This book will enable engineering organisations to manage their valuable knowledge resources and the people who possess them. The authors show that the loss of experience and knowledge base due to staff turnover erodes corporate culture.
Software startups make global headlines every day. As technology companies succeed and grow, so do their engineering departments. In your career, you'll may suddenly get the opportunity to lead teams: to become a manager. But this is often uncharted territory. How can you decide whether this career move is right for you? And if you do, what do you need to learn to succeed? Where do you start? How do you know that you're doing it right? What does "it" even mean? And isn't management a dirty word? This book will share the secrets you need to know to manage engineers successfully. Going from engineer to manager doesn't have to be intimidating. Engineers can be managers, and fantastic ones at that. Cast aside the rhetoric and focus on practical, hands-on techniques and tools. You'll become an effective and supportive team leader that your staff will look up to. Start with your transition to being a manager and see how that compares to being an engineer. Learn how to better organize information, feel productive, and delegate, but not micromanage. Discover how to manage your own boss, hire and fire, do performance and salary reviews, and build a great team. You'll also learn the psychology: how to ship while keeping staff happy, coach and mentor, deal with deadline pressure, handle sensitive information, and navigate workplace politics. Consider your whole department. How can you work with other teams to ensure best practice? How do you help form guilds and committees and communicate effectively? How can you create career tracks for individual contributors and managers? How can you support flexible and remote working? How can you improve diversity in the industry through your own actions? This book will show you how. Great managers can make the world a better place. Join us.
Introducing The Effective Engineer--the only book designed specifically for today's software engineers, based on extensive interviews with engineering leaders at top tech companies, and packed with hundreds of techniques to accelerate your career.
This book is a must-have resource for those engineering professionals seeking out best practice in engineering leadership and innovation. It is underpinned by years of applied experience in engineering settings, and is designed to develop and prepare engineers as leaders to accept the technical and managerial challenges that they will face as professionals At a time when engineering and innovation in technology is of importance on so many fronts, this text encourages engineers and technical professionals to become effective, socially conscious leaders and innovators. The text and course material is designed to create an environment of interactive, high-engagement learning that will produce lifelong skills. Some of the many benefits of this book include: Accompanying notes, instructor’s manual, sample syllabi for qualifying textbook adoption; A complementary website with a wealth of ancillary resources; Case studies in STEM contexts; An international approach, underpinned by years of experience in US settings; Practical advice on how to distinguish yourself as an engineering leader; A solid grounding in ethics and professional responsibility. Drawing together best practice in engineering leadership education, and current research in the field, this book is an essential read for those wishing to develop expertise in engineering leadership. Current professionals in the field, educators as well as students of engineering wishing to excel, will all be particularly interested readers.
Teaches scientists and engineers leadership skills and problem solving to facilitate management of team members, faculty, and staff This textbook introduces readers to open-ended problems focused on interactions between technical and nontechnical colleagues, bosses, and subordinates. It does this through mini case studies that illustrate scenarios where simple, clear, or exact solutions are not evident. By offering examples of dilemmas in technical leadership along with selected analyses of possible ways to address or consider such issues, aspiring or current leaders are made aware of the types of problems they may encounter. This situational approach also allows the development of methodologies to address these issues as well as future variations or new issues that may arise. Leadership by Engineers and Scientists guides and facilitates approaches to solving leadership/people problems encountered by technically trained individuals. Students and practicing engineers will learn leadership by being asked to consider specific situations, debate how to deal with these issues, and then make decisions based on what they have learned. Readers will learn technical leadership fundamentals; ethics and professionalism; time management; building trust and credibility; risk taking; leadership through questions; creating a vision; team building and teamwork; running an effective meeting; conflict management and resolution; communication; and presenting difficult messages. Describes positive traits and characteristics that technically-trained individuals bring to leadership positions, indicates how to use these skills, and describes attitudes and approaches necessary for effectively serving as leaders Covers negative traits and characteristics that can be detrimental when applied to dealing with others in their role as leaders Discusses situations and circumstances routinely encountered by new and experienced leaders of small teams Facilitates successful transitions into leadership and management positions by individuals with technical backgrounds Indicates how decisions can be reached when constraints of different personalities, time frames, economics, and organization politics and culture inhibit consensus Augments technical training by building awareness of the criticality of people skills in effective leadership Leadership by Engineers and Scientists is an excellent text for technically trained individuals who are considering, anticipating, or have recently been promoted to formal leadership positions in industry or academia.
In times of networking and the growing importance of platform economies, how can products and services be developed that inspire people? Which development methods and organisational forms are promising for this? Leaders and developers will find answers to these questions in this book. With their holistic approach, the authors look at the changing leadership roles that arise in the development of products and services: Is it, for example, about translating new ideas or unknown technologies into high-quality products? Or is it about working efficiently together in an international development alliance? The procedures and models were discussed and further developed in more than 10,000 theoretical and practical workshops with managers at Bosch worldwide. At its core is a leadership model that facilitates discussion and combines the skills needed to master technical issues with those needed to lead people. After an introductory chapter on fundamental questions such as the organization's purpose, values, and strategic goals, key elements of leadership in systems design are introduced, including requirements engineering, architecture design, and model-based development. The following chapters discuss concrete approaches and strategies to - Convert quality attributes, - to reduce risks, - to introduce a review culture, - manage complexity - Process conflicts - Define roles - to build teams. The structure of the book follows the process of developing and implementing strategic goals. However, each chapter can also be read on its own, as it forms a self-contained unit. This book makes the leadership task understandable, discussable and learnable for developers. It thus helps managers to shape change in their own field of work or to grow into a new role.
At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior Software Engineer, the career level for software engineers, in five to eight years. At that career level, you'll no longer be required to work towards the next pro? motion, and being promoted beyond it is exceptional rather than ex? pected. At that point your career path will branch, and you have to decide between remaining at your current level, continuing down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer, or switching into engineering management. Of course, the specific titles vary by company, and you can replace "Senior Engineer" and "Staff Engineer" with whatever titles your company prefers.Over the past few years we've seen a flurry of books unlocking the en? gineering management career path, like Camille Fournier's The Man? ager's Path, Julie Zhuo's The Making of a Manager, Lara Hogan's Re? silient Management and my own, An Elegant Puzzle. The manage? ment career isn't an easy one, but increasingly there are maps avail? able for navigating it.On the other hand, the transition into Staff Engineer, and its further evolutions like Principal and Distinguished Engineer, remains chal? lenging and undocumented. What are the skills you need to develop to reach Staff Engineer? Are technical abilities alone sufficient to reach and succeed in that role? How do most folks reach this role? What is your manager's role in helping you along the way? Will you enjoy being a Staff Engineer or you will toil for years to achieve a role that doesn't suit you?"Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track" is a pragmatic look at attaining and operate in these Staff-plus roles.
Many people think leadership is a higher calling that resides exclusively with a select few who practice and preach big, complex leadership philosophies. But as this practical book reveals, what’s most important for leadership is principled consistency. Time and again, small things done well build trust and respect within a team. Using stories from his time at Netscape, Apple, and Slack, Michael Lopp presents a series of small but compelling practices to help you build leadership skills. You’ll learn how to create teams that are highly productive, highly respected, and highly trusted. Lopp has been speaking and writing about this topic for over a decade and now maintains a Slack leadership channel with over 13,000 members. The essays in this book examine the practical skills Lopp learned from exceptional leaders—as a manager at Netscape, a senior manager and director at Apple, and an executive at Slack. You’ll learn how to apply these lessons to your own experience.
A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.