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Modern Books for Software Engineering Managers

Alexey Yuzhakov on January 22, 2025

The main goal of this article is to share the list of books that are worth reading and practical for the Software Engineering Manager role or simil...
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Joe Adair

This list is great thank you! I have been meaning to give audio books a try and this list is perfect, I normally prefer a hard copy. I put a play list together on Spotify for myself since a few of these are free audio books if you have a premium account. I'm not promoting anything here I just figured I would share the link in case anyone was interested. I haven't listened to any of them yet and some are just a summary.

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Ravin Rau

Nice compilation, Radical Candor was the first book I read when I transitioned into an engineering manager. It was an awesome book and helped me a lot in managing my team. Another book that I would recommend is High Output Management. It also helps a lot if you are managing a high-performing team.

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Pavel Vasilevich

Thanks for that post. James Stanier was in my wishlist for a long time, it looks like it is the time to read it finally.

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Davide de Paolis

very nice list. i read half of them and can absolutely recommend all ( Radical Candor being a must read - for every human being in any role ) and will check out those that are missing!

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Jason Brown

Thanks! Checking a few of these out immediately 🙂

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maxwell angello

Thanks for the great list

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The Grey Hat Guy

Good job

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Pierre-Henry Soria ✨

What a nice list! Very helpful. I will surely grab one or two from your list for my next vacation! 🏝️

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Dhanush

Never heard of these books.
Thanks for sharing.

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HB_the_Pencil

I'm an aspiring software developer (not a manager), but I'd like to have my own company someday. I'll probably check some of these books out if I can!

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Wilko van der Veen

The 'top' companies like Google and so on are not the best example for management styles in my opinion. It is all about being the fastest and the best and a lot of people are working long days with a lot of pressure. It all looks cool on the outside but then?

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Alexey Yuzhakov

Big companies often have multiple layers of management. Some things are irrelevant to smaller companies, but many other things fit quite well for 2-5-person teams. I don't think it's all about "the fastest". From my point of view, it's more about predictable results, striving for effective processes, etc. Several times I saw how small companies acquired by bigger ones struggle a lot during their growth because of just the inability to organize their work and being "predictable".

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Neha Pathak • Edited

Can't thank you enough for writing above post. Could you please help with some guidance or books/ resources for someone like me who would like to become engineering manager but don't have technical/ coding background. Thanks in advance.

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Alexey Yuzhakov

Well, you can try The Manager's Path. However, based on my observations, it will be very hard to get and hold such a position without prior engineering experience. You should not be the best engineer, but you should be pretty familiar with what's going on under the hood.

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Sheen Brisals

Interesting that you didn't pick goodreads.com/book/show/67825.Peop...

Perhaps the new gen is not aware of this classic.

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Alexey Yuzhakov

There is an explanation for that in the beginning of the article :) And even a reference in the title. Books like Mythical Man-Month, Slack, Peopleware, High Output Management, Drive are well known among engineering managers but they become more interesting from historical perspective rather than from practical point of view.

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Sheen Brisals

Ah I see. Ok, I understand your point. Thanks.

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Fredrick Boaz

Someone shared a playlist of them however it restricts region to be specific African region.

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