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jstanieron Ask HN: Books to read when you transform from SWE into SWE Management?

Thanks for mentioning my book. Indeed, it's written exactly with that moment of time in mind: the "OK, so I want to do this. But how?"

jstanieron Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2021)

Shopify (https://www.shopify.com) | Frontend / Backend | UK and Europe

Come and help us make commerce better for everyone.

We're expanding into EMEA and I'm hiring out the team here. I'd love to work with you.

We're fully remote (https://www.shopify.com/careers/work-anywhere) and have a fantastic engineering culture (https://shopify.engineering/)

EMEA engineering roles I'm hiring for: https://bit.ly/3l0Sfut

If you'd like to talk to me directly, then you can email me at james dot stanier @shopify.com, ping me on Twitter @jstanier, or find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jstanier/

jstanieron Ask HN: Where do you write?

Unless you have a very large following already, you're at the whim of the Medium editors to "elevate" content to the wider readership of the site, via the preexisting topics, or if you're really lucky, to feature your article on the front page.

* Edit: That doesn't mean you shouldn't! :-) However, you might get more readership - if that's what you're interested in - by writing pretty much anywhere, and just sharing it with the right communities.

jstanieron Ask HN: In what unexpected ways has writing a blog affected your career?

I got a book deal!

I answered a whole bunch of questions over on a Show HN a while back if you're interested: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129

I'm happy to answer any specific questions around this. My email's in my profile, or you can reach me on Twitter (@jstanier).

jstanieron Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?

Hello! I did a Show HN recently as I wrote a book on exactly this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129

There's a lot of interesting discussion on that thread that might be useful to you as well.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Sure! Sign up here: https://t.co/burXhyiuoK?amp=1

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

I /think/ I know what you're talking about, but just in case this gets derailed in a back-and-forth and lost, then feel free to contact me on Twitter @jstanier or my email is in my profile - we can chat more easily there.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Thank you! I hope it helps. Let me know if there's anything you'd like covered.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

When they're embedded in a Google Doc, they're pretty good at getting the point across - then they can have a link to the app itself too.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Yeah, that's a good idea. My blog has a mailing list but I did a wonderful job of making it extremely hard to find.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Thank you, I'm pleased you think that. My PhD was in compilers anyway. I have no formal management training. :-)

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Thank you! I hope you like it.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

@jstanier on Twitter, or my email is in my profile.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Hey! I think you'll have to wait until the thing is done and then you can buy it from Amazon and other bookstores. Couple of months, I guess.

The publisher is in charge of choosing the excerpts, but I'll feed that back to them.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Hey - icon set? What do you mean by icon set? :-)

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

I understand. Yeah, we're a VC-backed company but it didn't feel like the journey was a movie script at any point.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Thank you!

The target audience for the newsletter was decided as "the busy exec". Not too much text, lots of gifs of functionality that we've built, etc.

There's some separate newsletters we do as well - there's a fortnightly "what's going on in the backend" one, curated by our infrastructure teams that's aimed at engineers.

Currently the general case newsletter goes to Engineering, Product, Product Design, and the exec group. We don't think it's quite good enough for the staff@ mailing list yet, but maybe we're just being over-cautious. It's really hard to get the balance right.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

The book assumes someone is interested in it or just started. I didn't cover landing the job, but that's a really interesting point.

Personally, I got promoted from within at the beginning of my management journey. Have you been applying to external companies? I wonder if others on here have more experiences in that area that they'd like to share.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

@jstanier on Twitter if that works for you.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

We don't talk about that blog.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

I didn't even know that was a thing. :-) Ace!

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

You should! I think there's a lot of stigma around it. It's definitely not a step "down".

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Sure, that's good feedback and makes a lot of sense. I can edit that blurb.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

That's kind of you to say that! Thank you. Can I email you to get some more of your feedback? What's the best way to contact you?

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

I don't know if there's a way to subscribe for updates with the publisher, but if you use Twitter I'm on there as @jstanier and I give updates on how it's going. If you're not on Twitter then I can drop you an email.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

Good question! I don't know. I can ask my editor. When the print copy is out it will be available from bookshops and Amazon and so on, so maybe that's the short-term answer.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

That's a good question. I'm English and I work for a UK company. I had some reviewers at the 50% stage who were from European companies and they didn't say anything specific about this, but I'd be interested to learn more about the US tech scene being quite alien - I haven't experienced it myself.

jstanieron Show HN: I wrote a book for engineers that want to become engineering managers

I totally agree on your final sentence there. There's a number of things in that chapter you mention, and there's also material on managing upwards earlier on in the book.

As an example of something I personally struggle with: what's the best way to have the rest of the company know what all of our teams are working on without A) going into too much detail B) being obtuse C) opening ourselves up for miscommunication to customers or deadline promises D) giving ourselves room to fail, because not everything will work out.

The current iteration is a fortnightly newsletter that I curate between product and the engineering managers in the department and it gets sent around, but making everyone happy with it is /so/ hard.