management – Page 2 – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Beyond the Office Walls: A Practical Guide for Remote Tech Team Excellence

By Scott J. Pearson | April 22, 2024April 22, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Remote work has been a trend for a long time as Internet technology inundated homes. Working as a developer in health IT, I have often troubleshot issues from home via my laptop for over a decade. Writing software, I’ve interacted with people all over the globe from my kitchen table or personal office for a long time. The recent COVID pandemic forced the wider workplace to catch up with these trends. As the health threat…

Engineering Management for the Rest of Us

By Scott J. Pearson | April 18, 2024September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Engineering management books can sometimes be a bit technical, like the field of engineering itself. Of course, it’s no surprise that engineers often view the task as one of exacting competence – like their work. Yet management can, in truth, be its own thing because it deals with people. Humans pose their own set of challenges, and few can speak authoritatively about both realms. Thus, few good books exist in this domain. Unfortunately, many engineers…

Management-Business Software-Technology

An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

By Scott J. Pearson | April 12, 2024April 12, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Engineering presents unique challenges to managers. Not only are engineering managers usually picked from those who work primarily with objects, but they also receive little training in the discipline. Having little training reinforces a dynamic where little training material is also available to the next generation. To fill this void, Will Larson provides a succinct introduction to the field. His perspective aims to inform from a systems perspective – that is, by observing how managerial…

Management-Business Software-Technology

The Software Hiring Handbook: The Software Developer’s Guide to Conducting a Job Interview

By Scott J. Pearson | March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

As Michael Kahn states in this book’s introduction, there exist many guides to giving interviews generally along with guides to being interviewed about software development, but there are few guides to giving interviews specifically to developers. This 2006 book tries to fill that niche. It is short and certainly not comprehensive – as if that were even possible. But it advances wisdom that people like me need in finding a software developer, especially for the…

Management-Business

The Future of the Office: Work from Home, Remote Work & the Hard Choices We All Face

By Scott J. Pearson | January 27, 2024January 27, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The COVID pandemic continues to shape the face of the global workforce in 2024. This book, written in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, sought to bring prior research about remote work to the forefront of business leaders. Written by a Wharton School professor, it briefly summarizes earlier studies and speculates on the pandemic’s future business outcomes. Given that it was written in the middle of a global crisis, this work is tightly coupled…

Management-Business

Remote: Office Not Required

By Scott J. Pearson | January 20, 2024January 20, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

The COVID pandemic forced the global workforce to become used to working from home, and many of us transitioned there permanently. I grew up with my professor-father often working from home in the evenings and trudged through graduate school studying and writing in a home office. Thus, working from home was not entirely new to me. In 2013, when this book was written, this idea was still a relatively fresh management technique, and this short…

Leadership Management-Business

Let It Go!: How to (Finally) Master Delegation & Scale Freedom Across Your Organization

By Scott J. Pearson | January 12, 2024September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Entrepreneurship draws people who aren’t afraid of taking risks and who are willing to put in the work. However, this field also has its share of pitfalls… like not being able to transform work requests into work for others. Leaders often get to their positions by getting things done. The practice of leadership, however, often means letting others get things done. The handoff process is called delegation. In this book, Emily Morgan dissects this topic…

Management-Business Software-Technology

Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager: How to Be the Leader Your Development Team Needs

By Scott J. Pearson | January 4, 2024January 4, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

Managing software engineering efforts is a difficult task. One needs a thorough knowledge of authoring software, which itself is a rare, time-consuming accomplishment. Almost all general managers do not have an in-depth knowledge of programming (though many assume they do!). A few of the best software developers are promoted into a managerial role and have to figure out what to do on the job. Much literature on general management topics exists, but few writings center…

Management-Business

Delegation & Supervision

By Scott J. Pearson | January 1, 2024January 1, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

It’s January 1, and one of my New Year’s resolutions is to learn to say “no” more often and more effectively. To accomplish this, I’m reading several books on delegation. This book, short and inexpensive, seemed like a good place to start. Brian Tracy offers a broad overview of how to delegate and supervise work accomplished by a team. He communicates his message in a clear, accessible, and succinct manner. The book offers a good…

Leadership Management-Business Mentoring

The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever

By Scott J. Pearson | October 24, 2023September 24, 2024 by Scott J. Pearson

When approached with an issue, most of us instinctively respond with doling out advice. We assume that people want to use our expertise. However, many of the best leaders have a different response: curiosity about the other person. They ask questions to empower the people around them to make better decisions. After all, the question-askers are the ones closest to the issues, not the one being questioned. In this book, Michael Bungay Stanier seeks to…