Your Next Move


Book Description

"Whether you're going for that promotion, looking to jump ship, or change careers entirely, Michael Watkins' Your Next Move is a book you'll want to read." So starts the positive review of Your Next Move on the influential 800 CEO Read website. It's true that all leaders--no matter how seasoned--need guidance through the professional changes that define a career. In fact, transitions into new roles are the crucibles in which leaders get their toughest tests, and they're the defining factor in professional careers today. Yet far too often, leaders fail to transition effectively into new roles. The resulting costs are high, for individual careers and for organizations. In Your Next Move, leadership-transition guru Watkins shows how you can survive and thrive in all the major transitions you will face during your career-including promotions, leading former peers, on-boarding into a new organization, making an international move, or turning around or realigning an organization. With real-life examples and case studies, Watkins illustrates the defining hurdles associated with each type of transition. He then provides the insights, strategies, and tools you'll need to accelerate through these crucial turning points and continue moving up in your career. The necessary complement to the author's bestselling guide The First 90 Days, which has been translated in more than 20 languages worldwide, Your Next Move offers the keen observations, tried-and-true management wisdom, and practical good sense Watkins is renowned for. It's a vital resource for any manager or executive seeking to maintain career momentum. To quote the reviewer from above: "It's not just about "moving" but about what happens when those actions are taken. Success or failure are the two options, and which option you emerge with will determine what happens going forward. Watkins' book definitely has the research and insight to equip you for the better of the two paths."




Master Your Next Move, with a New Introduction


Book Description

Your next professional move can make or break your career. Are you ready? In business, especially today, you are only as successful as your next career transition. Do well, and you'll be on the fast track to even more challenging roles. Fail, and you could irreparably harm your career--and your organization. In his international bestseller The First 90 Days, transition guru Michael D. Watkins outlined a set of basic principles for getting up to speed quickly in new professional roles. Since that book was published Watkins has worked with thousands of leaders, helping them to accelerate their transitions. These leaders posed challenging questions on how to apply the basic principles in real-life situations. The truth that emerged: the First 90 Days framework can be applied in every transition, but the way you apply it is entirely different when you have been promoted to a higher level than it is when you are joining a new organization or taking a role in a different country. Master Your Next Move answers a distinct need, focusing on the most common types of transitions leaders face and the unique challenges posed by each. Based on years of research, and now with a new introduction, this indispensable book explores eight crucial transitions virtually everyone encounters during their career, including promotion, leading former peers, onboarding into a new company, making an international move, and turning around a business in crisis. With real-world examples and many practical models and tools, Master Your Next Move is your guide to surviving and thriving as you make your next move . . . and every one after that.




Staff Engineer


Book Description

At most technology companies, you'll reach Senior Software Engineer, the career level for software engineers, in five to eight years. At that career level, you'll no longer be required to work towards the next pro? motion, and being promoted beyond it is exceptional rather than ex? pected. At that point your career path will branch, and you have to decide between remaining at your current level, continuing down the path of technical excellence to become a Staff Engineer, or switching into engineering management. Of course, the specific titles vary by company, and you can replace "Senior Engineer" and "Staff Engineer" with whatever titles your company prefers.Over the past few years we've seen a flurry of books unlocking the en? gineering management career path, like Camille Fournier's The Man? ager's Path, Julie Zhuo's The Making of a Manager, Lara Hogan's Re? silient Management and my own, An Elegant Puzzle. The manage? ment career isn't an easy one, but increasingly there are maps avail? able for navigating it.On the other hand, the transition into Staff Engineer, and its further evolutions like Principal and Distinguished Engineer, remains chal? lenging and undocumented. What are the skills you need to develop to reach Staff Engineer? Are technical abilities alone sufficient to reach and succeed in that role? How do most folks reach this role? What is your manager's role in helping you along the way? Will you enjoy being a Staff Engineer or you will toil for years to achieve a role that doesn't suit you?"Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track" is a pragmatic look at attaining and operate in these Staff-plus roles.




An Elegant Puzzle


Book Description

A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.




Designing Your Life


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.




The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded


Book Description

The world’s most trusted guide for leaders in transition Transitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success. In this updated and expanded version of the international bestseller The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins offers proven strategies for conquering the challenges of transitions—no matter where you are in your career. Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions and adviser to senior leaders in all types of organizations, also addresses today’s increasingly demanding professional landscape, where managers face not only more frequent transitions but also steeper expectations once they step into their new jobs. By walking you through every aspect of the transition scenario, Watkins identifies the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter and provides the tools and strategies you need to avoid them. You’ll learn how to secure critical early wins, an important first step in establishing yourself in your new role. Each chapter also includes checklists, practical tools, and self-assessments to help you assimilate key lessons and apply them to your own situation. Whether you’re starting a new job, being promoted from within, embarking on an overseas assignment, or being tapped as CEO, how you manage your transition will determine whether you succeed or fail. Use this book as your trusted guide.










Ask a Manager


Book Description

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together