The Engineering Leadership Playbook - by Raphael Neves (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In today's business landscape, software engineering teams must deliver innovation faster than ever. However, outdated management approaches centered on tools and metrics rather than people strangle velocity and creativity. Legacy leaders cling to rigid structures mismatched with market dynamics, draining effort and morale from burnt-out teams.

The Engineering Leadership Playbook provides a modern framework to unlock your team's potential through empathy, clarity, and empowerment. Unlike traditional leadership books fixated on delivery metrics, Raphael Neves offers a refreshing people-oriented leadership model tailored to nuances of engineering culture.

With 15+ years leading high-growth tech teams, Raphael demystifies how to balance autonomy with alignment, reconstruct feedback models on psychological safety, and sustain excellence amidst uncertainty. You'll learn his proven conflict resolution blueprint for defusing clashes through mutual understanding while tangibly tracking progress. Additionally, his continuous feedback system grounded in evidence spotlights gaps early while accelerating strengths.

This playbook moves systematically from foundational concepts like emotional intelligence and leading by example into team development frameworks around high-impact coaching, mentorship, and performance reviews. The method is brought full circle through innovation catalysts that maintain creative momentum at scale.

Step-by-step, Raphael unpacks human-centered leadership aligned with accelerating market realities. Apply his engineering management playbook, and your teams will thrive fuelled by vision, trust, and care.

What You'll Learn

• A modern, human-centered framework to empower engineering teams through clarity, trust, and purpose.
• Techniques to match coaching and mentoring styles to individual motivations and development needs.
• A customizable 9-box talent assessment model grounded in objective competency evidence.
• Conflict resolution blueprint focused on mutual understanding and win-win integrative solutions.
• Methodologies to sustain growth mindsets, celebrate experimentation, and extract learnings from setbacks.
• Systems to provide caring yet candid career feedback tailored to team members' personalities.
• Frameworks to secure executive buy-in, influence without authority, and craft compelling narratives.
• Engineering hiring practices focused on competencies over credentials to diversify innovation perspectives.
• Approaches for compassionate yet accountable performance management grounded in structure.
• Processes to create mentorship programs for individual learning styles and career ambitions.

Who This Book Is For

Aspiring engineering leaders seeking management fundamentals, new managers transitioning into people leadership, and experienced executives refreshing approaches to performance and innovation. Its practical takeaways scale across software teams from lean startups to large enterprises.

From the Back Cover

The modern digital landscape presents many threats and opportunities, necessitating a robust understanding of cybersecurity. This book offers readers a broad-spectrum view of cybersecurity, providing insights from fundamental concepts to advanced technologies.

Beginning with the foundational understanding of the ever-evolving threat landscape, the book methodically introduces many cyber threats. From familiar challenges like malware and phishing to more sophisticated attacks targeting IoT and blockchain, readers will gain a robust comprehension of the attack vectors threatening our digital world.

Understanding threats is just the start. The book also delves deep into the defensive mechanisms and strategies to counter these challenges. Readers will explore the intricate art of cryptography, the nuances of securing both mobile and web applications, and the complexities inherent in ensuring the safety of cloud environments. Through meticulously crafted case studies tailored for each chapter, readers will witness theoretical concepts' practical implications and applications. These studies, although fictional, resonate with real-world scenarios, offering a nuanced understanding of the material and facilitating its practical application.

Complementing the knowledge are reinforcement activities designed to test and solidify understanding. Through multiple-choice questions, readers can gauge their grasp of each chapter's content, and actionable recommendations offer insights on how to apply this knowledge in real-world settings. Adding chapters that delve into the intersection of cutting-edge technologies like AI and cybersecurity ensures that readers are prepared for the present and future of digital security. This book promises a holistic, hands-on, and forward-looking education in cybersecurity, ensuring readers are both knowledgeable and action-ready.

What You Will Learn

• The vast array of cyber threats, laying the groundwork for understanding the significance of cybersecurity
• Various attack vectors, from malware and phishing to DDoS, giving readers a detailed understanding of potential threats
• The psychological aspect of cyber threats, revealing how humans can be manipulated into compromising security
• How information is encrypted and decrypted to preserve its integrity and confidentiality
• The techniques and technologies that safeguard data being transferred across networks
• Strategies and methods to protect online applications from threats
• How to safeguard data and devices in an increasingly mobile-first world
• The complexities of the complexities of cloud environments, offering tools and strategies to ensure data safety
• The science behind investigating and analyzing cybercrimes post-incident
• How to assess system vulnerabilities and how ethical hacking can identify weaknesses

About the Author

As a passionate and customer-centric engineering leader, Raphael Neves excels at fostering collaboration between engineering and cross-functional teams to create innovative and value-driven products. He embraces that people are the main motto for driving any business to success and directly contributes to making engineering leaders less tech-centric and more human-oriented. With extensive experience across various industries, he brings to his debut book, the secret ingredients to develop a strong leadership character, build high-performing teams, drive continuous improvement, create a rock-solid engineering culture, and align engineering efforts with business objectives.

Raphael dedicated the last nine years of his professional experience to leadership roles, and he is currently working as a Director of Engineering at Zendesk and previously worked as Director of Engineering at Tymeshift. He grows teams, develops people, and prioritizes a customer-centric and human-oriented culture.