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

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 planning preparation 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

• Pragmatic Engineer Talent Collective and Job Board special offers for subscribers: posting jobs for free, or with a discount

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:

• 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:

• 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