#3 | Sunday reads for EMs
My favourite reads of the week to make your Sunday a little more inspiring.
👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. This is a new series in which every Sunday I share with you my favourite reads of the week. To accelerate your growth see: 50 Notion Templates | The EM’s Field Guide | CodeCrafters | Get Hired as an EM | 1:1 Coaching
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In Praise of “Normal” Engineers
tl;dr: This is a must-read if you care about building resilient teams. Charity argues that the obsession with “10x engineers” misses the point: teams, not individuals, own software. The best orgs are ones where normal engineers can consistently ship great code because the systems, culture, and leadership make it easy to do the right thing. Shrink your deploy cycles, build inclusive systems, and focus on team effectiveness over individual brilliance.
The Product Engineering Manifesto
tl;dr: This one’s for every EM tired of engineers being treated like code machines. It talks about a product-first approach to engineering, emphasizing discovery over delivery, outcomes over outputs, and reliability as a core product feature rather than a tech debt afterthought. Most “requirements” are really hypotheses, and engineers should co-own product strategy, not just execution.
Managing Up
tl;dr: If your boss feels more like a blocker than a booster, this is your survival guide. Lena Reinhard uses the metaphor of a garden-invading groundhog (aka your boss) to make managing up approachable. Key takeaway: managing your manager is a learnable skill rooted in curiosity, self-awareness, and structured communication. Great for senior ICs and new EMs navigating leadership dynamics.
From ChatGPT to Instagram to Uber
tl;dr: Peter Deng distills decades of product wisdom from Facebook, Instagram, Uber, and OpenAI into gold nuggets for product-minded engineers. Big ideas: team composition matters more than individual brilliance, AGI won’t remove the need for craft, and growth teams should be your first hire (not to hack metrics but to enforce discipline). His hiring heuristic: “If I’m telling you what to do in six months, I hired the wrong person” is worth thinking about.
The Brute Squad
tl;dr: Traditional IDEs are dying, and “agentic coding” is the future. For EMs, the message is clear: train your teams to ride this wave or risk obsolescence. A funny, weirdly insightful dispatch from the bleeding edge.
When AI Has Better Taste Than You
tl;dr: Julie Zhuo breaks down human value into capability, taste, and agency - arguing that AI is quickly catching up on the first two, but agency (what we choose to care about) is our biggest advantage. It’s more philosophical than tactical, but still a nice read.
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The 25 Micro-Habits of High-Impact Managers
What did you read recently that you would like to share?