Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager by Michael Lopp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Read this on the recommendation of Kevin Sonney from the Productivity Alchemy podcast.
Very solid approach to laying out management skills and tricks for people who are from technical/engineering backgrounds. I don’t know that I actually found it that biting or humorous, but the simple explanations of why managers and processes are :necessary: for organizations larger than 20 people and the approaches to managing the information that managers have to be a conduit for (in multiple directions) was certainly useful.
If you’re a structural thinker/problem solver who is new to management, this might be very useful. If you’re already pretty strong in the people skills area, it may be less useful directly, but indirectly provides an insight to how your more structural/problem solving folks may view you and your work.
Also, it provided some descriptive frameworks for management/meeting techniques that I’ve actually seen my (quite effective) boss use, both in one-on-one and group meetings. I’m stealing some of them.
Confessions of a Curator, Editor, Geek 