254cb59ad?gi=a7f878096392) - This article explain the dynamic of that sneaky question and how to defuse it.

- [Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/) - “Your salary negotiation — which routinely takes [less](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/less) than 5 minutes to conclude — has an outsized influence on what your compensation is.”

- [Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer](https://haseebq.com/my-ten-rules-for-negotiating-a-job-offer/) - “First part will be about conceptualizing the negotiating process, about how to begin the process and set yourself up for maximal success. The second part will be advice on the actual back-and-forth portion of negotiating and how to ask for what you want.”

## Onboarding

How to get newcomers up to speed with the rest of the team you manage. And how to introduce yourself to teams you just joined or inherited.

- [The Most Important Performance Management Rule For Software Engineers](https://staysaasy.com/startups/2022/04/03/performance-management.html) - “Merge code every week. That's what you should be saying to your new Software Engineering hire.”

- [Optimize Onboarding](https://staysaasy.com/management/2020/08/28/Optimize-Onboarding.html) - “Your organization has painfully slow onboarding. Endless HR videos, slow [security](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/security/security) processes, a mountain of fragile technology setup - these all make for a shitty and counterproductive start at a company. Optimize your onboarding to get people doing what you hired them to do.”

- [As a manager of a new employee I make an absolute point of being a "helicopter mom" from the moment they hit the area until about week 2 or 3](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24404676) - Navigating a new organization will be hard the first few weeks, and the presence of a manager can help speed things up.

- [A Career Cold Start Algorithm](https://boz.com/articles/career-cold-start) - The author developed an algorithm to ramp-up quickly when joining an existing team where he had a massive knowledge deficit and no pre-existing relationships.

- [Meeting everyone on a new team](https://www.annashipman.co.uk/jfdi/meeting-everyone.html) - Right after inheriting a position at the top of an organization of 50 engineers, the author bootstraped the relationship with that big team by meeting everyone in 30 minutes 1:1s. It was a huge time investment, and despite fears of being boring, it allows for recognizing patterns of what change was needed.

## Motivation

- [Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) - Daniel Pink summarizes it concisely: people are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose.

- Reflecting on the postulates above, [Bryan Cantrill defines that the role of management](https://x.com/bcantrill/status/1216491615264489473?s=20) “is in constructing that environment, not micromanaging it. If engineering performance is suffering, it's (likely) a management problem: wrong problem, wrong mission, or wrong team -- or all three.”

- [What Silicon Valley "Gets" about Software Engineers that Traditional Companies Do Not](https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/what-silicon-valley-gets-right-on-software-engineers/) - “1. Autonomy for software engineers; 2. Curious problem solvers, not mindless resources; 3. Internal data, code, and documentation transparency; 4. Exposure to the business and to business metrics; 5. Engineer-to-engineer comms over triangle-communication; 6. Investing in a [less](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/less) frustrating developer experience; 7. Higher leverage --> higher {autonomy, pay}”.

- [Some reasons why enterprise software is good and maybe even fun](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21231455) - The majority of us will not build the next unicorn: we statically have a better chance to build enterprise software. The twist? It might even be more interesting than you expect.

### Happiness

- [First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1595621113?&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=cc8ac8de84cb23f23ca5577dcb7af139&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) - We learn in this book that employee happiness was not correlated to company success. A comment on HN details the [questions that were highly correlated to company success](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20571219).

- “My team tracks life impact as a metric (pages outside business hours) and works to drive that down to zero.” ([source](https://x.com/dwc/status/962179099606200320)) - Maybe the best indicator of a happy team is how little it is disturbed outside office hours.

- [6 Signs You're a Micromanager (And What to Do Instead)](https://unito.io/blog/micromanagement-signs/) - “You're more involved with your employees than ever, yet they seem disgruntled, unhappy, and [less](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/less) productive than usual. Your check-ins seem to go unappreciated. And no one seems receptive to all of your great feedback on their work. What's going on? Well, we hate to break it to you, but you might be a micromanager.”

### Procrastination

- [3 tricks to start working despite not feeling like it](https://www.deprocrastination.co/blog/3-tricks-to-start-working-despite-not-feeling-like-it) - “'Screw it, let's do it'; Start sloppy; Start small”.

- [Why procrastination is about managing emotions, not time](https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200121-why-procrastination-is-about-managing-emotions-not-time) - “Research shows that once the first step is made towards a task, following through becomes easier”.

## Culture

- [hacker-laws](https://github.com/dwmkerr/hacker-laws) - Laws, Theories, Principles and Patterns that developers will find useful.

- [Adaptation vs adaptability](https://sci-hub.st/10.1016/s0303-2647%2801%2900170-8) - There is a spectrum between perfect efficiency and being completely flexible. This article explores ecosystems and the flows of material and energy between different organisms within the ecosystem. ([hinted by HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20963513))

- [The IT revolution and southern Europe's two lost decades](https://voxeu.org/article/it-revolution-and-southern-europes-two-lost-decades) - If you still doubt management culture could make or break an industry: “inefficient management practices have kept southern European firms from taking full advantage of the IT revolution”.

- [Meaningful differences that makes Google offices more productive](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20443133) - “The people are smarter, your manager (and their manager) cares a lot about you and it's easy to [move](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/move).”

- [It's Not Enough to Be Right—You Also Have to Be Kind](https://archive.ph/RoW6v) - “It's harder to be kind than clever”, or put another way by Abraham Joshua Heschel: “When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.”

- “It is not your job to protect people (particularly senior management) from the consequences of their decisions. Make your decisions in your own best interest; it is up to the organization to make sure that your interest aligns with theirs.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7179946)).

- “If you cannot disrupt a perverted culture by introducing a new culture, the politics of the perverted culture will work against you until you break, align, or leave. It is not unwise to leave before you break and it is easier to leave before you align.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20914779)) - At one point, even with the most unselfish of intentions, your attempts to elevate the culture might stall. It is not fair, but it's probably the time to leave.

- [You have only 4 options](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16126082) - “1. Change you; 2. Change the other; 3. Fly; 4. Stay and suffer.” A more concise way of saying the same thing as above.

- [Netflix Culture](https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664) - “The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.”

- [High Performance Organizations Reading List](https://github.com/pdfernhout/High-Performance-Organizations-Reading-List) - A list of books, web pages, and videos about how to design better organizations, divided into 3 categories: organization and motivation, health and wellness, and software development specific.

- [A Conversation with Werner Vogels, [Learning](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/learning) from the Amazon technology platform](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1142065) - Scaling systems is not only a technical challenge. It has to be about teams and culture too. One lesson learned from the early days of AWS: “Giving developers operational responsibilities has greatly enhanced the quality of the services, both from a customer and a technology point of view. (…) You build it, you run it.”

- [The principles of Amazon service-oriented collaboration](https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/14/amazons_away_teams/?page=2) - A compilation of anonymous sources from AWS which ehoes the interview above: “teams are ostensibly autonomous and can make any important decision needed to meet their goals.”

## Cognitive Tools

Thinking frameworks and mental models to improve decision making, understand systems and solve problems.

### Collections

Expansive lists of well-known models and concepts.

- [Gigerenzer's simple rules](https://www.foundingfuel.com/article/gigerenzers-simple-rules/) - The reason we often relies on these simple heuristics: “outside the lab, in real world, we cannot do well with just with logical rationality, we need ecological rationality - the kind of thinking that helps us get what we want in an environment that's uncertain and dynamic. This means exercising our instincts, using simple but robust rules of thumb.”

- [The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions](https://fs.blog/mental-models/#military_and_war) - A collection of 109 models.

- [Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful](https://medium.com/@yegg/mental-models-i-find-repeatedly-useful-936f1cc405d#.qb3gkdmtk) - Huge compiled list of mental models. Became the basis of book.

- [Tools for better thinking](https://untools.co) - “Collection of thinking tools and [frameworks](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/front-end-development/frameworks) to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.”

- [A Few Rules](https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/a-few-rules/) - A formalized list of some wisdom you probably encountered elsewhere.

- [Awesome Concepts](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-concepts) - Laws, principles, mental models and cognitive biases.

- [UX Core](https://keepsimple.io/uxcore) - 105 cognitive biases with simple descriptions, brief and detailed examples.

### Explaining

- [Hanlon's razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) - “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” My favorite flavor of [Occam's Razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor), and a crucial mantra to defuse rampant paranoia in a highly political setting.

- [Regression toward the mean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean) - Or why after a period of intense euphoria and ambition, things slowly get back to their usual mediocrity.

- [Locus of control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control) - A framework on “the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as opposed to external forces beyond their control.”

### Problem Solving

- [First principles and asking why](https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/growth/first-principles-and-asking-why/) - “Our ability to think in abstractions can weaken our judgement, as those abstractions may no longer be as true as they once were. Also a similarly dangerous evolutionary trait is our ability to think in analogy, where we make assumptions based on the comparison of two things that are not actually related.” [Elon Musk explains it better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV3sBlRgzTI).

- “People who excel at software design become convinced that they have a unique ability to understand any kind of system at all, from first principles, without prior training, thanks to their superior powers of analysis. Success in the artificially constructed world of software design promotes a dangerous confidence.” - A reminder of the needs of humility and recognition of limits in our industry, [from a panel on the Moral Economy of Tech](https://idlewords.com/talks/sase_panel.htm).

- [The Art of Powerful Questions - Catalyzing Insight, Innovation, and Action](https://www.betterevaluation.org/sites/default/files/the-art-of-powerful-questions.pdf) - “Leaders believe that they are being paid for fixing problems rather than for fostering breakthrough thinking.”

### Systems

- [To Get Good, Go After The Metagame](https://commoncog.com/blog/to-get-good-go-after-the-metagame/) - “Every sufficiently interesting game has a metagame above it. This is the game about the game. It is often called 'the meta'. (…) The meta is what you get after you master boring fundamentals. But observing the state of the current meta often reveals what boring fundamentals you need to learn.”

### Brainstorming

- [Yes, and…](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and...) - “A rule-of-thumb in improvisational comedy (…). It is also used in business and other organizations as a principle that improves the effectiveness of the brainstorming process, fosters effective communication, and encourages the free sharing of ideas.”

- [Strong Opinions, Weakly Held — a framework for thinking](https://medium.com/@ameet/strong-opinions-weakly-held-a-framework-for-thinking-6530d417e364) - “Allow your intuition to guide you to a conclusion, no matter how imperfect — this is the 'strong opinion' part. Then – and this is the 'weakly held' part – prove yourself wrong.”

### Behavioral

- [Programmer Interrupted](http://blog.ninlabs.com/2013/01/programmer-interrupted/) - Research shows the devastating effect of interrupting developers: 1. 15 min is required to resume work; 2. A programmer get just one uninterrupted 2-hour session in a day; 3. Worst time to interrupt: during edits, searches & comprehension.

- “People make bad choices if they're mad or scared or stressed.” - [Disney's Frozen](https://web.archive.org/web/20250123004447if_/https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b5/17/97/b5179700050b96f91f63e086e053b5ee.jpg).

- [I coached CEOs, founders, VCs and other executive: These are the biggest takeaways](https://leowid.com/2019-2) - Excerpt: “We're all just big, complicated bags of emotion walking around; Power comes with the ability to receive a No; [Learning](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/programming-languages/learning) to manage your focus, not your time.”

- [Intellectual Humility Cheat Sheet](https://web.archive.org/web/20200526135036/https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/53419b80e4b0cccdfc3bbcf8/1579371627532-SANUEQ1REPX09L8NE1XM/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kI9Q46LYBJG1wKj9b7EvhSB7gQa3H78H3Y0txjaiv_0fDoOvxcdMmMKkDsyUqMSsMWxHk725yiiHCCLfrh8O1z5QHyNOqBUUEtDDsRWrJLTmWp-RWlGnWD_Yv5axNBE_gjfhPXbI2t7MOi3WVleCqN9URFC-c33mY-I6dtTBVWXC/ih-cheat-sheet-v2.jpg) - “is about being open and able to change your mind about important things, and being able to discern when you should.”

- [Avoiding Intellectual Phase Lock](https://books.google.com/books?id=__CnDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT21&dq=intellectual%20phase%20lock%20Frank%20Dunnington&pg=PT21#v=onepage&q=intellectual%20phase%20lock%20Frank%20Dunnington&f=false) - Anticipating an important result so much, humans by nature are susceptible to introduce subtle confirmation bias. To combat IPL, you might introduce random unknowns to suppress any attempt to game the system toward the object of your desire. I.e. avoid to cheat yourself to success.

- [The six ways to influence people](https://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/06/robert-cialdini-influence/) - 6 universal principles of influence that are used to persuade business professionals: reciprocity, consistency, social proof, getting people to like you, authority and scarcity.

- [On Bullshit](http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/bullshit.pdf) - This [HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23147605) perfectly describes the concept. “Unlike lying/fraud, where [falsehood](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/falsehood) is instrumental, Frankfurt defined bullshit as potentially false speech where the truth *simply wasn't important*. Bullshit is characterized by giving the *surface appearance* of confidence, intelligence, or a convincing argument; whether it's actually true or not is besides the point.”

## Team Dynamics

On the day-to-day dynamics of the team, and its interaction with other teams.

- [How to Celebrate the Small Wins](https://web.archive.org/web/20190714235605/https://medium.dave-bailey.com/how-to-celebrate-the-small-wins-4a03004a1816?gi=90c401bc3fd1) - My takeaway: “Celebrating Slow Progress; Hunt for Key Milestones”.

- [Team Leader Venn Diagram](https://larahogan.me/blog/team-leader-venn-diagram/) - “A tool for gaining a shared understanding of responsibilities”.

- [When your coworker does great work, tell their manager](https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/07/14/when-your-coworker-does-great-work-tell-their-manager/) - Highlighting unseen work in public allows managers to recognize efforts their reports are doing. Still, there is some cases in which it might put your colleague in a tight spot. So always ask if it's ok first.

- [Eye Candy QA](https://techreflect.net/2020/01/05/eye-candy-qa-2005-2011/) - Retelling of author's job at Apple: “John Louch was my boss. (…) John always shared everything with us, even the *don't share this with your team* stuff. We were people he trusted, so it was as it should be. It made you feel like you were part of something greater.” Or why sharing some open secret promote strong trust in your entourage.

- [The Apollo Syndrome](https://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/apollo.htm) - A phenomenon discovered by Dr Meredith Belbin, and exposed in his 1981 [book on Management Teams](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1856178072?&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=486a53a41992fa334ccd6de4b3f689e1&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl), where teams of highly capable individuals can, collectively, perform badly.

- [A conversation with Elon Musk about Starship](https://youtu.be/cIQ36Kt7UVg?t=203) - In a team with very talented contributors, everyone's is a chief engineer: you are expected to challenge the status-quo and questions other department's constraints. This allow smart engineers to avoid the trap of optimizing for something that should not exist in the first place. Might be a cure for the Apollo Syndrome.

- [Symptoms of Groupthink](https://web.archive.org/web/20210925184712/https://courses.washington.edu/psii101/Powerpoints/Symptoms%20of%20Groupthink.htm) - Overconfidence, tunnel vision and conformity pressure can led a group astray.

- [It's Not Sabotage, They're Drowning](https://shermanonsoftware.com/2019/11/15/its-not-sabotage-theyre-drowning/) - Some kind of push backs shouldn't be interpreted as intentional sabotage, but as drowning people sinking the lifeboat in an attempt to save themselves.

- “Community already exists, you just create a communication platform for it” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21828666)) - Or why trying to create a community from the ground up might not be the right way of looking at things: a better and more subtle strategy would be to empowers the already existing channels and make them visible.

## Engineering

You're no longer an engineer. Still, your team is responsible for the systems, technology and all the processes surrounding them. You'd better know a bit about engineering tenets.

### The Technical Engineering Manager

You shouldn't spend your time coding. Leave that to the engineers: your value lies elsewhere now. But does that means you must forget all things technical? The answer is an astounding *NO*. Here are some arguments:

- [Do engineering managers need to be technical?](https://increment.com/teams/do-engineering-managers-need-to-be-technical/) - Yes. “Looking forward to the next 30 years of management trends, only a few things seem certain: Managers should be technical, and the definition of technical will continue to change.”

- [If Your Boss Could Do Your Job, You're More Likely to Be Happy at Work](https://archive.ph/J2vlo#selection-1025.8-1025.64) - “Although we found that many factors can matter for happiness at work – type of occupation, level of [education](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/back-end-development/education), tenure, and industry are also significant, for instance – they don't even come close to mattering as much as the boss' technical competence.”

- “The best managers I met tended to be those that if the circumstance required it, could do the job of those two levels below.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23891984)) - Another way of putting it: managers needs domain knowledge and to know the work their reports do.

- “Over the years we have developed the policy that it is important for the supervisor to thoroughly know and understand the work of his group.” ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20683609)) - This quote is [from David Packard](https://www.amazon.com/HP-Way-Hewlett-Built-Company/dp/0887307477?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1686404404&sr=1-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=e6069674f9b0b4ef884b0f8f70eb8f94&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) (HP co-founder), decades before current [management fad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_fad).

### Systems Complexity

Whatever the technical stack, we are building systems first, and have to manage its complexity.

- [Second-system effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect) - “Tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems, to be succeeded by over-engineered, bloated systems”.

- [Living with Complexity, by Donald A. Norman](https://www.amazon.com/Living-Complexity-Donald-Norman-2010/dp/B00DEKM5GK?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1686404524&sr=1-1&linkCode=ll1&tag=kevideld-20&linkId=497ae387bbd398624d897bdfbf90f7b6&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) - In which we learn that, based on [Tesler's law of the conservation of complexity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_conservation_of_complexity), “the total complexity of a system is a constant: as you make the person's interaction simpler, the hidden complexity behind the scenes increases. Make one part of the system simpler, said Tesler, and the [rest](/@harrisonqian/awesome/wiki/miscellaneous/rest) of the system gets more complex.”


---
*truncated — [full list on GitHub](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-engineering-team-management)*
