Better Engineering Leader: Wrapping Up the Series

Dec 02, 2024

In the previous week, I sent the final, 30th lesson of the series Better Engineering Leader.

Over the past 30 workdays (Monday to Friday), I shared daily insights focusing on one of the three essential pillars of software engineering leadership: People, Technology, and Product. This course ran alongside my regular weekly emails.

Nearly 650 people signed up, and the daily reading rate was above 50%, which I consider a success given the daily commitment of subscribers.

So, why did I create this series?

Becoming a Leader Is a Journey, Not an Event

I’ve been writing Practical Engineering Management for more than a year and have shared my thoughts in other spaces for nearly a decade. With over 200 articles in my portfolio, each week brings new inspiration, real-world use cases, and lessons that I’m eager to share.

The subscribers of this newsletter form a highly diverse group: from fresh team leads and managers to directors, SVPs, CTOs, and software engineers aspiring to grow into leadership roles. Each person is in a different place to become an inspirational and influential leader.

To cater to this broad audience, I created two “fast-track” materials alongside my regular writings:

Intro article: New to Engineering Leadership? Let Me Help – This is designed for leaders new to their roles. At this stage, you don’t need to dive into every nuance of things like expectations management, strategic planning, DevOps transformation, building high-performing teams, or making them data-driven. Instead, this article provides a high-level overview of an engineering leader's core competencies and responsibilities.
This course, Better Engineering Leader, is a series of 30 daily lessons covering the core pillars of people, technology, and product. It is designed for leaders who have been on this journey for some time and are eager to delve into more nuances of their work.

The Series of Better Engineering Leader

The original idea was to structure the most important content from Practical Engineering Management into a chronological course that touches on each of these pillars in turn.

Each lesson is a one-hour exercise that briefly covers a certain subject, gives you some practical exercises, and links to extended content in my newsletter.

However, because every engineering leader is at a different stage in their professional path, I recommend going through these items in the order that works best for you. Pick the lessons that resonate with you the most or the pillar in which you would like to improve your skills.

Here’s the final list of lessons (you can find them all under the Better Engineering Leader tab):

People

Technology

Product

Wrap-up

Day 30: Becoming a Better Engineering Leader: The Next Steps

Final Thoughts

Is this everything you need to become a better engineering leader? Not quite. While these lessons provide a solid foundation, they’re just the starting point for further exploration.

Some challenges you face will be specific to your organization or industry. Others represent broader themes that go beyond technology leadership.

The next big shift in our profession is toward Product Engineering Leadership—where the focus is less on the technology itself and more on leveraging it to create products people need and love.

In future articles, I’ll explore what this transformation means for engineering leaders and how to prepare for it.

Share your feedback

In the meantime, I would be grateful for your feedback regarding the Better Engineering Leader series. If you took part in this journey, can you share how valuable these lessons were for you?

Please share your reaction, write the feedback in the comment, as a response to the email or talk to me directly on chat. I would be thrilled to get to know you better so I can adjust my content accordingly.