Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

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If you're keen to understand how to elevate your team, prioritise your work, and value your own change in throughput, this is the book for you. Her practical, experience-based approach is a welcome departure from the often theoretical focus of similar texts. As someone who has seen many an engineer struggle with the transition to management, I found Drasner’s book to be a refreshing, candid look at the realities of the role. 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. Understand Your Team’s Technical Expertise: As a manager, it’s essential to have a solid grasp of your team’s technical skills and abilities.

Prioritize and Manage Time Effectively: Drasner suggests that effective time management is a crucial skill for engineering managers. Very readable and thoughtful guide for new team leads and managers with references for further reading. However reading it with some experience, there is nothing that goes beyond obvious things or high-level summaries of concepts from other books. Where the book could be better is in the presentation of diverse management styles and the examination of their effectiveness in varying organizational cultures.Sarah Drasner’s “Engineering Management for the Rest of Us” is a practical and easy-to-read guide to the world of managing engineers. This includes recognizing their struggles, supporting them through challenges, and celebrating their successes. The book goes from the macro to the micro- with topics ranging everywhere from “feedback” to “scoping down PRs”.

The text artfully balances anecdotal evidence, factual data, and actionable steps, weaving a narrative that is as engaging as it is informative. The strength of the book lies in its practicality; Drasner does not shy away from addressing common issues encountered in the field of engineering management. 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. Build Relationships with Stakeholders: Building strong relationships with stakeholders is a significant aspect of an engineering manager’s role.Engineering Management for the Rest of Us is the book I wish every one of my past managers had read. I see this book becoming a reference book for many details, especially regarding organising my work life and improving my relations with colleagues.

She’s an award-winning speaker, author of SVG Animations from O’Reilly, Vue core team emeritus, and co-organizer of ConcatenateConf. Maybe my expectations from Sarah were to high but I felt some topics were discussed too lightly, almost as stating common sense for people that have a few year of experience working in teams. 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.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. However, there are a few topics that seem to be less connected to the enginineering manager's job and more to the individual contributors.