“Effective Leadership in High Tech” Syllabus and Reading List
Every Fall quarter, Stanford kindly permits Mauria Finley and I to teach “CS 183E: Effective Leadership in High Tech.” (AKA: “Soft Skills for CS Majors.”) We try to pay forward the lessons we learned over many years working as technical leaders and entrepreneurs in engineering and product management. Our goal is to equip new grads with the lessons we wished we’d known when we started our own careers… so you can go forth and make new and different mistakes than we did!
Our class offers the tools to find your first job in the tech industry, transition from college, to career, to leadership in technical roles, and thrive professionally over time. Of course, not everyone has that goal — but our class is intended for those who do.
We’re sharing our syllabus and reading list here for those considering taking the class, or simply curious about a tech leadership curriculum for college students!
Section 1: Being a Great Individual Contributor
Week 1: Personal Productivity — Leading starts with yourself. Understanding the big picture and how it affects your project; driving outcomes, not process; setting goals; when to ask for help.
Readings: Productivity Hacks * Maker Schedule, Manager Schedule * 5 Tips of a Productive Developer * Optional: Procrastination * Optional: Pick Just Three * Optional: Frequency Reduces Difficulty * Optional: Tackle the Hard Stuff First
Week 2: Thought Leadership — What thought leadership is; when you need buy-in and how to get it; how to handle success (and failure!)
Readings: How to Get Real Buy-In * Snippets from Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (full book recommended, but not required class reading)
Week 3: Resolving Conflict — Types of conflict and tough conversations; debugging to root cause; techniques for working through and resolving conflict; when to ask for help.
Readings: None
Section 2: Transitioning Into Leadership
Week 4: Becoming a Leader — What makes you an awesome resource for your boss and team; taking ownership; influence vs. authority; being respected AND being trusted.
Readings: I’m Not a Leader
Week 5: Giving & Receiving Feedback — Feedback is both great and terrifying; how to use it to better yourself and your team.
Readings: Staying on Your Side of the Net * Radical Candor * Humans Hate Being Spun
Week 6: Interviewing — The big picture of hiring and the nitty gritty; high stakes judgment calls; how to be a great interviewer; continuous self-improvement.
Readings: Anatomy of the Perfect Technical Interview * This is How Coursera Competes… * What do the Best Interviewers Have in Common?
Week 7: Team Culture — What is culture? Values vs. perks; how you can shape it; how you will be shaped by it; creating positive energy and handling crises.
Readings: The Netflix Culture Deck * Draw the Owl (Twilio) * Google’s Quest to Build the Perfect Team * Valve Employee Handbook * Culture is the Behavior You Reward and Punish * Peacetime CEO, Wartime CEO
Section 3: Managing Your Career
Week 8: First Job to Early Career — Optimizing for growth and momentum; different roles and types of company; evaluating opportunities; when to leave.
Readings: How to ask for a raise * How to ask for a promotion * Valuing Employee Options * Excerpts from Lean In (full book recommended, but not required class reading)
Week 9: Networking and Mentorship — Importance of building strong relationships; your personal brand; finding mentors and sponsors; being a good “mentee.”
Readings: None
Week 10: Reflection — Look back at the topics of the course; dig deeper in areas of interest; Mauria and Jocelyn “AMA”.
Readings: Excerpts from Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. (full book recommended, but not required class reading)
