Engineering Management Reading

Bird's eye view

"Engineering management" is not a skill. Any book about management is by default a collection of essays about a wide variety of topics. They are best for getting a bird's eye view of the work. I prefer books about specific management skill sets.

• Sarah Drasner, Engineering Management for the Rest of Us
• Will Larson, An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management
• Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
• Various, HBR's 10 Must Reads for New Managers

Frequent recommendations

• Gary Keller, The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results
• Micheal Bungay Stanier, The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
• Various, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High
• Abby Covert, How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody (available free online)
• Charles van Doren & Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
• Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking
• Oliver Burkeman, Meditation for Mortals
• Thomas H. Davenport & Jinho Kim, Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics
• Vaughn Tan, The Uncertainty Mindset: Innovation Insights from the Frontiers of Food

Finished

• Peter Block, Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used
• Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
• Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance
• Patrick M. Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable
• John Gall, The Systems Bible (FKA Systemantics)
• Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
• Donella H. Meadows, Diana Wright, Thinking in Systems
• Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
• Chet Richards, Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business
• Cal Newport, So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
• Chris Voss & Tahl Raz, Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
• Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
• Jeff Lawson, Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century
• Étienne Garbugli, Solving Product: Reveal Gaps, Ignite Growth, and Accelerate Any Tech Product with Customer Research
• Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters
• Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
• Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships
• David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
• Ryan Singer, Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters (available free online)

Tangential but useful

• Joe Coulombe, Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys
• Kathy Sierra, Badass: Making Users Awesome
• Greg Mckeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
• Alan Weiss, Value-Based Fees: How to Charge What You're Worth and Get What You Charge

Abandoned

• Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
• Steve Magness, Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness
• Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right
• Clayton M. Christensen, Karen Dillion, Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice
• Seth Godin, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

Antilibrary (Want to Read)

• Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace
• Stephen Bungay, The Art of Action: How Leaders Close the Gaps between Plans, Actions and Results
• Scott Berkun, Bryan Zug, Why Design is Hard
• Marty Cagan, Inspired: How to Create Tech Products that People Love
• Eric Nehrlich, You Have A Choice: Beyond Hard Work To Meaningful Impact
• Gary A. Klein, Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions
• Abby Covert, Stuck? Diagrams Help
• Avinash K. Dixit, Barry J. Nalebuff, Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life
• Peter Drucker, The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker's Essential Writings on Management
• Andrew S. Grove, High Output Management
• Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done
• Michele Hansen, Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers
• Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford, The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
• Jim Vandehei, Mike Allen, Roy Schwartz, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less
• Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer, No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
• Hamilton Helmer, 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy
• Liz Wiseman, Impact Players: How to Take the Lead, Play Bigger, and Multiply Your Impact
• Liz Wiseman, Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
• Joshua Seiden, Outcomes Over Output: Why customer behavior is the key metric for business success

Articles & Online Resources

• William Oncken, Jr. and Donald L. Wass, Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?
• Etienne de Bruin, The CTO’s Hidden Notebook
• Micheal Lopp, The Update, The Vent, and The Disaster
• Daniele Procida, Diátaxis: A systematic approach to technical documentation authoring.