I was recently promoted to team lead (yay me!) and I was recommended this book by a couple of people to learn more about being a leader in tech.

It was such a useful book to read – it starts off talking about mentoring, then progressing to team lead and continues all the way up to what it calls the big leagues, e.g. CTO.

I read it all the way to the end even though two thirds of the book were definitely above my pay-grade, and I’m glad I did as it contained so much useful information.

I’ve never been a people leader before, so I found the early parts of the book so valuable before I started meeting with my new lines in terms of information on starting off catchups on the right foot, preparing for a new management relationship, and building trust. There was even a section on managing a former peer which was just what I needed.

Each chapter contained a Good Manager/Bad Manager scenario where two styles were compared to each other and that was great for thinking about my past experience and my future plans.

If I had a criticism of the book, my only one really would be that certain parts were quite ‘american’ so didn’t seem to apply to me personally, but that wasn’t really a huge problem. As with any book like this, I think it’s all about picking and choosing the advice that will help you and ignoring the things that won’t.

My book is literally covered with sticky notes of things I want to remember/come back to in future, and I can see that this book will be a guide for years to come in my career. I will definitely get more out of the later chapters by coming back to read them when I reach those stages in my career.