Leading Effective Engineering Teams: Lessons for Individual Contributors and Managers from 10 Years at Google

by Addy Osmani

In this insightful and comprehensive guide, Addy Osmani shares more than a decade of experience working on the Chrome team at Google, uncovering secrets to engineering effectiveness, efficiency, and team success. Engineers and engineering leaders looking to scale their effectiveness and drive transformative results within their teams and organizations will learn the essential principles, tips, and frameworks for building highly effective engineering teams. Osmani presents best practices and proven strategies that foster engineering excellence in organizations of all sizes. Through practical advice and real-world examples, Leading Effective Engineering Teams empowers you to create a thriving engineering culture where individuals and teams can excel. Unlock the full potential of your engineering team and achieve unparalleled success by harnessing the power of trust, commitment, and accountability. With this book, you'll

Genres: Leadership, Management, Technology, Engineering, Business, Nonfiction, Technical

276 pages, Paperback

Published July 16, 2024

About the author

Addy Osmani is a Senior Staff Engineering Manager working on Google Chrome. He leads up teams focused on making the web fast and low-friction to build on for developers. Addy has authored a number of books and has spoken at conferences around the world.

Reviews

[Andrea Santambrogio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lots of repeated bullet points

Overall this book presents interesting management topics and some relevant studies. Unfortunately most of the information is structured in often repetitive bullet points and the « case studies » lack depth and complexity. I would have liked the author to structure the book better and find more information corroborating his assertions.

[Michał Kutyła · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to reading this book after seeing endorsment from Pragramatic Engineer. Unfortunately, I'm disappointed because of following reasons:
1. The author covers too many aspects of management, each aspect gets a paragraph of a shallow description. I felt like I was reading a table of contents. In the end I just skimmed through the last part of the book because I could not keep reading obviousness about "courage, integrity, honesty etc." - come on!
2. Case studies are no longer than half a page and are very obvious, doesn't really add value
3. In general, nowadays, one could generate similar book using LLMs
4. For managers from companies with good engineering culture, there will be little new in this book.

On the other hand, for the beginner manager/leader, this book could be a nice short introduction to various aspects of management. It may also be inspirational for managers from companies with poor engineering culture.

[Krishna Kumar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not horrible, but still very banal. Probably useful for a first time manager, but otherwise there is nothing much to be gained reading this. The author sometimes had strong opinions and at other times vacillated between different actions. What I found was that the specific times he did either, I felt he should have done the opposite. For example, don’t micromanage but also don’t under manage. Okaaaaay, I mean sure, but I don’t need to read a book to know that. Dig deeper and explain it better. Or maybe just pick a side and defend it.

[Stepan Reznikov · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really disappointed by this book. It felt like it was written by a mildly bored AI. No colour, no spark, lacking the unique voice of the author. The examples and stories were synthetic and completely forgettable. I had to force myself to keep going - and still kept losing the plot. There was just nothing to grab onto.

[Nico · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF after ~1/3 of the book. A disappointing summary of existing research and books. Saying nothing new in (too) many words. I expected more from the author.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book fills a gap in literature about technology leadership. Many books on leadership exist; likewise, many books on approaching technology from the perspective of business leadership exist; however, not a lot of books talk about how to lead from a technologist’s angle. People working in software are usually really smart people. They know and respect “game” when they see competence and mastery in their field. But mentorship from books or from seasoned leaders is hard to come by for those who themselves aspire to lead. This book fills that gap with practical lessons learned from Google’s rise.

This book covers everything and is as comprehensive as an academic textbook. The research literature informs its perspective including Google Projects Oxygen and Aristotle. These internal projects sought to identify the most useful practices of successful managers at their company. Yet the practical side of management also shines through these pages. Like the best management books, it never strays far from results like productive teammates, fulfilling work, and maximizing effectiveness. It’s simply the most complete book on IT leadership that I’ve read so far. It’ll fill a lasting place in the marketplace of technology books.

Following modern leadership theory, Addy Osmani asserts that anyone can lead, regardless of title. He identifies common pitfalls technologists make when moving from a coding-heavy job to a people-heavy role. Importantly, he describes in depth how personality interacts with the art of coding. The personalities of programmers are notoriously difficult to master, and not many books are careful when categorizing them. This book, grounded in practice, is as insightful and innovative at that task as I’ve read anywhere else.

If you’re in the technology industry and want to contribute to your team, this work is for you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a coder, tester, or manager: If you want to make your team better by leading helpful change, this book can identify a path forward – even if you don’t want to change your current job responsibilities. It’s filled with the idealism, erudition, and inventiveness that has propelled Google forward to change the world… and might just propel your workplace forward, too.

[George Nikolaropoulos]

Really liked this one! Really great for engineering leaders, offering practical advice on building high-performing teams. A combination of leadership principles with technical insights, addressing common management challenges like communication, team dynamics, and balancing innovation with execution. The real-world examples make the strategies actionable, helping leaders create collaborative, empowered teams. A must-read for anyone looking to foster a culture of accountability and continuous improvement which is really hard from time to time. Highly recommended for those in or aspiring to engineering leadership roles.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a nice go-to list with lots of good ideas paired with real-world examples. I especially liked the antipattern list, this makes it way easier to have look for this kind of behaviour and to reflect.

Overall the book is well structured and entertaining to read and if you follow every mentioned book inside of it your reading stack is going to grow significantly. ;)

[Milos Mirosavljevic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite coprehensive manual of what makes an effective engineering manager. Due to the nature of the topic, the book is a bit borring at times, since there is no common narrative or storyline, albeit author did try to include some (fictional) stories in explaining relevant concepts.

But all in all, this book is very useful for those who aspire to be engineering managers.

[Abhaga · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't get much out of it, mostly standard fare. The bad part was the immense hype that the author built up in the beginning, as if some groundbreaking discoveries from internal Google research into team and manager effectiveness would be shared.

The anti-pattern portion was good - crisp and immediately useful.

[Siarhei · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s one of the best books for engineering managers I’ve ever read. In my own rating I’d set it at the same level as Elegant puzzle and recommend both as must have read for EMs. Both books extend each other.

[Andrzej Grzesik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Should have been so good.

[Simon Hohenadl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much new here for me, but a good compendium for new engineering leaders

[Ruben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice collection of concepts. In my opinion this book has a lot of GenAI. I don’t mind but it’s not what I prefer to read.

[Reme Le Hane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading this, very well written, lots of details when needed and covers a lot of interesting topics that I have not come across with regards to leading teams. It also links out to a few additional resources that I’ve added to my arsenal for my own leadership role.

[Masoud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably an oversimplification and an unfair assessment of the content, but I felt like the book was--at times--a smaller version of Software Engineering at Google--the parts related to management and teams, of course, not the technical parts.

That being said, there were two essays that I found very interesting, original, and helpful: first on enabling, empowering, and expanding your team; and second on the differences between productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Great book overall.