A reading list for new engineering managers

#33 – April 19, 2021

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this week's favorite

This is the reading list I wish I’d been given as a new engineering manager. It’s organized roughly in the order that I’d want to have read them. If you’re a new engineering manager: I hope this list helps you succeed.

I interviewed four current Airbnb employees individually. Three are product managers, and one is an engineering manager. Their Airbnb tenures ranged from three to more than five years. A set of common themes emerged, as well as some areas of disagreement. I’m thankful to these employees for their time, and it was a fun experience (that word experience will keep coming up).

Instead of starting from “how do we hire top talent?”, start from “what are our weaknesses?”

Your employee just quit at a terrible time, with little notice, and you really just want to explode – but you can’t! Here’s how to handle a resignation with tact and grace.

The problem of prioritization comes up in many of my coaching discussions with product leaders, and in almost every product forum. We want it to be a trivial mechanical process: pick a metric (usually current revenue), estimate ROI for the entire backlog, then do whatever scores highest. But that very rarely works in practice.

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