Book Review - Managing Humans (BoIB)

Originally posted on December 3, 2007 on the internal blog:

About three weeks ago, I got an email from the Columbus Metropolitan Library that "Managing Humans" was available. It's taken me a while due to other commitments to finish it and this review, but here goes.

Managing Humans is the first book by Michael Lopp, otherwise known as Rands from Rands in Repose. It is an updated and edited collection of essays from the Rands in Repose blog that focuses on management, specifically managing software engineers in software companies. Lopp's resume is quite extensive, taking him around Silicon Valley and back through Borland, Netscape, Apple, Symantec and the failed startup. Through the diversity of these stops, he's come up with a set of tales about management and various personalities you encounter in the workforce.

If you've read Rands in Repose, you know that it's very snarky and pointed in its commentary. Managing Humans tones these two items down, which allows the book to be a bit more accessable to the masses. It's very funny and "too true" in many of its passages. Lopp gives many of his characters names which are catchy. You will probably find yourself saying things like "I know a Fez and his name is....", or "my manager is sooooo Organic".

The catchiness of the book allows it to disseminate quality information in a consise 200 pages and appeals to managers and their employees at the same time. For managers, the importance he places on the one-on-one is and communication is very compelling. While for the staff, the importance of understanding who your manager is and how he thinks is a great start on figuring out how to "manage" your manager to help hims succeed and make sure he knows that you are doing it.

When you do get the book, be sure to read through the glossary which contains many terms which you should probably know if you're in software engineering. My personal favorites:

• Synergy - A word used in close proximity to Leverage
• Leverage - A word used in close proximity to Synergy
  

If you don't find that funny, then, maybe this book isn't for you. If you do, go pick it up.

I highly recommend this book for ease of reading, entertainment and insight. It's worth a purchase and a place on your bookshelf for quick reference of how to manage people to help them and you succeed.

PDF "Trouble"

I like Jeff Atwood's Coding Horror blog. I use it as fodder for many posts at my internal work blog. It covers a lot of "looking forward" topics for my group, but it doesn't hit home as much as it could. Some of those topics are so far out that my coworkers just aren't thinking about these things yet.

That changed today.

Jeff's post on PDFs is directly relevant to things that I do on a daily (or monthly) basis. In it, he argues against PDF and for HTML, which 99% of the time is fine. The user experience is better with HTML, it can do neat things by interfacing with the browser.

However, it doesn't allow the user to save their content. PDF does. Why is this important? Because you need to save a legal document.

An aside, my work currently consists of producing electronic statements for large companies. Your monthly cable bill, your wireless bill, your credit card bill...you name it...online. I have produced many HTML based statements, which are great. They interface with the end user, can allow them to sort transactions in some cases, or download CSV files to import into a spreadsheet. So why is it, that I argue against Jeff and for PDF? Because you can save PDF and get a file that looks and feels like that paper document I get in the mail.

Look and feel is important for large companies. They have spent loads of cash on print document authoring software. They spent even more cash on print vendor contracts or large print shops. It is important that the document they produce for paper looks the same or very similar then the one on the web. It reduces customer care costs if they are the same. PDF allows for that. You can do it with HTML, and some forward looking companies and utility startups are doing so.

I believe Jeff is simply ignorant of some of the uses for PDF, and probably doesn't know about the world I interface with.. But read the comments and you see a lot of users who just don't understand the advantages of PDF when it comes to statements. They overestimate the client and their legal team, as well as the end user.

As companies try to get more "green", they will try to reduce paper costs which means turning paper off for customers. As this occurs, HTML (well, actually the browsers) will have to come up with a better way to save a statement. Obviously IE can package a statement in an mht file. But Firefox, Opera and Safari can't. And we all know the holy wars that are unleashed when you limit your audience to one browser.

West By "Gosh" Virginia?

Has our society become so scared that we take a simple phrase and replace God with Gosh?

Who are we? Goofy?

That's exactly what the play by play guy on Fox said when he repeated the phrase my father uttered so many times over the years. Of course the Fox announcer probably just heard it for the first time when interim coach Stewart bellowed it at 2:20 of this clip.

Just another example of someone being too PC. Either the announcer or his producers were scared to say "God".

Wow.