Book Recommendations By Engineering Leaders

I’m stunned to have met several people in my career who proudly say, “I have never read a [technical/leadership] book.” I certainly acknowledge information is readily available via blogs, newsletters (like Level Up 😉) , podcasts, videos and more. At the same time, books offer an amazing opportunity to delve deeply into topics. Participants in my tech lead training course receive a copy of a recommended reading list (all of which I’ve read) but I’m always interested in learning what others recommend and why. This lead to this question on twitter with many replies I felt needed to be captured as an article.

What's a good book you've read recently you'd recommend to engineering leaders and why?

— Pat Kua (@patkua) July 31, 2020

Below you’ll find an aggregate list of the books in alphabetical order, roughly categorised. You can see who recommended what book and why. (Disclaimer: Links are affiliate where I earn a small commission if you choose to buy them).

Product or Business Books

• Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Marty Cagan) – “Plenty of high-signal advice across a range of things that affect engineering leaders” via @pingles
• Smart Business: What Alibaba’s Success Reveals about the Future of Strategy (Ming Zeng) – Thought-provoking [business topics]: networks, APIs, bazaar via @pingles

Team and Organisation Culture

• Cloud Native Transformation (Pini Reznik et al) – “Good summary of patterns that accompany virtually any transformation” via @ikrnic
• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (Ed Catmull) – “An amazing read for several reasons, not least about the challenges of supporting and managing the expectations (and energy) of creative people in the entertainment industry (from the Pixar CEO)” via @caludio
• The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures (Erin Meyer) – “Essential reading to actually make the most of a diverse team by helping everyone better understand and adapt to each other” via @prla
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (Patrick M. Lencioni) – “Absence of trust and Fear of conflict are two common behaviours I’ve come across in (engineering) teams and this book provides guidance on how to overcome them. Easy read too!” via @nazchinaza and @bartekci
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Clayton M Christensen) – “Describes how teams can become wedded to favorite successful solutions and blinded to new solutions that may prove more fruitful going forward” via @mwattsun
• Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t (Simon Sinek) – “It’s a great book to understand the difference between being a boss and being a leader, and how to generate a good culture within any team and/or company” via @mmartinezgrasso
• Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity (Arnold Mindell) – “Using the power of conflict to learn and using it with diversity to get all the wisdom and knowledge from your team and building sustainable software” via @kenny_bass
• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (General Stanley McChrystal et al) – “Interesting seeing the benefit of cross-functional collaboration and similar strategies in contexts different from our industry” via @alediaferia
• The Goal: A Process of Continuous Improvement (Eliyahu M. Goldratt) – “Engineering leaders are often the one who initiates improvements. The most important thing is to identify the goal and then the constraint. Because any improvement not at the constraint is an illusion” via @dsdshcym
• The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data (Gene Kim) – “It is a fiction (book) but has a lot of #goodstuff that make you think about how to navigate and manage technical team members and projects” via @eisabai

Leadership

• The 3-Minute Rule: Say Less to Get More from Any Pitch or Presentation (Brant Pinvidic) – “Even if you aren’t selling, simplifying your pitch is key for communicating your ideas” via @ScaleUpCareer
• Applied Empathy: The New Language of Leadership (Michael Ventura) – “There is still a commitment to command & control that disables those practicing it (usually oblivious or worse) and those upon whom it is inflicted” via @gregtutunjian
• The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well (Michael Lopp) – “Really good advice, even though a little bit focused on start-ups, scale-ups.” via @fab3mat
• Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results (James Clear) – “To build the right behaviours” via @digitalsecure
• An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management (Will Larson) – “Lots of good content on practical engineering management tips” via @EdisonLimjh and @bartekci
• Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager: How to Be the Leader Your Development Team Needs (James Stainer) – “Really practical and good writing style too. I found that the three levers approach i.e ‘scope-time-resources’ nicely captured current best practices” via @priyasamuelsays
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High (Kerry Patterson et al) – “(where) communication (is) some crazy high % of the job” via @johncutlefish
• Dealing with Difficult People (Harvard Business Review) – “Sometimes it’s yourself being difficult and Not everything can be solved with aiming for constant harmony” via @pixelmord
• Ego is the Enemy: The Fight to Master Our Greatest Opponent (Ryan Holiday) – “Covers a lot of detrimental and toxic behaviours we often see in tech (passion vs purpose for example) and gives great examples of alternative ways of thinking” via @outragedracoon
• Good Strategy / Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters (Richard Rumelt) – “A good strategy is simple and includes ‘what’ we are doing and ‘how’ we are doing it. More common than not, strategies only cover the ‘what'” via @tafcisco and @StewGleadow
• Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (Edgar Schein) – “Loved how it very clearly defined different modes of humility and inquiry and helped me think more concisely about what mode I was employing in a given conversation. Excellent coaching tool” via @outragedracoon
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Robert Cialdini) – “Many engineering managers feel they just need to rely upon their technical chops but miss the fact that influence and empathy go a long way in getting things done” via @marksbirch
• Mindset – Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential (Carol Dweck) – “Nice to be reminded of how the fixed mindset shows up and tips of switching to a growth mindset in all areas of life” via @samlaing
• Resilient Management (Lara Hogan) – “It is easy and fast to read and provides (the) human side of things” via @rehadiscioglu
• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive (Charles Duhigg) – “Easy read on productivity” via @techplusplus
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Simon Sinek) – “Eye opening stuff. Leaders need to lead to a direction and this book nails it on this topic” via @faouriH and @renebianco
• Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each in Business (and in Life) (Thomas Erikson) – “Talks about a nice mental model to understand people’s desires, motivations, fears and behaviour” via @JFThatsABug
• TED Talks: The official TED guide to public speaking: Tips and tricks for giving unforgettable speeches and presentations (Chris Anderson) – “Even if you are not talking to hundreds some really good skills for talking to groups” via @johnkilmister
• The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change (Camille Fournier) – “It covers the progression from mentor to lead onto manager and executive. Brief and practical” via @bishr_tabbaa, @felipenipo and @lacraia
• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts (Annie Duke) – “For breaking down conventional and unhelpful mental models with bigger picture objective and critical thinking” via @backslashx1b
• Thinking in Systems (Donella Meadows) – “For breaking down conventional and unhelpful mental models with bigger picture objective and critical thinking” via @backslashx1b
• To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others (Dan Pink) – “Many engineering managers feel they just need to rely upon their technical chops but miss the fact that influence and empathy go a long way in getting things done” via @marksbirch
• Turn The Ship Around!: A True Story of Building Leaders by Breaking the Rules (David Marquet) – via @d_stepanovic and @thiagoghisi
• Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity (Jennifer Garvey Berger) – “Because we are all TRAPPED!” via @seclectech

Software Engineering

• Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations (Nicole Forsgren et al) – “All of the things we “know” to be true about software development, backed up by research and data” via @MaritvanDijk77
• Domain Modeling Made Functional: Tackle Software Complexity with Domain-Driven Design and F# (Scott Wlaschin) – “It’s a must read if you want to learn about functional programming, domain modeling, #DDDesign and #eventstorming” via @cpontet
• Software Engineering at Google: Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time (Titus Winters et al) – “It is entirely based on experiences from the trenches, not ideas or high-level principles. I like to read experiences from people that worked in successful companies” via @ionel_condor
• Technology Strategy Patterns: Architecture as Strategy (Eben Hewitt) – “A lot of interesting ideas, tips and advices :)” via @jobot0
• The Timeless Way of Building (Christopher Alexander) – “A salient reminder that software architecture mostly has its roots in architecture architecture” via @phyllisstein
• When Will It Be Done?: Lean-Agile Forecasting to Answer Your Customers’ Most Important Question (Daniel S Vacanti) – “If you love data and how to quantify improvements in terms of process” via @thiagoghisi
• Your Code As a Crime Scene: Use Forensic Techniques to Arrest Defects, Bottlenecks, and Bad Design in Your Programs (Adam Tornhill) – “If you love data and how to quantify improvements in terms of code” via @thiagoghisi

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