Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

I appreciated Sarah's general outlook on management, and I'm sure there's plenty of good advice in the book, but it needed an editor. Or a different editor. Or a different writer and editor.

Too much of the first few chapters were like trying read a marketing blog or an HR email, not a book I wanted to study or curl up with. I gave up as soon as I got to to this sentence:

"A larger action item: try to change any processes or patch any misalignments that exist around the person that might alleviate the disconnects."

The layout is really nice, though.

It's quite unusual for me to read a book about management coming from the US culture and feel it so highly valuable.
Sarah Drasner looks like the kind of person I would definitely like to know and work with, and that's a lot to say XD

Parts 1, 2, and 4 are pure GOLD. You need to carefully read it. Take notes. Reflect on it. Absolutely amazing. Lots of wisdom, lots of humanity, and lots of practical experience.
I confess that some advices in part 3 (the one more into "engineering") sound horrible to me, quite misaligned with the way I understand product development based on software. But still, that doesn't eclipse the rest of the book (which is most of the content).

I would definitely recommend its reading to anyone currently working as Engineering Manager (or any other similar label) or willing to :-)