HN Explorer

Ask HN: Books on engineering management, company growth, etc.?

5 points by rubicon33 ↗ HN
Anyone have any good reads centered on engineering management ideally at companies in small to mid level? I'm not looking for a management style per se, I just want to read about personal accounts from people in the field.

Seems like there must be some good memoirs out there that aren't just self-help management books.

9 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 26.6 ms ] thread
dingosity
Well... Peopleware by DeMarco and (of course) Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Also... just noticed that Richard Hamming's autobio got published a few years back (and has a forward by Bret Victor!) Amazon has a "Look Inside" feature so you can check out the first couple of chapters and see if it's what you're looking for. I just really love Bret Victor's presentations and Hamming is a bit of a legend.

And I just went downstairs to my library and found "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier. I read the first several chapters and found them reasonable. And I just rememebered I wanted to read the last couple chapters. The ones in the middle are less to do with my situation, but I'll probably read them eventually. Fournier includes a chapter on "what you should expect from a manager," which I thought was a good twist. I found it worthwhile.

rubicon33
These are some great suggestions, now I feel spoiled by choice! If I told you I was most interested in anecdotes and hard-learned lessons from leaders in the space, which would you say most applies?

Thanks!

retrocryptid
Ed Yourdon did a book called "Death March" which might be apropos, though more of a cautionary tale of what NOT to do.
rubicon33
Sounds interesting, I'll check it out. Thank you!
YuriNiyazov
I really liked “high output management”
rubicon33
That looks really in line with what I was interested in except I was hoping for something a bit more recent. A lot has changed since the 80s (I think?). Thanks!
YuriNiyazov
I found it very applicable at a 2010’s Silicon Valley startup. A lot more things stayed the same than changed, so this is still a deeply applicable book.
creer
Someone recommended The Ultimate Entrepreneur: The Story of Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation, 1988, by Glenn Rifkin and George Harrar - as a business management story telling comparable to Soul of a new machine. It's on my list. (Offhand, btw, I would expected it tainted by the west coast vs east coast business style difference.)

Oh, and in The Soul of A New Machine itself, the "responsible adult" is the engineering manager.

And for far more recent and startup-y stuff, there is Founders at work and European Founders at Work