Name: Leaders Eat Last
ISBN: 9781591845324

Leaders Eat Last

Why do only a few people get to say “I love my job?” It seems unfair that finding fulfillment at work is like winning a lottery; that only a few lucky ones get to feel valued by their organizations, to feel like they belong. Imagine a world where almost everyone wakes up inspired to go to work, feels trusted and valued during the day, then returns home feeling fulfilled. This is not a crazy, idealized notion. Today, in many successful organizations, great leaders are creating environments in which people naturally work together to do remarkable things. In his travels around the world since the publication of his bestseller Start with Why, Simon Sinek noticed that some teams were able to trust each other so deeply that they would literally put their lives on the line for each other. Other teams, no matter what incentives were offered, were doomed to infighting, fragmentation and failure. Why? The answer became clear during a conversation with a Marine Corps general. “Officers eat last,” he said. Sinek watched as the most junior Marines ate first, while the most senior Marines took their place at the back of the line. What’s symbolic in the chow hall is deadly serious on the battlefield: great leaders sacrifice their own comfort—even their own survival—for the good of those in their care. This principle has been true since the earliest tribes of hunters and gatherers. It’s not a management theory; it’s biology.

What Hacker News says

beilabsDec 2025

I really enjoyed Leaders Eat Last and Careless People.

2025 brought me to:

The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick

Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School - Mark McCormack

The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change - Adam Braun

Neuromancer - William Gibson

Blood of Elves - Andrzej Sapkowski

We Were Eight Years In Power - Ta-Nehisi Coates

Mort - Terry Pratchett

I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King

American Gods - Neil Gaiman

The Boy’s in the Boat - Daniel James Brown

Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins

Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business - Gino Wickman

Source Code - Bill Gates

Mythos - Stephen Fry

Educated - Tara Westover

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World - John Wood

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism is a memoir - Sarah Wynn-Williams

Hail Mary - Andy Weir

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phipip K. Dick

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie

thread

kingkongjaffaAug 2024

Star with why and leaders eat last, both by Simon Sinek.

Good strategy, Bad strategy, by Rumelt is a classic on business strategy.

The books from https://www.tablegroup.com/

thread

bwbSep 2022

1. Leaders Eat Last Deluxe: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

We gave this to every employee at the business, as it models the type of culture and leaders we wanted to grow. For me personally, it put down on paper what I had been trying to do for years. It was something I reread often to try to improve my manager/leadership skills. This type of thinking helped me become a better CEO (it wasn't instant).

2. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works

Great books on tactics and strategy; it helped me improve why we did things and created a much better approach to problems.

3. 4. Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want and The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback

Totally changed how I approach building solutions and testing ideas. I learn how to do customer dev interviews and go from learning to testing what problems I am hearing and so on. I’ve flipped through each of them 50+ times as I construct the next interview or so on. I particularly like the Product Playbooks method to evaluate different problems and the value individuals put on them. They have been helpful as I’ve started to learn, and I’ve got a long way to go.

I wish I had these 10 years previous; it would have saved a lot of money.

thread

tmshNov 2021

I've been going through this transition for the past year or so. And it started out with it being more stressful (e.g., on COVID walks with my wife noted more days than not I'd be complaining and thinking it best to go back to being an IC).

But the more I've done it, the more I really enjoy it. It's sort of like having kids (I imagine). I.e., it's sort of insane and counterproductive, but ultimately very satisfying. And as someone else mentioned it's a two-way door (if your engineering interests are long-term).

I've read probably 20-30 engineering management books in the past year and started our 'manager learning hub' wiki at work. There's a few good books I'll link to below.

But yeah you will likely have a new peer group of other managers. So you now have your team and your manager peer group. So if you find yourself not learning as much as an IC before (I'd been one more or less for 16 years before starting to transition), it can be a fun new area to learn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTik4nt1knY

https://github.com/keyvanakbary/learning-notes (but read the books for real)

Will Larson's An Elegant Puzzle - Systems of Engineering Management is a nice more modern book. I would balance it with The Empathy Edge by Maria Ross.

A lot of management theory begins with Peter Drucker (and then Andy Grove and then John Doerr etc. - that OKR lifestyle approach - which has various and basically comes down to focusing on input metrics).

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-stack-overflow/writ...

mentions Smart & Gets Things Done (nice final chapter on different types of team challenges). Peopleware though aging has a lot of interesting examples. Leaders Eat Last was recommended to me by another manager. And in general that is basically the sentiment (i.e., put others first, but use metrics).

Like having kids, it's an opportunity to reflect on what you would've wanted differently in all the previous managers you have (and a realization that it's tougher than it looks). While managing engineers is different from leadership, it puts leadership on display perhaps more. Your blast radius is bigger. Most companies won't necessarily encourage it right away for ICs because it has a greater negative effect when it doesn't work.

And yeah to reiterate what others have said - it's a skill (i.e., a set of areas to make mistakes in) that takes time to develop/learn. And I'd say a lot of your growth comes down to who your manager will be in the process. If you have a good manager who mentors (in whichever style), you can learn a whole lot and improve your growth areas fairly quickly.

Also if you have more of an e2e and slight business focus, it can be interesting. It probably works best for those who are more generalist/breadth-first search types (though if good at communicating and delegating it's not strictly necessary); since there is a lot of "herding" for lack of a better word; and less time to depth-first dive into areas.

But yeah it gets better with time (or it should - and if it doesn't like I say it should be a two-way door). At first you might be like - what are all these 1:1s and why am I running around so much? And then with time, you'll start looking forward to all your 1:1s. And learning from others re: strategy (in general you'll participate with one level up meetings more; so if you're L6 at a company, you'll start seeing more what L7s see and be asked for input on, if you're responsible for a team). And starting to exhibit the best parts that you've learned before.