The Pragmatic Engineer

The Pragmatic Engineer

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The Pragmatic Engineer
The Pragmatic Engineer
Resources for Engineering Managers and Software Engineers

Resources for Engineering Managers and Software Engineers

A checklist for engineering managers, business case for a platform team, project lead expectations, performance reviews and others

Gergely Orosz's avatar
Gergely Orosz
Aug 30, 2021
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The Pragmatic Engineer
The Pragmatic Engineer
Resources for Engineering Managers and Software Engineers
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Below are documents and templates that hundreds of engineering managers and engineers have used with success at various companies. I'll add new ones to this page, as I come around to the several other templates that served me over the years.

Resources shared include:

For engineering managers:

  • Measuring the impact of an engineering team

  • Preparing for a reorg as an EM

  • Checklist for (New) Engineering Managers: the checklist I wish I had

  • Tech Lead Expectations to empower engineers to lead projects

  • Narrative/Business Case for a Platform team used to create one

  • Performance Review Example and Template for EMs

  • Promotions Map for EMs to visualize promotions progress

  • Oncall compensation data

  • Checklist for growing a (junior-heavy) team

  • Checklist for the (bi-) annual planning for engineering managers

  • Project reporting example for regular engineering project updates.

  • Preparing for layoffs: a checklist

  • Uber’s Engineering Metrics Dashboard

  • Staying technical as an engineering manager: resources

Hiring:

  • Software engineering interview process

  • EM interview process

  • Interview processes at Sourcegraph

Onboarding:

  • Onboarding Overview

  • Onboarding Task List

  • Onboarding Email Example

  • Onboarding Checklist for Engineering Managers

  • Onboarding Check-In Questionnaire that many places use to check-in around the one-month timeframe

Performance reviews:

  • Preparing for promotions: a checklist.

  • Work Log

  • Self-review for performance reviews.

  • Numbers in self-reviews for software engineers.

Career-related:

  • The Software Engineer’s Guidebook: 10 bonus chapters (a 100-page PDF)

  • Resources to find great tech jobs: 100+ of the highest paying jobs, and 50+ places to find promising high-growth startups and a list of the best executive recruitment firms in tech

  • Writing goals and accountability document: to help making progress in becoming a better writer.

  • “Wartime” vs “peacetime” differences

For software engineers:

  • System prompt for SWE-agent

  • Security design review template

  • What is a senior engineer at Big Tech?

  • A migration checklist

  • Incident Analysis Templates

  • Project reporting example

  • Performance Review Example

  • Work Log Template for software engineers

  • Team Standup Template

Reports:

  • GenZ at the workplace: 2024 (two data sets)

  • Senior and above compensation in tech: 2024

  • Code freeze approaches: 2023

  • Cloud Development Environment vendors in 2023

  • Shopify’s engineering levels in 2023

  • AI coding tools: research data and GitHub Copilot alternatives

  • Curbing vendor costs in 2023: details

  • Tech compensation changes in 2023

  • Microsoft’s 2022 compensation numbers

  • Pay transparency data at Pollen, in 2022 (UK, US, Poland)

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