I receive a number of requests through this blog, in my workshops and through Level Up, a curated newsletter for leaders in tech about connecting with other technical leaders. I see a lot of value in connecting with people in a similar, or slightly different situation for co-mentoring opportunities and to be exposed to different approaches or people. I also recognise that building and managing an inclusive community takes a lot of effort.
Instead of trying to build and manage another community I thought it would be useful to provide a curated list of engineering and technical leadership communities for others. Since this is a curated list, I’ve tried to include communities which:
- Focus on engineering leadership or technical leadership roles;
- Have measures in place to build an inclusive community such as having a Code of Conduct and a set of moderators or a process in place to enforce the Code of Conduct; and
- Are free to join (no membership fees)
List of Engineering Leadership Communities
Open the link below to view the joining instructions for each of these communities.
- CTO Craft Community (~2K members) – Although this community says it’s a CTO community there are many participants at all levels who take part in this. There is a free membership option which gives you the ability to join their slack group.
- Engineering Managers Slack Group (~3K members) – As taken from their landing page, “Our group is a safe, confidential space for engineering managers new to the role to chat and support each other.”
- LeadDev Slack (~7K members) – The LeadDev run many events (some paid, some free) for engineering leaders and while their slack group is relatively quiet, you often see bursts of activity around events and still a great place to connect with other engineering leaders.
- Lidr (~400 members) – A slack community run by a commercial leadership training company from Spain, with mostly European members.
- Rands Leadership Community (~15K members) – Started by well known technical leader and most recent author of “The Art of Leadership“, Michael Lopp.
Know of a community that should be added? Reach out and let me know via email or send me a message on twitter (@patkua).
Want to level up your technical leadership skills? Discover self-paced courses at the http://techlead.academy, join a guided online workshop, “Shortcut to Tech Leadership“, or subscribe to Level Up, a free curated newsletter for leaders in tech.
