The Engineering Executive's Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership 1st Edition

As an engineering manager, you almost always have someone in your company to turn to for advice: a peer on another team, your manager, or even the head of engineering. But who do you turn to if you're the head of engineering? Engineering executives have a challenging learning curve, and many folks excitedly start their first executive role only to leave frustrated within the first 18 months.

In this book, author Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive roles: measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy."

This book explains how to:

• Get an engineering executive job, negotiate the contract, and onboard at your new company
• Run an engineering planning process and communicate effectively with the organization
• Direct the core meetings necessary to operate an effective engineering organization
• Hire, onboard, and run performance management
• Manage yourself and remain effective through many challenges
• Leave the job when the time is right

Will Larson was the chief technology officer at Calm and the author of An Elegant Puzzle and Staff Engineer. He's also a prolific writer on his blog, Irrational Exuberance.

About the author

Will Larson has been an engineering leader and software engineer at technology companies of many shapes and sizes including Calm, Stripe, and Uber. He grew up in North Carolina, studied Computer Science at Centre College in Kentucky, spent a year in Japan on the JET Program teaching English, and has been living in San Francisco since 2009. He writes frequently on his blog, Irrational Exuberance, at lethain.com.