The Engineering & Leadership Blog
Articles, guides, and essays for engineering leaders and managers
The Engineering & Leadership Project regularly publishes blog posts, articles, and papers to help engineers become excellent engineering leaders.
We cover topics such as engineering project management, people management systems engineering, productivity, and more.
Scroll below to read our most recent work.
Remote work for (non-software) engineering teams
[Note from Pat: The following is a guest post by Cristian Orozco. Cristian is one of the partners of an FE exam prep startup called PrepFE. He is a graduate in civil engineering from the University of Tennessee. Cristian’s experience includes working both...
5 Tips to Accelerate Your Engineering Job Search During a Pandemic
[Note from Pat Sweet: This is a guest post from Jeff Perry of More Than Engineering] Times are tough for so many engineers at many levels right now. Some industries are downsizing in a big way. People have lost internships and jobs, or have just been blocked from...
Finding the 6th Day: A Productivity Guide for Engineers Who Need More Time Now
Download the guide One of the most common issues that my coaching students and staff bring to me is (you guessed it) productivity. It seems that no matter where in the world you are, what industry you're in, or what stage of your career you're in, finding...
20 Ways To Better Lead Virtual Teams
Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash If necessity is the mother of all invention, then we are living in a time where we'll be forced to be very inventive. The global COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc throughout the world. The toll on human life has already been...
10 Practices That Will Make You A Successful Engineer
[Note from Pat: This is a guest post from Justin Kauwale of Engproguides.com] Engineering as a subject and as an occupation is a very satisfying branch of science. Look around you and you will find marvels of engineering everywhere. The smart devices you use today...
One Thing Parenting Taught Me About Management that my MBA Didn’t
It's not uncommon for me to have events outside my work life contribute to how I approach my work. Today was one of those days. Today, I have my daughter and her unwavering desire to push boundaries to thank for getting me thinking about how I lead my...
The Lost Art of Delegation
Delegation is incredibly important. An organization cannot survive without managers who can effectively and efficiently delegate tasks to staff. Managers who fail to learn this critical skill will find they and their teams inefficient and ineffective. These are the...
Dear Engineers: Own the Problem
A while back, I got an email from a junior engineer asking whether it was "his job" to address some concerns about a design he had worked on. Admittedly, I was a bit torn with respect to how I should answer. My gut reaction was that this engineer was trying to dodge...
The Engineer’s Career Guide: How to Get More Job Offers
A few weeks ago, I started a new job as a senior systems engineer. I'm incredibly excited to be taking on a new challenge, and I'm sure there will be lots to share in the future as I settle into the new role. Today, I want to tell you about how I approached the job...
How to Avoid a Successful Life: Focus on Self Mastery, Flexibility and Action
[Editor's Note: This is another guest post from the excellent Tyler Watkins. You can check out his work on how to live a better life at tylerjwatkins.com.] In the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel at Stanford University conducted a series of experiments on...