Books and Resources That Shaped My Approach
A curated list of books and resources that inform how I think about engineering leadership, org design, and the Head of Engineering role.
These books and resources have shaped how I think about engineering leadership, org design, and the Head of Engineering role. I recommend them to anyone growing into or already in that space.
Books
The Manager's Path — Camille Fournier. Expectations and challenges of engineering management; chapter 9 on writing career ladders is especially useful. Fits directly with the Career Ladders framework on this site. O'Reilly.
Staff Engineer — Will Larson. What it means to operate at Staff+ level: influence without direct reports, scope, and "what only you can do." Useful for calibrating senior IC expectations and for leaders who want to support staff engineers well.
An Elegant Puzzle — Will Larson. Teams, org design, and scaling. Systems of teams, when to add managers, and how to avoid coordination collapse. Complements Scaling engineering orgs.
Accelerate — Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, Gene Kim. The research behind DORA metrics and high-performing technology organizations. Evidence-based; good grounding for Engineering metrics and for making the case for investment in delivery and reliability.
The Phoenix Project / The Unicorn Project — Gene Kim et al. DevOps, flow, and culture through narrative. Helpful for explaining why delivery and operations matter to non-technical stakeholders and for motivating platform and flow improvements.
Radical Candor — Kim Scott. Feedback, care, and the balance between challenging directly and caring personally. Applies to 1:1s, performance conversations, and team culture. Fits the People axis of the Career Ladders.
How to Be Good at Performance Appraisals — Dick Grote. Defining responsibilities and evaluating performance in a structured way. Referenced in Career Ladders for writing and using level expectations. HBR.
Articles and talks
Optional: add a short subsection here with 2–3 external links to classic blog posts or talks (e.g. on org design, technical strategy, or leadership). Keep the list curated and stable so the page doesn’t become a link dump.