Ask HN: Book recommendations to improve XFN and engineering leadership as an IC

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41114065

2 1 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've been a software engineer for ~10 years currently at a FAANG.

Despite feeling technically competent, I would like to improve my ability to approach discovery, alignment, handling power structures/blockers, and general project management as a senior software engineer. The sort of skills that would eventually allow me to run my own company/team/org.

Maybe more broadly, any resources that help take one from a "senior" position to more of a "staff" or "principle" level.

Thanks all! <3

Jugurtha• 2 years ago

The sort of skills that would eventually allow me to run my own company/team/org.

These are different things. Running your own company more often than not implies you have started the company, and the skills you need to start and run a company are different in and of themselves, let alone the fact they're different from running a team in an established company/organization where you never think about how the power is still on.

In smaller companies and startups, the opportunity to learn is yours if you want it and the incentive to do so is survival. The company is small enough that you can, if you're so inclined, be involved in and learn about everything.

I answered a few questions on some topics you might find relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40482961

There are a few replies there about communication and alignment. More (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25398448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25288605)

A FAANG is so large that the acronym is just five letters, and procuring whiteboard markers to them could be the biggest contract another company ever had.

What you want is to expand the spectrum of your involvement or "ownership". One way of doing that is to learn to sell into the enterprise.

Imagine you are a startup and you want to sell your product to [insert your company]. How would you go about it? It teaches you many things: What problem does it solve? For whom is it a problem? Why is it a problem? Why now? Are they aware it is a problem? Have they tried solving that problem? What outcome and why wasn't it solved? What does winning look like (success criteria)? For whom? Who are the owners and stakeholders? Who has the budget? Who is the competition [it could be internal competition]? Will this make or break someone's career if it's a success/failure? Who can torpedo the effort? Who's green-light do you need? Who's non red-light do you need? How does that align with the company's strategy? How do you scope that solution? What features are table stakes? How do you manage the product's roadmap (what not to build and what to build and why)? Does everyone know why they're doing what they're doing and can they make decisions unsupervised? What's important for each one at the table (legal, security, IT, infra, finance, sales, marketing, etc.)? You'll learn how to reason from each one's perspective (even make their own case for them) in order to orchestrate and find ways to drive the effort forward.

All these will be really useful because, even if you are still at that company, you'll have to learn how to do it to get buy in for whatever project or product or project you're working on or direction of the product you think is right, to get the resources you need, get the people you need (or to prevent adding more people, both are important).

Do you hang out with people starting start-ups? They surely talk about the problems they're facing and you could learn a lot brainstorming with them? Talking with people starting different startups exposes you to a variety of problems, solutions, and thought processes. You could notice patterns.

A few books that could come in handy:

- "Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth" - Gabriel Weinberg (DuckDuckGo's founder).

- David Skok's "For Entrepreneurs" - https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/ and https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/zero-to-100/

- "The Lean Product Playbook" - Dan Olsen

- EnterpriseReady - https://www.enterpriseready.io/#features

- "Lean B2B" - Étienne Garbugli

- "High Output Management" - Andrew Grove

- MEDDIC sales (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify/Implicate the pain, Champion). That's a known sales framework

- Michael Dearing on Pricing https://web.archive.org/web/20160318134158/https://www.heavy...

- "Predictable Revenue" - Aaron Ross

- "Founding Sales" - Peter Kazanjy (I haven't read that one but I've heard good things)

- "When software and people mix" - Gail Goodman - Business of software 2012 (https://vimeo.com/54076835)

- "Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business" - Jason Cohen at Microconf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw

- How to Build a Startup - Steve Blank on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAwxTw4SYaPnxzSuovATB...)

- Marc Andreessen's archive, but start with this: "The only thing that matters". https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

Whatever you do, you know the whole customer development and product market fit and ensuring there's a market and that you have distribution? Most people know that and still, the temptation to build before is strong. That's why I started my list with Gabriel Weinberg's "Traction".

All the best. Happy to exchange throughout your quest.

Ask HN: Book recommendations to improve XFN and engineering leadership as an IC

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