Software Engineering Manager's B.I.B.L.E.

Nobody reads the manual. Somebody should.

You got promoted because you were great at engineering. Now the job is asking you to stop being the person who solves every hard problem, and nobody warned you.

After twenty-five-plus years of building software and several years leading the people who build it, Franklin Coles wrote the field guide he wishes he'd had before his first day as a manager. This is not a leadership textbook. There are no seven habits, no twelve pillars, and no pyramid to memorize. It's a runbook for the trenches: short chapters that stand on their own, each built around plain-spoken maxims in a scripture-style cadence, followed by blunt, practical commentary.

Inside, you'll learn how to:

• Stay technical without becoming the hero (or the bottleneck)
• Name technical debt in terms the business will actually fund
• Run code reviews and one-on-ones that build people, not just pull requests
• Lead through an incident without hunting for someone to blame
• Have the conversation you've been avoiding for weeks
• Give promotion feedback that never comes as a surprise
• Influence product leaders, executives, and peer teams you can't give orders to
• Make it safe to say the real thing in the room

The book moves through three parts: The Technical Manager, The People Manager, and Leadership Beyond Your Team. Along the way, Coles shares the mistakes behind the lessons: the junior engineer he judged too harshly, the performance plan that ended with a termination he had to deliver, and the "confidential" conversation that wasn't.

Written for engineers who aspire to lead and engineering managers already deep in the trenches. Chew the meat, spit out the bones, and write your own maxims in the margins.