The Effective Engineer

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Relationships Are Systems — What Engineering Taught Me About Partnership

Feedback loops, leverage, iteration — the principles that made me a better engineer turned out to be the same ones that made me a better partner, father, and human.

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What Makes a Good Engineering Culture?

One of my favorite interview questions that I ask engineering candidates is to tell me about one thing they liked and one thing they disliked about the engineering culture at their previous company. I’ve interviewed over 500 people — many of them from top tech companies like Facebook, Google, Am… (more)

How to Transition from Average Engineer to 10x Engineer

Can an average engineer develop technical skills that surpass 10x the abilities of his or her peers? Unlikely. (more)

The Secret to Growing Your Engineering Career If You Don’t Want to Manage

Is staying a software engineer your whole life a good career choice? Or must you transition into management to continue climbing the engineering ladder? That’s what engineers recently wondered on Quora, and it’s an important question worth addressing, particularly for those not psyched about mana… (more)

The Five Key Mindsets to Master If You Want to Be a Successful Programmer

Dave Cutler, at age 74, still goes to his office at Microsoft every day to write code. (more)

Make If-Then Plans to Get More Things Done

In the 1990s, Psychology Professor Peter Gollwitzer conducted a study into the science of motivation. At the University of Konstanz in Germany, he asked students who were on their way to final exams if they would volunteer to participate in a study to write a Christmas essay of how people spend t… (more)

Master Adjacent Disciplines

“Should I focus on becoming a generalist or a specialist? Which route better sets myself up for career success?” Engineers who already know the importance of learning and of investing in themselves often ask these questions and wonder where to best spend their time. (more)

How Do I Tell My Team to Work More Hours to Hit a Launch Date?

This blog post is based on an answer I wrote on Quora. (more)

Beware the One-Person Team

“Software development is a team sport,” write Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman in their book Team Geek. The two Googlers, who together started the company’s Chicago engineering offices, capture a valuable but often overlooked insight in their tagline: working effectively as part of a tea… (more)

Pick the Right Metric to Incentivize the Behavior You Want

In Good to Great, Jim Collins recounts the story of how Walgreens CEO Cork Walgreen grew the company to be the largest drug retailing chain in America. $1 invested in Walgreens in 1975 would skyrocket to $562 by 2000 under his leadership, easily beating the stock market index by over fifteen time… (more)

How to Make Your Engineering Team More Effective

As a leader, how you spend your time is critical. You have an incredible opportunity for impact because your decisions directly affect the output of your entire team. That makes investments in the team’s effectiveness particularly valuable and high-leverage. (more)

“A comprehensive tour of our industry’s collective wisdom written with clarity.”

— Jack Heart, Engineering Manager at Asana

“Edmond managed to distill his decade of engineering experience into crystal-clear best practices.”

— Daniel Peng, Senior Staff Engineer at Google

“I wish I had this manual to give my engineers when I was a VP of Engineering at Twitter. This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team.”

— Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Director at Uber

Read a sample chapter

“A comprehensive tour of our industry’s collective wisdom written with clarity.”

— Jack Heart, Engineering Manager at Asana

“Edmond managed to distill his decade of engineering experience into crystal-clear best practices.”

— Daniel Peng, Senior Staff Engineer at Google

“I wish I had this manual to give my engineers when I was a VP of Engineering at Twitter. This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team.”

— Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Director at Uber

Get the book now

Grow Your Skills Beyond the Book

Listen to podcast interviews with top software engineers and watch master-level videos of techniques previously taught only in workshops and seminars.

Consistently deliver business value — become the key person your team trusts to ship business-critical initiatives.
Study in-depth interviews with leaders from Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Stripe, and Instagram — double down on their highest-leverage investments, and avoid their most costly mistakes.
Pick the right projects most likely to propel you up the career ladder — including the nuances of how the criteria change as you get more senior.

Get the bundle now

“A comprehensive tour of our industry’s collective wisdom written with clarity.”

— Jack Heart, Engineering Manager at Asana

“Edmond managed to distill his decade of engineering experience into crystal-clear best practices.”

— Daniel Peng, Senior Staff Engineer at Google

“I wish I had this manual to give my engineers when I was a VP of Engineering at Twitter. This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team.”

— Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Director at Uber

Read a sample chapter

“A comprehensive tour of our industry’s collective wisdom written with clarity.”

— Jack Heart, Engineering Manager at Asana

“Edmond managed to distill his decade of engineering experience into crystal-clear best practices.”

— Daniel Peng, Senior Staff Engineer at Google

“I wish I had this manual to give my engineers when I was a VP of Engineering at Twitter. This summarizes and presents everything I used to tell my team.”

— Raffi Krikorian, Engineering Director at Uber

Get the book now

Grow Your Skills Beyond the Book

Listen to podcast interviews with top software engineers and watch master-level videos of techniques previously taught only in workshops and seminars.

Consistently deliver business value — become the key person your team trusts to ship business-critical initiatives.
Study in-depth interviews with leaders from Google, Facebook, Dropbox, Stripe, and Instagram — double down on their highest-leverage investments, and avoid their most costly mistakes.
Pick the right projects most likely to propel you up the career ladder — including the nuances of how the criteria change as you get more senior.

Get the bundle now