We recommend: Oren Ellenbogen — 'Leading Snowflakes'

Practical tips to help improve your engineering manager skills

We recently read Oren Ellenbogen’s 'Leading Snowflakes' and loved it!

Our Thoughts

I remember the day where I knew that I wanted to become an engineering manager, but I had no idea where to start. There were very little resources out there that I was able to find. And the ones that I did manage to find were so theoretical and abstract that I didn’t know what to do with it.

In his book, Oren Ellenbogen aims to help those folks who are going through the same experiences as I have by providing them with practical ideas, which upon reading, you immediately can put into practice.

I especially enjoyed the “Captain’s Log” where Oren recommends that we take note of the dilemmas we encounter on a day to day basis. Not always might we know immediately how to react in such situations, but in order to do better next time, we could take a note of what happened, so that we can replay it against another manager with more experience then ourselves. This is a brilliant idea!

Call to Action

What is that “one awkward moment” you had in your career, which you wish you would want to be able to replay? Who were involved? What did you say?

Now that you’ve thought about it, go replay the scenario to your own manager to see how they would have reacted if they were you.