Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

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It's imperative that we as managers learn as much as we can and work on ourselves, so that our teams may enjoy a healthy working life and strong relationships. Build Relationships with Stakeholders: Building strong relationships with stakeholders is a significant aspect of an engineering manager’s role. Working relationships are nuanced, communication is linked with individual values, motivations, power dynamics, and skills. Drawing on her extensive experience, Drasner provides practical advice for those making this transition.

I would strongly recommend this book not just for engineering managemers but for Individual contributors as well. So many challenges and learnings that helped me grow a tonne in that seemingly short period of time. It's not just important, it's crucial that we iterate on our own skills as managers so that we can properly support everyone around us: individuals, peers, leadership, and the business.Even as someone who’s been in leadership roles for a while, I found valuable insights and reminders. She’s an award-winning speaker, author of SVG Animations from O’Reilly, Vue core team emeritus, and co-organizer of ConcatenateConf. Engineering for the Management for the Rest of Us is a book that will gear you up for a journey into engineering management (or honestly kind of management, frankly) by highlighting a lot of common technical aspects of the career.

I had the chance to have a leader position and to be honest, looking back at that time, I totally ruined it. This book won’t answer all the questions you might have as an engineering manager, but it covers a good deal of them and does an excellent job at that. Drasner recommends promoting a culture of teamwork, where each team member feels valued and plays a critical role in the project’s success. A lot of Engineering Managers and leaders studied for years and years to become the best Engineer they possibly could be.I have a professional respect for the author, but the book is really shallow and quite straightforward.

While it might benefit from a deeper exploration of diverse management styles, the practical insights it offers are invaluable for those new to the field. In conclusion, Drasner’s book offers a pragmatic guide to the often-overlooked intricacies of engineering management. I'm sharing what I've learned- not so that you follow my concepts exactly, but rather so that you can be thoughtful about your own leadership and needs. While the book may be helpful for non-technical managers new to managing engineering teams, it is unlikely to provide any new insights or strategies for those already experienced in the field.This isn't a tactical guide like many others, which does make it an interesting addition to a library. It gives the impression that Sarah tried to fit in all the significant ideas she has about engineering management, with coherence being a bit less critical.

I've been in my software engineering manager role for a couple of years only, yet it feels like it's been much, much longer than that. I later had the best manager I ever had and that was life changing for me, I started looking at this person as my friend, imagine the level of trust. To people who have the same aspirations in engineering management I'd encourage you to read this instead https://abseil.

Join us at the next edition of Bookmarked where Suzan Bond will be joined by Sarah Drasner, who has 10+ years of experience in engineering management at all levels, from Lead to VP, to discuss her newest book ‘Engineering Management for the Rest of Us’.