/resources-to-become-a-great-engineering-leader

List of books, blogs, newsletters and people!

100+ Resources to become a great engineering leader

List of books, newsletters, people and more!

Investing in yourself is a great investment anytime! I am sharing with you my personally curated resources to level up and grow to become a great engineering leader in 2024!

Topics span from software engineering, system design, data engineering, leadership, management and all the way to product and business.

How to start?

There are a LOT of resources here and your time is very important. I don’t suggest to go and try to study all of the resources at once, I suggest to pick a few resources at a time from specific categories that you need the most. That’s what I do as well.

When I need to go more in details in a specific category, I choose the resources and do a deep dive on the specific topics. I also connect with certain individuals, check their posts and / or ask them questions.

Important: Before you choose which resources you wish to go more in detail, I suggest to do a retrospective of your current skillset and define where you need to improve. This will ensure you are spending your time on the most impactful things first!

Get better in System Design

List of books

  • Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann
  • System Design Interview by Alex Xu
  • Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler
  • Understanding Distirbuted Systems by Roberto Vitillo
  • Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin
  • Systems Analysis and Design, multiple editions and multiple authors
  • Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems by Sam Newman
  • Fundamentals of Software Architecture by Neal Ford and Mark Richards
  • Software Architecture: The Hard Parts by Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage and Zhamak Dehghani
  • Learn System Design in a Hurry, (Helping FAANG+ Software Engineering candidates land their dream job) by Evan King

List of blogs

List of newsletters

People to follow on LinkedIn

Become a better Leader / Manager

List of books

  • The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo
  • The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
  • The Lean Manager by Andrew and Muhammad Wilkerson
  • The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
  • The Manager's Path by Camille Fournieri
  • Leadership in 60 seconds by Omar Halabieh
  • Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra
  • The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
  • Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson
  • How to Lead When You're Not in Charge by Clay Scroggins
  • Think Again by Adam Grant
  • The Mind of the Leader by Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter
  • The Culture Map by Erin Meyer

List of newsletters

People to follow on LinkedIn

Become a better Software Engineer

List of books

  • The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas
  • Refactoring by Martin Fowler and Kent Beck
  • Why Programs Fail by Andreas Zeller
  • Clean Code by Robert Cecil Martin
  • Grokking Algorithms by Aditya Y. Bhargava
  • Staff Engineer by Will Larson
  • Modern Software Engineering by David Farley
  • Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
  • Engineering Software Products by Ian Sommerville
  • Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  • Code Complete by Steve McConnell
  • The Staff Engineer's Path by Tanya Reilly
  • Cracking the Coding Interview by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
  • Clean Code Cookbook: Recipes to Improve the Design and Quality of your Code by Maximiliano Contieri

List of newsletters

People to follow on LinkedIn

Become product-minded and business-oriented

List of books

  • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making by Tony Fadell
  • Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
  • Empowered by Marty Cagan
  • Loved: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products by Martina Lauchengco
  • Start with Why by Simon Sinek
  • What Your Customer Wants and Can’t Tell You by Melina Palmer
  • The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
  • Transformed by Marty Cagan

List of newsletters

People to follow on LinkedIn

Get better at Data Engineering / Data Science

List of books

  • Fundamentals of Data Engineering by Matt Housley
  • Data Engineering with Python by Paul Crickard
  • Spark: The Definitive Guide by Matei Zaharia
  • Big Data: Principles and Best Practices of Scalable Realtime Data Systems by James Warren
  • 97 Things Every Data Engineer Should Know by Tobias Macey

List of newsletters

People to follow on LinkedIn

Any resources you liked and believe would be a great addition to this list? Feel free to open a PR! I am always in the lookout for some more great books / newsletters / people to follow.