44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Gird yourself for a depressing look at your career!, January 4, 2003
This review is from: The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Paperback)
If you are a programmer who is constantly persuing self-improvement of your software development skills, but is frustrated by your social development environment (i.e. Management), this book is for you. You care enough about yourself to try and fix your troubled environment. After you finish this book, I suggest giving Pete McBreen's <i>Software Craftsmanship</i> a read, and follow that with Alistair Cockburn's <i>Agile Software Development</i>. Duncan's book shows software development as a battleground of politics and ego-tanks-Duncan suggests ways to survive that crazy mess. If you actually want to change the way you develop software, McBreen and Cockburn show you the door.
I finally finished the Career Programmer after putting it down so many months ago because...I found it...depressing. Why? I lived that crazy mess. However, I have a hard time pinning down who his intended audience is--the Sr. Programmer, the middling programmer, the junior programmer? He certainly addresses all of these, sometimes from paragraph to paragraph. I suppose that he's writing to them all, or more appropriately-to the program manager that's been promoted from Sr. Engineer. I guess this because he talks about accurately tracking your activities (a PSP tactic), Managing your Team, and Putting together your Testing Team. This is obviously a mix of topics that's going to apply to a project manager.
Duncan repeatedly puts the onus on the reader to be responsible for these activities because no one else, and certainly not your management will do these things for you. (Depressing.) He compliments this advice with more survivalist wisdom on politics: don't stick your head too high and get fired. Don't lay too low and ignore the politics game and get fired for becoming redundant. Make sure to kiss up and make sure to praise management but suggest ideas on how their protect could be "better" with ideas from the other corner of your mouth at the same time.
This endless list of survival tactics is guidebook material for beginning programmers, but like I said, if he's writing to project managers, it behoves the project manager (or Sr. Programmer) to teach their Jr. programmers these tactics. It would be a very intimidating book to read for the entry level programmer. However, entry level programmers, in my experience, don't read much (they Know How To Program: bring it on!) and it's the team lead programmers who by discovering failure, start reading these books. Thus, this book is yet another depressing account of Thinks You Should Have Known.
Duncan, in his wisdom, points out something that many a programmer has oft reflected on: career path. He doesn't talk about this to much point, but his section on it says: have a thought about what kind of developer you want to be before you jump into the industry and let it mold you into something you regret. How many of us feel molded even now? Too many. I reflect on how a doctor or a lawyer could easily make the same kind of mistake--let their industry whisk them along and wake up to find themselves as a profession in a field they failed to choose.
However, this book is saturated with irony: almost all pointed advice Duncan gives is to subvert the system. Sneak in your testing staff. Sneak in your design time. Lie about what you're doing to give your self time to do things management is too ignorant to approve of. Duncan writes: life is too short to work for clowns, but if you have to pull these stunts to build a development team, to what degree of clown do you stop working for? People concerned about the reality of the software industry should pay attention to the reality presented in Duncan's book.
I think that many of the topics that Duncan raises in his book are artifacts of Scientific Management and Software Engineering. The environments that Duncan describes - offices full of idiotic ego-battles where people talk about producing software - would not exist were Pete McBreen's vision of software development the existing reality (a reality where people cared about getting the work done as it reflects their reputation).
I also find it interesting to note that much of what Duncan writes has been written by Steve McConnell in <i>Rapid Development</i> and <i>Software Project Survival Guide</i>. However, McConnell and Duncan describe something much closer to the Software Engineering environment than what, in my experience, is actually the reallity for smaller application development projects. I had echoed the ideas McConnell promoted for lack of any better writing on software development. However, after reading McBreen and Cockburn's respective works, my views on how to develop applications have radically changed towards the Craftsman approach. McConnell, in <i>After the Goldrush</i> provides many good arguments for the Licensing of Software Engineers, McBreen compliments McConnell's tack that such licensing efforts-are only rarely applicable.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Primer for the Uninitiated, March 5, 2002
This review is from: The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Paperback)
From the very first chapter, I found myself nodding my head in agreement and chuckling about the inane situations Chris has encountered in Corporate America. Although he and I come from different worlds (Chris from software development and me from marketing/sales) his commentaries on the pitfalls, obstacles, and twisted logic of how Corporate America works is insightful and offers valuable tips on how to navigate potentially damaging confrontations.
This is a humorous, down-to-earth, practical guide that can be used by anyone (technical or non-technical) in coping with some truly wierd situations that arise. "The Career Programmer" is a quick read and definately deserves a second reading. If the truth be told, I sped through my first sitting with the book because I wanted to find out what happened to the chihuahua. Well done.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A really good and unique book, April 9, 2002
This review is from: The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics for an Imperfect World (Paperback)
...
It's actually quite a depressing read in many ways as it quickly disposes of all the illusions many of us have about our chosen field of work, but it always does so in an amusing and well writen way.
And more importantly it gives solid advise about what to do about it. How to make the company work more for you rather than against you. But always in a professional way, and still in the interests of the company.
It's particularly good as an antidote against all those methodologies which sound great on paper but don't stand a chance of being implemented in most companies.
I've seen plenty of books about how to succeed in management, and sales, and marketing, but never one about how to succeed as a programmer - in the sense of making your life better and more productive, rather than just the technical aspects.
I highly recommend this book.
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