A curated list of the top books engineering leaders recommend, with interview links showing why each title matters for managing teams and advancing your career.
The piece pulls together recommendations from more than 125 engineering leaders, surfacing the books that consistently surface as the most valuable for technical managers. By aggregating these votes, it cuts through the noise of endless reading lists and gives a data-driven shortlist of titles that actually move teams forward.
Featured titles include The Manager's Path by Camille Fournier, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, Radical Candor by Kim Scott, High Output Management by Andy Grove, and Turn the Ship Around! by L. David Marquet. Each entry is paired with a short interview excerpt from the recommending leader, explaining the concrete ways the book shaped their approach to hiring, feedback, or scaling teams.
For an engineering manager looking for actionable guidance, the article offers more than just a bibliography-it provides context. The interview snippets reveal how the books helped solve real problems like building trust, improving decision-making, and sustaining team morale, making it easy to pick the next read that aligns with a current challenge.
The list is updated regularly, so readers can treat it as a living reading roadmap. Bookmark the page, follow the interview links for deeper insight, and use the curated titles to accelerate your own leadership growth and your team's performance.
Check out the full stdlib collection for more frameworks, templates, and guides to accelerate your technical leadership journey.