The Art of Leadership

What Hacker News says

1. mindcrashJul 2024
   The Managers Path is mentioned earlier.

   Can also recommend:

   - The Art of Leadership by Michael Lopp (aka Rands of Rands in Repose fame)

   Which tackles situations he encountered (and are all too familiar) while managing in various roles at Apple, Netscape and Slack.

   - The Engineering Leader by Cate Hudson

   What I think is absolutely great about this book is that it isn't just about how to deal with the people you are responsible for but also how to deal with _yourself_

   - The Engineering Executive's Primer By Will Larson

   This one is meant more for "Head of Engineering" types, but still contains tons of handy information to turn yourself into a effective leader.

   And last but not least:

   - Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager by James Stanier

   Subtitle of this book says it all. Highly recommended!

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2. CountVonGuetzliDec 2023
   After doing the first-time CTO thing three years ago in an established company with over 100 engineers, I think these two are the minimum required reading:

   An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Eng Management (https://lethain.com/elegant-puzzle)

   and

   The Art of Leadership, small things done well (https://www.amazon.com/Art-Leadership-Small-Things-Done/dp/1...)

   There are a lot more that were helpful to me, but those two encompass most of the important concepts and skills already in a usefully synthesized way, at least for me.

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3. lansteinMar 2023
   Advice to Founders and CEOs

   - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary)

   Finance

   - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight)

   Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting)

   - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham)

   Legal

   - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy)

   Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit)

   - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore) - Only the Paranoid Survive (Andy Grove) - Blitzscaling (Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh) - The Innovator's Dilemma (Clayton Christensen) - Good to Great (Jim Collins) - Playing to Win (A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin) - Tape Sucks (Frank Slootman) - Strategy vol. 1&2 (Harvard Business Review)

   Pricing

   - Monetizing Innovation (Georg Tacke and Madhavan Ramanujan) - Confessions of the Pricing Man (Hermann Simon)

   Startup Phase

   - The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) - The Four Steps to the Epiphany (Steve Blank) - Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

   Management/Leadership

   - The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) - Managing Humans (Michael Lopp) - The Art of Leadership (Michael Lopp) - High Output Management (Andy Grove) - Managing Oneself (Peter Drucker) - Essentials: Management (First Round Capital) - The Making of a Manager (Julie Zhuo) - The Powell Principles (Oren Harari) - Radical Candor (Kim Scott) - Leading Matters (John L. Hennessy) (fantastic book list in the coda) - Turn the Ship Around (L. David Marquet) (this is THE book on delegation) - Principles (Ray Dalio)

   COO/Succession Planning

   - Riding Shotgun (Nathan Bennett and Stephen A. Miles)

   People Performance/HR/Culture

   - Powerful (Patty McCord) - No Rules Rules (Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer) - Netflix culture deck - The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (Patrick Lencioni) - Work Rules! (Laszlo Bock) - It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work (DHH and Jason Fried) - The Culture Map (Erin Meyer) - The Talent War (Mike Sarraille and George Randle) - Great People Decisions (Claudio Fernández-Aráoz) - The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (Ozzie Osman) - Punished by Rewards (Alfie Kohn)

   Purpose, Passion, and Self

   - Start with Why (Simon Sinek) - What You Do is Who You Are (Ben Horowitz) - Drive (Daniel Pink) - Mindset (Carol Dweck) - Grit (Angela Duckworth) - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (Eric Jorgenson)

   Fundraising/VC

   - Secrets of Sand Hill Road (Scott Kupor) - Venture Deals (Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson) - Raising Venture Capital (Andy Sparks) - The Business of Venture Capital (Mahendra Ramsinghani) - Done Deals (Udayan Gupta) - The Power Law (Sebastian Mallaby) - VC (Tom Nicholas)

   Board

   - Boardroom Excellence (Paul Brountas) - Startups Boards (Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani)

   M&A

   - Winning (Jack Welch) - M&A chapter - Connecting the Dots (John Chambers) - M&A chapter

   Marketing

   - Data-Driven Marketing (Mark Jeffery) - Positioning (Al Ries and Jack Trout) - Scientific Advertising (Claude Hopkins) - Traction (Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares) - Behind the Cloud (Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler) - Ogilvy on Advertising (David Ogilvy) - Marketing High Technology (William Davidow)

   Psychology

   - Influence (Robert Cialdini)

   Negotiation

   First, read Influence (under Psychology), then, in order

   - Thinking in Bets (Annie Duke) - Getting to Yes (Roger Fisher and William Ury) - Never Split the Difference (Chris Voss) - The Bald Truth (David Falk)

   Self

   - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey)

   Design and UX

   - Creative Confidence (Tom Kelley and David Kelley)

   AI (Machine Learning, Deep Learning/Neural Networks)

   - Andrew Ng's AI for Everyone course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/ai-for-everyone](https://www....

   Growth (Data Science, etc.)

   - Hacking Growth (Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown)

   Graph Theory

   Product

   - Inspired (Marty Cagan) - Joel on Software (Joel Spolsky)

   Customer Loyalty/Customer Success

   - Delivering Happiness (Tony Hsieh) - Setting the Table (Danny Meyer)

   Finding a Startup Job

   - Entering StartupLand (Jeffrey Bussgang)

   CIO as ICP

   - The CIO Paradox (Martha Heller) - Be the Business (Martha Heller)

   Stories

   - Made in America (Sam Walton) - Shoe Dog (Phil Knight) - The Everything Store (Brad Stone) - Built from Scratch (Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank) - Hard Drive (James Wallace) - Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson) - Elon Musk (Ashlee Vance) - Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull) - The Ride of a Lifetime (Bob Iger) - Valley of Genius (Adam Fisher) - The Idea Factory (Jon Gertner) - Dealers of Lightning (Michael Hertzik) - Idea Man (Paul Allen) - Pour Your Heart Into It (Howard Schultz)

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4. mystickphoenixDec 2022
   A few things come to mind along with what's already been mentioned:

   Assorted Non-Book Readings:

   - https://randsinrepose.com/dont-skip-this/

   - http://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

   - https://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2019/12/day-21-being-kind-to-...

   - https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-t...

   - https://grugbrain.dev/

   - https://changelog.com/posts/rich-hickeys-greatest-hits

   - https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love/blob/master...

   - http://www.cs.unc.edu/techreports/86-020.pdf

   Books:

   - The Phoenix Project: Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, George Spafford

   - Deep Work: Cal Newport

   - The Art of Leadership: Michael Lopp (Rands)

   - Extreme Ownership: Jocko Willink and Leif Babin (once you get through the ho-rah stuff it's a fantastic read)

   - Time Management for System Administrators: O'Reilly (fantastic for interrupt driven work)

   - Elements of Clojure: Zachary Tellman (not just for Clojure devs)

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