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Everyone knows that senior leaders have extraordinary demands on their time. Their stamina, decisiveness, and high-wire balancing of resources, people, and priorities can seem superhuman. In this book, Michael Lopp, a senior leader at companies such as Slack, Pinterest, and Apple, brings the day-to-day reality of senior leadership back down to earth. In his engaging style, Lopp chronicles the practices and pitfalls that often define a typical senior leader's day, from the morning ritual to eleventh-hour emergencies and finding meaning and purpose outside of work.
Through short essays and longer chapters, you'll get a front-row seat to the at-times unpredictable, insufferable, and productive meetings, conversations, people, and processes that fill the hours--and practical insights on how to improve the skills you need to thrive in your role. Whether you're an acting senior leader or just aspiring to be, the essays in this book will spark recognition and reflection and help you to be more intentional about how you spend your most precious resource: your time.
- Build the skills needed to succeed as a senior leader
- Learn how to navigate challenging scenarios
- Manage your time and mental resources more efficiently and flexibly
- Prioritize between competing demands, both at work and at home, without burning out
- Remember to have fun
About the author
Michael Lopp is a veteran Silicon Valley-based engineering leader who builds both people and product at historic companies such as Borland, Netscape, Palantir, Pinterest, Slack, and Apple. While he's not deeply worrying about staying relevant, he writes about backpacks, bridges, people, leadership, and werewolves at the popular weblog, Rands in Repose. He currently works at Apple on "things". Lopp has four books. His first book, Managing Humans, now in its 4th edition, is a popular guide to the art of engineering leadership and clearly explains that while you will be rewarded for what you build, you will only be successful because of your people. His second book, Being Geek, is a career guide for geeks and nerds alike. Michael's third book, The Art of Leadership: Small Things, Done Well, published in May of 2020. And most recently, in 2023, he published The Software Developer's Career Handbook: A Guide to Navigating the Unpredictable.
