Engineering management

Slack

• #leadership-chat is a public channel (not specific to engineering) where anyone can discuss and share information of general interest to leadership at Sourcegraph.
• #manager-team is a private channel where managers across functions can solicit advice from and share info with fellow managers about topics that they do not feel comfortable discussing in #leadership-chat for any reason.

Book recommendations

Here are some books that multiple people on the team have read and recommend. If you haven’t read these, use your education budget and read them!

• Turn the Ship Around - An inspiring story of how Navy captain David Marquet turned the lowest performing submarine in the Navy into the top performing one with his bottom’s up leadership style.
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball - An entertaining self-account of Gordon MacKenzie’s experience fostering creativity on his team at Hallmark Cards. Buy the hard copy. There are lots of fun illustrations and short stories. It is a quick read and probably unlike any other book you have read.
• Radical Candor - How to be a great leader by caring personally and challenging directly.
• An Elegant Puzzle - A field manual on how to do engineering management. Reads like a well structured markdown file.
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team - A model of how to think about what makes a highly effective team paired with a fictional story that illustrates the model.
• The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias (facilitated small group discussions.