Manager-dom was not a sought-after status (though I admit to prior curiosity), but as with many other engineers-turned-managers, it found me anyway (Q3 2023). Being a team lead and then an architect came naturally and brought success for many years. Some of the skills translate well from those roles while other necessary capabilities tend to be underdeveloped. Nothing can truly substitute for the value of gaining experience and reflecting on it; here are a few resources that I have found useful in my journey so far, giving me new ideas to play with and questions to aid my reflection.

Let’s start with What I wish somebody told me during my first year as a manager, which I only encountered yesterday. Most of its advice is not new, and yet it is nevertheless timely. What I most appreciated was this acknowledgment:

“You didn’t expect the emotional drain, right? That some days you’ll be so exhausted from being responsible for everything, that you’ll come home and just collapse on the couch.” (Anton Zaides)

For me it wasn’t so much a collapse on the couch as a recognition that it became harder to get a second (third?) wind after dinner and on the weekend, at least for creative endeavors or mentally challenging avocational work.

Here are two books that offer mutually-reinforcing advice, though in wildly different writing styles:

• First, Break All the Rules was a recommendation from a veteran manager. The book has been influential enough that some of the rules-to-be-broken already seemed a little dated, because people in my orbit have already been breaking them. That does not diminish its value in bringing deeply researched topics to light. This was a very worthy physical book purchase - a tome that I am sure to revisit periodically for years to come.

• Managing Humans is a series of frequently-humorous essays by Michael Lopp, which I found in my O’Reilly subscription. One of my highlights that I need to continue practicing in 2025:

  “Every month, your team produced something and it’s your job to document that production. I do this by spending an hour a month jotting down reflections of the team for the past 30 days. What stands out in my mind? What’d we do? Who rocked?” (Michael Lopp).

Both books have topics addressing the root causes of the emotional drain. Sometimes you can’t avoid the drain, which probably means having a difficult conversation. Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High will help you move past the fight-or-flight tendency into a productive interaction.

Finally, at some point I skimmed through Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders, a book I had first read ten years ago (cf in this blog: easy : simple :: lazy : efficient and Management 3.0: Knowledge and Diversity). A useful resource, but, unfortunately, what currently stands out in this reader’s mind is the author’s off-putting sarcasm.

Posted with : Book reviews and commentaries, Meta