40+ Short Resources For Engineering Managers: Learn On The Go

Engineering managers are responsible for the success of their teams. They are also in charge of ensuring that projects are done on time, to budget, and with quality. Needless to say, being an engineering manager is a challenging job.

This article contains 40 short resources for engineering managers. You can read/listen/watch them while you’re waiting in line at the grocery store or commuting. These resources will teach you everything from building a strong team to getting inspiration when you need it most.

This article is a living article (we will continually edit and update it), and it highlights:

Interesting articles
Great Podcasts episodes
Interesting videos
Newsletters

Interesting articles

4 Things Engineering Managers of Effective Teams Do – This article covers the most significant challenges engineering managers face and what good engineering managers do to maintain high output, effective teams.

Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss – This article summarizes Kim Scott’s talk at a CEO Summit, where she shared a simple tool—Radical Candor for ensuring that your team gets the right kind of feedback.

How to Improve, Not Kill the Annual Performance Review – This is an article on how you can bring Radical Candor to your life and highlights tips on how to get better at giving performance reviews.

Engineering Growth Framework – A collection of articles written on how to think about growth for engineers on your team.

Feedback In Times of Crisis – In this article, Karen Casella, a Director of Engineering at Netflix, shares some great insights into giving feedback during times of a crisis.

Forget Technical Debt — How to Build Technical Wealth – This is an interesting article with some great ideas on avoiding technical debt in your team’s work.

101 Questions to Ask in One-on-Ones – This is an excellent list of questions to ask during one-on-one meetings with your direct reports.

Mistakes I’ve Made as an Engineering Manager – In this article, Sarah Drasner shares her mistakes as an engineering manager and how engineering managers can avoid them.

How to Build a Strong Engineering Culture That Empowers Engineers – this article gives four tips on building a strong engineering culture.

Better Engineering Management: Top Three Things Product Managers Dislike About Engineering Managers – This article discusses how engineering managers can improve their relationships with product managers.

The 3 Ways An Engineering Managers Role Differs Between a Startup and a Corporate – This article covers the three ways the engineering management role differs in a startup and an established corporation.

Guiding Critical Projects Without Micromanaging – Written by Camille Fournier, this article shares how to manage developers when building critical projects.

Medium’s Engineering Interview Process – This article shares insights into Medium’s engineering interview process.

Managing Your Team’s Capacity: An Engineering Manager’s Guide to Saying No – Saying no isn’t easy. This guide will show you how to say no to external requests from your peers and senior management in managing your team’s capacity.

Should Engineering Managers Write Code? Wrong question – This article by Coursera Engineering answers the popular question “Should engineering managers write code?”.

How Can Managers Create a Culture for Women to Thrive? – This article shares tips on being more inclusive towards women in your engineering team.

Engineering Managers: Managing Down, Managing Up and Across – an interesting guide for engineering managers in managing down, up, and across an organization.

AMA with Andy Hunt co-author of Pragmatic Programmer – This article shares Andy Hunt’s answers to Agile development practices and concepts in an AMA hosted by the Zumvie Slack Community for Engineering Managers.

Great podcast episodes

Team Building: No All-Star Teams – This podcast episode shares why “All-Star Teams.” are wrong and guides how to avoid building one.

Applying a Systems Thinking Lens to Management – In this podcast episode, Smruti Patel (Head of Engineering, LEAP & Data Platform at Stripe) talks about the importance of how information flows within an organization and building trust through clarity and vulnerability.

Managing in a Remote World – In this podcast episode, Zapier’s VP of Engineering, Doug Gaff, talks about managing an engineering team remotely.

Embracing Transparency, Iteration, and Asynchronous Workflows in a Remote World – In this podcast episode, Darren Murph, Head of Remote at Gitlab, shares how remote work empowers people at work and also in their everyday lives.

Hiring the Best People – In this podcast episode, Patty McCord, former Chief Talent Officer at Netflix, talks about hiring and retaining top talent.

How to Build Successful Engineering Teams – In this podcast episode, Dizzy Smith, VP Engineering of Packet, shares insights about culture building, communication structures, and diverse leadership in distributed teams from his 15+ year career in engineering.

Growing Engineers – In this podcast episode, Tara Ellis, Engineering Manager at Netflix, shares how engineering managers can invest in the growth of engineers on their teams.

The Elegant System of Management – In this podcast episode Joel Hooks, from Egghead.io, sits down with Will Larson, CTO of Calm, to discuss systems for engineering management.

Performance Review: Build Your Process and Master Feedback Delivery- Leadership coach and former engineering leader Lara Hogan discuss building a performance review process in this podcast episode.

Knowledge Sharing: A Sneak Peek into Facebook’s Engineering Teams – In this podcast episode, former Engineering Manager at Facebook, Balázs Balázs, shares strategies on knowledge sharing he’s used over the years with his engineering teams.

There are a lot more great podcast episodes by engineering leaders we could list here. To listen to more great podcast episodes, check out the top 11 podcasts for engineering managers in 2021.

Interesting videos

Q&A Panel with Engineering Managers at Silicon Valley Code Camp 2019 – A value-packed Q&A with Ron Lichty — Co-Author of Managing the Unmanageable, Tammy Baker — former VP of Software at Molekule, Jerry Krikheli — Senior Director of Engineering at Facebook, Eric Braun — Director of Manufacturing Systems and Emotional Intelligence Coach, Vidal Graupera —Engineering at LinkedIn and Marcus Blankenship — Senior software engineering Manager at Heroku in San Fransisco Hosted by Paypal.

Ryan Burgess Engineering Management Videos – In this youtube playlist of short video clips, Ryan Burgess, Senior Software Engineering Manager at Netflix, bottom-up, answers various engineering management questions.

Camille Fournier on Building and Motivating Engineering Teams – In this 16-minute keynote speech Camille Fournier, the author of “The Manager’s Path,” shares how engineering managers can build and motivate teams.

Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace – In this short TEDx talk, Harvard organizational behavioral scientist Amy Edmondson shares how leaders can create a psychologically safe workplace for their direct reports. We discussed this in-depth in our blog post—Psychological Safety in Your Engineering Team.

Placing collaboration at the heart of technical projects – A video series on creating visibility for engineers and their managers and building cohesive and effective teams.

Camille Fournier on How Building a High-Performance Team is Everyone’s Job – In this talk, Camille Fournier shares how a team becoming great comes from the participation of everyone on the team to push the team there.

On being wrong – This TEDx talk by Kathryn Schulz highlights that it’s ok to be wrong sometimes, and leaders should embrace their fallibility.

Running Remote Teams – A 3 episode video series on running remote teams.

Newsletters

Subscribe to these newsletters to receive valuable content from engineering leaders weekly in your inbox:

Software Lead Weekly – With over 28,250 readers. Carefully curated by Oren Ellenbogen, VP Engineering at Forter and author of “Leading Snowflakes,” this weekly newsletter shares content on people, culture, and leadership in tech.
Marcus Blankenship’s Tech Leadership Newsletter – Delivered a few times a week, this newsletter shares ideas, advice, and tools to become a better technical leader.

CTO Insights by Tosho Trajanov – Curated by Tosho Trajanov, former CTO at Adeva, shares weekly readings on software engineering & tech leadership.

Fellow TLDR newsletter – Curated by the Fellow.app – creators of the Supermanager Podcast, this newsletter shares tips, interviews, and best practices to become a better leader.

Tech Manager Weekly – Curated by the CTO Craft Community, this weekly newsletter shares interesting articles about managing tech teams.
Level-up Engineering Management Newsletter – A biweekly newsletter with the latest episodes of the Level-up Engineering podcast covering management, culture, and leadership topics.