Software Lead Weekly

Hi, author here! I wish I had a solution to this problem! The idealistic side of me wants everyone to "think critically". Of course if all humans were critical about the decisions they made and their effects on the systems around them (organizations, society, environment), we probably wouldn't have wars and global warming.

So that won't scale beyond the individual, which might be acceptable from a Stoic perspective but I doubt that's the solution you're looking for.

Oren Ellenborgen shared my post in today's edition of Software Lead Weekly [1], and in his summary of the post he suggests using Key Failure Indicators (KFIs) to counterbalance Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). From what I understand, the idea is that you observe metrics of success but you also observe metrics of health, and take action if the former starts degrading the latter.

For example, if you want to deliver features more quickly, you might measure the time between a change is submitted for review and the time it's deployed. But if you're concerned that this could degrade quality, you could also measure the number of defects that are identified. If defects increase as delivery time decreases, this indicates the success metric is causing some undesirable behavior. Hope this helps.

[1] https://softwareleadweekly.com/issues/513

Everyone recommends The Manager's Path, but I don't think it's a good book to explain HOW to become a manager. The book's goal is to explain the career path of a manager from tech lead to CTO.

My #1 recommendation these days is "Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager" by Jamies Stanier. This book explains how to approach the work a manager is involved in and what you can expect from the day to day. Planning, hard conversations, performance reviews etc.

Also, look for general management books. Leadership is something all humans do – software management is about managing creative people. Some other books I recommend are:

• Creativity, Inc by Ed Matmull
• Crucial Conversation
• Team of Teams

For email newsletters, I recommend Software Lead Weekly (https://softwareleadweekly.com/) and Better Allies (https://betterallies.com/more-content/).

Lastly, I also write a blog called Build the Stage (https://www.buildthestage.com) about managing SWEs. I've got posts about performance reviews, team meetings, how to give feedback, etc. It'll help you out.

After many years of RSS (Google Reader, then Feedly), I gave up on it due to sheer volume and now get my daily fix from curated email newsletters, a mix of news and tech-related ones. This post lead me to make an inventory of them:

http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/morning-briefing-europe

https://qz.com/

https://webopsweekly.com/

https://www.finimize.com/

http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/

https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-macro/

https://labnotes.org/

https://aeon.co/

http://softwareleadweekly.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/the-interpreter

http://www.phpweekly.com/

http://www.hackernewsletter.com/

http://www.electricdreaming.com/

https://www.dpreview.com/newsletter

And a few Greek ones, might as well add them:

https://insidestory.gr/

http://factnews.gr/

http://www.georgakopoulos.org/2014/05/newsletter/

A few good resources for this. The different positions of "Technical Lead", "CTO", "Engineering Manager" all vary from company to company so I'm not sure what your new role will entail.

1. https://pragprog.com/book/jsengman/become-an-effective-software-engineering-manager, which had a good conversation here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129).

2. https://managinghumans.com/ by Michael Lopes

3. https://leadingsnowflakes.com/, which also has a good weekly newsletter - http://softwareleadweekly.com/.

4. https://www.udemy.com/course/practical-leadership/

5. https://tomdemarco.com/Books/deadline.html - quite old now, but it's still hugely insightful.

May I wish you the best of luck. It's an exciting and really difficult challenge, but can be hugely rewarding in the end.

Check out Managing Humans by Michael Lopp. Or, as @jennyp mentioned, check out his blog - rands in repose. His book is basically a collection of blog posts.

Another book that was recommended for new managers is https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118911954/ -

Your First Leadership Job: How Catalyst Leaders Bring Out the Best in Others by Byham and Wellins

Radical Candor by Kim Scott

Not books, but other resources that might be useful:

https://www.tombartel.de/#blog

http://softwareleadweekly.com/ - also comes as a weekly email with links to different articles

https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass

Newsletters
http://levelup.thekua.com/
https://softwareleadweekly.com/
http://www.techmanagerweekly.com/
https://wherewithall.com/

Blogs
https://randsinrepose.com/
https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/
https://www.theengineeringmanager.com/
https://www.askamanager.org/
https://increment.com/
https://devtomanager.com/

Conference
https://theleaddeveloper.com/

Other Resources
http://lenareinhard.com/engineering-management-reads/
https://github.com/LappleApple/awesome-leading-and-managing

Previously: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21712194