DIY Tech MBA
Get an MBA yourself, Teach yourself about business basics
I reached a point in my career a few years ago where I wished I had an MBA, but it was difficult to get an MBA. It would be hard to stop working and get one, hard and expensive to find the time to do a part-time one, and I wasn't working for a place that would pay for one at the time.
I don't need the structure of an MBA program to provide motivation, and I'm not afraid to read. So I decided instead to just focus my reading practice towards an MBA curriculum.
My focus was on a Tech MBA which to me means learning about how to start, grow, and manage technology companies. The curriculum would need all the typical core classes, but electives that focus on technology leadership.
My research found all sorts of great sources for ideas:
- The assigned books of the top traditional MBA programs, and more tech-focused programs such as the Stern Tech MBA, Cornell Tech MBA, MIT Sloan (cool, they used a blog post of mine in a weekly link roundup), and CMU's Masters of Product Management.
- Personal MBA book and reading list.
- Seth Godin's altMBA unofficial book list.
- Basecamp MBA list
- My own (flawed) judgement.
Curriculum
I am actively working through the following:
Starting Points
Leadership
- High Output Management
- What You Do is Who You Are
- How to Lead When You are Not In Charge
- The Captain Class: a New Theory of Leadership
- The Principle of the Path
- Turn The Ship Around
- Small Unit Leadership
- The Effective Executive
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
Technical Leadership
- Art of Leadership
- Managing Humans
- Being Geek
- The Manager's Path
- Resilient Management
- Creativity Inc.
- The Elegant Puzzle
- Peopleware
- Building Great Software Engineering Teams
- How F*cked Up is Your Management?
- Debugging Teams
- 97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know
- Beautiful Teams
- Measure what Matters
- EntreLeadership
Economics
Finance
- Accounting Made Simple
- Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits
- Financial Intelligence, Revised Edition: A Manager's Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean
- CFO Techniques: A Hands-on Guide to Keeping Your Business Solvent and Successful
Sales + Marketing + Negotiations
- Mastering the Complex Sale
- Making Ideas Happen
- Building a Story Brand
- Blue Ocean Strategy
- Forever Employable
- Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
- Influence
- Never Split the Difference
Strategy
- Nine Lies about Work
- Company of One
- Your Next Five Moves
- Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
- Technology Strategy Patterns
- Built to Last
- Trillion Dollar Coach
- Good to Great
Startups + Rapid Growth
- The Lean Startup
- Zero to One
- High Growth Handbook
- The Hard Thing about Hard Things
- The Founder's Mentality
- Business Model Generation
- Blitzscaling
- Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
- Scaling Up
- Scaling Teams
Product Management
Design + Innovation + Creativity
- Hackers & Painters
- How Design Moves the World
- Myths of Innovation
- The Dance of the Possible: the mostly honest completely irreverent guide to creativity
- Steal like an Artist
- War of Art
- The Best Interface is No Interface
- Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs
- The Design of Everyday Things
- Critical Thinking
- User Story Mapping
Technology in Context
- Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology
- Close to the Machine
- Soul of a New Machine
- Ruined by Design
- The Circle
- Technopology
- A People’s History of Computing in the United States
Engineering
- Code Complete
- Release It
- Godel, Escher, Bach
- Code
- Beautiful Code
- Site Reliability Engineering
- Domain-Driven Design
Patrick Lencioni
I have special sections for Patrick Lencioni and Gerald Weinberg books. They are category-crossing, thought-provoking, solid reads.
- The Motive
- The Ideal Team Player
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- Death by Meeting
- Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars
- The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
- The Five Temptations of a CEO
- Getting Naked
- The Truth about Employee Engagement
- The Advantage
Gerald Weinberg
- The Psychology of Computer Programming
- Secrets of Consulting
- More Secrets of Consulting
- Becoming a Technical Leader
- More Secrets of Consulting
- Are Your Lights On?
- An Introduction to General Systems Thinking
Self-Awareness + Emotional Intelligence + Psychology
- Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity
- Mindset
- Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being
- Managing Oneself
- Range
- Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior
- Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement
- Radical Compassion
- Emotional Agility
- Atomic Habits
- What Got You Here Won't Get You There
- No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work
Thinking
- Thinking in Systems
- On Writing Well
- The Obstacle is the Way
- Ego is the Enemy
- Stillness is the Key
- The Great Mental Models: Vol 1
- Superthinking
- Thinking: Fast and Slow
- Superforecasting
- The Art of Learning
Case Studies / Other's Experiences
- The Year Without Pants
- Remote: Office Not Required
- It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
- Rework
- Lost and Founder
- Bad Blood
- That Will Never Work
- Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
- Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People: Doing Business the Chick-fil-A Way
- Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
- The Almanack of Naval
- Shoe Dog
- Principles
Ongoing Practice
There are a million ways to keep up to date, here are a few.
- Y Combinator's Startup School Library
- Stripe's Atlas Guides
- Harvard Business Review's 10 Must-Read series
- Increment Magazine
- ThoughtWork's Radar
- Matt Levine's Money Stuff column
- Stratechery, especially the concepts.
- YouTube MBA
Contribute
Feel free to send me a pull request with other suggestions:
