Career Development Reading List
Fundamentals
The manager’s path: a guide for tech leaders navigating growth and change. Camille Fournier. 2017. - clear, concise descriptions of roles in tech and expectations at each career stage
Resilient management. Lara Hogan. 2019. - actionable advice and frameworks for maintaining resilience, cohension, trust, and compassion through all stages of a team’s growth, plus more great posts on the author’s blog
Staff engineer: leadership beyond the management track. Will Larson. 2021. - one of the only and most complete resources on how to get to and operate at the staff level, plus more great posts on the author’s blog
Effective Communication
Crucial conversations: tools for talking when stakes are high. Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. 2002. - the most important, pivotal conversations are the ones humans are ironically the worst at; here are some ways to be good at them
The difficulty anchor. Mekka Okereke. 2018. - women and minorities in STEM are systematically evaluated unfairly, both formally (i.e. performance review) and informally (i.e. your co-workers opinions of your work); here’s an effective way to combat that
Organizational Structure
How f*cked up is your management?: an uncomfortable conversation about modern leadership. Johnathan Nightingale and Melissa Nightingale. 2017. - series of short essays about common flaws in companies, in particular Silicon Valley startups
The tyranny of structurelessness. Jo Freeman. 2021. - not about tech but extremely applicable to tech and startups in particular; there is never no structure, the informal structures that inevitably form can be even more harmful and insidious, we should strive to build positive structure