Finished Reading Peopleware

It was an interesting read. Very informative, amazingly insightful and overwhelmingly convincing (barring the example described in the previous post). But it was next to useless for me as a programmer.

The book goes to great lengths describing the ideal working place, which makes the prospect of how things could be seem like Utopia, where the working man has the best job ever, never wants to leave the company and everyone's just all smiles, just by looking less at the short term, and concentrating more on the long term.

This book is entirely manager-speak. Only managers, those who have the power and inclination to make the workplace a better place, can get anything out of this book. Me, as a programmer, read how wonderful things could be, can compare to what I have and that's about it. Sure, I could go to my manager and say "they have this, why don't we have it too?", showing an opened book and pointing my finger at a paragraph in a page, but it ends there. Not once did I get additional understanding to how managers work, making my own job easier by understanding motives behind managerial decisions.

In fact, the majority of the book is still irrelevant, even if I would get a couple of people working at LightFrame, even if I would pay them full-time. The first half/three-quarters of the book is essentially saying "it's wise to splurge on your employees, if you do it in the right way". This prerequisites capital. It doesn't mean anything to me to try to get everyone a phoneless working environment with a 3-meter-minimum cubicle walls, because I don't have office space to start with. I can't send my core developers to a hotel or a off-season ski-resort for a week to finish off the last sprint for the next milestone, as it would chew the current year's budget in one go.

So, while the book has my respect and awe for its thoroughness and amount of insight, the only people that can get everything out of the book are managers in a medium- to large-sized company, wielding a fair amount of control, respect and leadership skills.

Joel on Software was a lot more entertaining, interesting and useful for me.

Oh, and LightFrame moves on pretty well, all things considered. It's just that one little ticket I'm worried about...