Books on engineering management, company growth, etc.?

Question

Anyone have any good reads centered on engineering management ideally at companies in small to mid level? I'm not looking for a management style per se, I just want to read about personal accounts from people in the field.Seems like there must be some good memoirs out there that aren't just self-help management books.

dingosity · Accepted Answer

Well... Peopleware by DeMarco and (of course) Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks. Also... just noticed that Richard Hamming's autobio got published a few years back (and has a forward by Bret Victor!) Amazon has a "Look Inside" feature so you can check out the first couple of chapters and see if it's what you're looking for. I just really love Bret Victor's presentations and Hamming is a bit of a legend.And I just went downstairs to my library and found "The Manager's Path" by Camille Fournier. I read the first several chapters and found them reasonable. And I just rememebered I wanted to read the last couple chapters. The ones in the middle are less to do with my situation, but I'll probably read them eventually. Fournier includes a chapter on "what you should expect from a manager," which I thought was a good twist. I found it worthwhile.

creer · Answer

Someone recommended The Ultimate Entrepreneur: The Story of Ken Olsen and Digital Equipment Corporation, 1988, by Glenn Rifkin and George Harrar - as a business management story telling comparable to Soul of a new machine. It's on my list. (Offhand, btw, I would expected it tainted by the west coast vs east coast business style difference.)
Oh, and in The Soul of A New Machine itself, the "responsible adult" is the engineering manager.
And for far more recent and startup-y stuff, there is Founders at work and European Founders at Work

retrocryptid · Answer

Ed Yourdon did a book called "Death March" which might be apropos, though more of a cautionary tale of what NOT to do.

YuriNiyazov · Answer

I really liked &ldquo;high output management&rdquo;