Management has three basic tasks to perform:

Establish the requirements that employees are to meet
Supply the wherewithal that the employees need in order to meet those requirements
Spend all its time encouraging and helping the employees to meet those requirements

- Philip Crosby

  * Wisdom from AntiPatterns
  * Wisdom from The Coaching Habit
  * Wisdom from Code Complete?
  * Wisdom from Design Patterns?
  * Wisdom from High Output Management
  * Wisdom from The Innovator's Dilemma
  * Wisdom from First, Break All the Rules
  * Wisdom from The Manager's Path?
  * Wisdom from The Mythical Man-Month
  * Wisdom from The Open Organization?
  * Wisdom from Peopleware
  * Wisdom from The Pragmatic Programmer?
  * Wisdom from Programming Pearls?
  * Wisdom from Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars
  * Wisdom from Slack?
  * Wisdom from The Talent Advantage
  * Wisdom from Topgrading
  * Wisdom from Why Good People Can't Get Jobs

Links/Essays

90-day Plan

https://firstround.com/review/this-90-day-plan-turns-engineers-into-remarkable-managers/

“A good manager is like a good interviewer,” says Loftesness. “The best interviewers do what they want the interviewee to do. They’ll share a personal moment, a funny story and they’ll get that back. They don't dominate airtime, obviously, but they give a little bit and they get a lot back typically. I think it's very similar with the manager. Asking questions and showing that you actually care creates a lot of space to share feelings and engender trust.”

Don't delay reviews - performance reviews, implementation reviews, design reviews, project reviews, candidate reviews. There is critical information or action items hidden inside that will factor into the project's success, for the worst if left unhandled.

Others:

Managing happens in all 3 directions, not just downstream.
Create frequent opportunities for communication.
Have continual career path discussions.
Find management mentors.
Cancel meetings and block off time.
Build and use an event loop (i.e. management activity checklist)
Learn what is unique about each engineer and plan to capitalize on it
Write out clear expectations/processes for the team with certain duties and tasks (like code reviews)
Technical and management ladders should be equivalent
Don't make any big deal about transitions into management (announcements, promotions, congratulations are stupid ideas)

Principles of Success - Building a Company of Workers That Will Run Through Walls for You

Goal: increase employee satisfaction/loyalty/productivity, decrease turnover, decrease salary expenses, maximize business growth

Minimize transitional difficulty between work and home

Make coming in to work as easy as possible. Make doing work at any point in the day or night as easy as possible. Take advantage of efficiencies.

How?

Locate office near affordable residential areas, away from congested business zones, to reduce commute times
Casual dress code removes the need to change outfits going between work and life
Provide an onsite gym with locker and shower to make mid-day workouts possible with minimal time loss
Provide an optional onsite food service of some kind, including evening offerings
Provide a mechanism for working remotely (say 20% of the time) to reduce commute time losses, sick day losses, vacation time losses

Make the office a desirable place

Create a second home for workers, a place they enjoy spending time, a place of comfort.

How?

Offer regular educational and cross-training opportunities
Make the office atmosphere quiet, casual, non-threatening (purge contentious folks)
Put in comfortable desks and chairs, plenty of white boards and conference rooms for thought sessions
Make the decor and style more like a home, with accompanying furniture such as couches

Personalize compensation and the work environment

One-size-fits-all policies make no sense for a diverse work force.

How?

Let workers choose between private office, cubicles, or open seating
Make sure your engineers are deciding their own office layout, and not non-engineers doing it for them
Make time off adjustable on a yearly basis - sometimes one needs more income, sometimes more vacation
Put equity, time off, and salary all up for negotiation to craft the right package for each candidate (e.g. range of 2-8 weeks off annually)

Allow for personalized roles and creative freedom

Let employees organically uncover new markets and business opportunities. Encourage ingenuity and finding patent-able ideas. Show a willingness to enter new fields. Open the door to willing contributors of all kinds.

How?

Make part-time roles available for those interested
Allow free flowing R&D time to each engineer for pet projects (maybe 10-20%)
Have continual evaluations with workers finding new types of tasks they'd like to explore
Create cross-domain training opportunities
Find ways to encourage knowledge pollination between teams