Customer Reviews

Cube Farm

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If you're in IT and have chortled knowingly at Dilbert, then Blunden might take you to the next level of cynicism. He describes his travails in his first real programming job.

During the ascent of the dot coms, he ended up at Lawson, a mid ranking purveyor of business tools and technology consulting. He found himself in the tool making part of the company. A very disillusioning foray into coporate computing. Months of intense effort on his part, but no deliverable at the end. Apparently, this was scarcely unique in the firm. He describes others having spent years there, just performing office politics and backstabbing, as opposed to producing a tangible product, to actually benefit the company and its shareholders and customers.

Perhaps the funniest passage is his Y2K experience. He wonders aloud if Mr Y2K, Ed Yourdon, was peddling moonshine and hysteria. Many of us might agree.

Be warned that Blunden is a Reverend in the notorious subversive organisation called the Church of the SubGenius. One day, Donald Rumsfeld and the Department of Homeland Security will catch up with these blokes. Then, it's a one way trip to Gitmo.

If you want to feel better about your job (or confirm your fears that corporate life is horrible), you might want to read Cube Farm by Bill Blunden (Apress). It's a quirky little book about a person's foray from college into a corporate environment of a major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software vendor.

Blunden went to Cornell and got a degree in physics. But in Cleveland, that and a couple of bucks will get you coffee at Starbucks. It might even get you a job at Starbucks. After a stint in food service, he got another degree in Management Science and ended up eventually securing a job in IT working for Lawson Software in Minnesota. In his time there, he was part of a grossly dysfunctional company that had most of their software projects die before seeing a shipment to market. The people, given code names in the book to "protect the guilty", are a rogue's gallery of misfits and psychopaths who will make you hope you never have a boss or coworkers like that. The story ends when he decides to leave because he doesn't like what he's becoming.

The book is touted as "a reality check for anyone preparing to enter the work force, and a survival guide for those entangled in their own personal version of Office Space." While I have no doubt these work environments exist, I've never seen all these personality types in a single place in my over 25 years of IT. For a first IT job, this guy had a horrible experience. His "lessons" at the end of each chapter are short one liners about corporate life, but they are largely based on an extremely cynical view of corporate life. If I had his experience at Lawson, I'd probably feel the same. But I'm not sure I'd buy this book as anything more than one person's hard luck story of life in IT as well as an entertaining read by a talented writer. Using it as a guide to surviving in the office place might cause you problems if you work in a more normal company...

This book is an in-depth expose into the life of a software engineer during the tech bubble. From the interview, through the various projects and failures and into the eventual layoffs. It's filled with great insights and cutting humor. Each chapter covers a particular phase of his work experience and wraps up with some key takeaways.

Anyone who has been in the software industry for a while will find a lot to laugh and cringe about in this book. Personally I found the anecdotes informative and the condensed takeaways at the end very appropriate.

Behind all of the comedy Bill preaches the core principles of respect for yourself and your profession, and emphasizes professionalism. That's something we could all use.

The subtitle for this book could be "how not to pursue a career in programming." The author studied physics at Cornell, which proved to be a problem when he sought employment in Cleveland. Soon, he was waiting on tables for three years. After adding a little more education (this time in operations research), he was able to attract three job offers. Naturally, he chose the one with the highest salary and the sexiest programming language opportunity. Was that a good decision? Wrong!

Lawson Software is described as a software disaster waiting to happen in the ERP space. In order to speed up transaction times and throughput, the founders had decided to eliminate all internal documentation notes in the software. That meant that only a few people who had originally worked on developing the software had any idea of how to make fixes to and upgrades on the code. There was essentially no written documentation either.

That made it all but impossible for anyone to make progress on programming projects for the existing software unless someone who knew the code well would help. The knowledgeable software developers had their own axes to grind, which didn't coincide very much with the needs of customers or profits for the company.

As a result, Reverend Blunden describes a continuing series of fiascos in which people were launched against impossible targets and naturally failed. The situation was so bad that some chose to not even try, seeing their time there as a paid sabbatical.

At the end of each chapter, the author shares his takeaways from these experiences. If you are in a real dog-eat-dog software-based company, these takeaways are appropriate. If you are in a normally functioning company, the takeaways are a little too skeptical and cynical. It's like reading Dilbert.

To give you a sense of how bad the working environment was, the author reports being pleased when he lost his private office to be put into the cube farm.

If you want to feel better about your own company and job, definitely read this book. The author has an entertaining style with the kind of slight exaggeration suggested that makes a story work better.

On the other hand, I found myself recognizing a number of personality types from companies with which I had worked. So the potential to create massive harm is probably always there. Let the employee beware!

It's funny because it's true. Well, it's really not that funny if it happens to you, and that's why you need to learn the lessons Bill Blunden learned the hard way over the course of three woeful years of cubicle hell so that you can avoid suffering the same soul-destroying fate. Blunden's workplace warnings go out specifically to high-minded computer programmers sashaying across stages with pointy hats atop their heads, but the lessons imparted in this book can be applied by anyone to innumerable aspects of life. Life is not going to reward your collegiate efforts by dropping a fantastic job in your lap. Just finding a job may be tough, and the chances are good that you will never find a truly satisfying way to pay the bills. If you are extremely unlucky, you may find yourself trapped in a highly dysfunctional workplace such as the one described in this book, and you will look desperately for any port in a storm. Whatever happens, you will certainly encounter some of the personality types and managerial handlers described so effectively in these pages, and having prior knowledge of the danger zones ahead and the types of coworkers to look out before can be of tremendous help to you, your career, and your sanity. That is why Cube Farm is an important book.

Bill Blunden worked hard to earn a degree in physics from Cornell. Justifiably proud of his academic achievements, he sauntered into real life thinking the world was his oyster; he found out that the world is indeed a big oyster, but it has a habit of swallowing you whole when you reach in and begin searching for your own personal pearl. After waiting tables for three years, he went back to school and got a degree in operations research; job offers finally began to come in, and he chose to accept a position at Lawson Software in Minnesota. Thus began three years of hell. He had embellished his resume somewhat to claim he was a Java expert, and now he was a full-fledged software engineer. He was eager and determined to learn and contribute to the company, but he soon found out that the company was not eager to train him to do the job. This was in part due to the fact that only a handful of people still understood Lawson's clunky, leviathan-like code in the first place, but it was also due to bad management. His co-workers were little help, as the company environment led to intense competition within the ranks. Everyone wanted the best project for himself, time and money were wasted by having two teams basically competing for the same prize, and self-interest alongside the need to provide for a family led to knowledge hoarding. This was not the atmosphere of collegial teamwork Blunden had expected to find.

Blunden worked on one failed project after another. These were projects that seemed destined to fail; everyone knew it, especially the programmers, but the managers at Lawson basically ignored problems and left their teams hanging in the wind on a daily basis. A couple of good souls helped Blunden along the way, but by and large his work experience was shaped by characters easily defined by the names he assigns to them in the book: Long John Silver, Mad Dawg, the Shill, the Godfather, the Last Mohican, the Wax Artist, the Puppet Master, and others. Work became a horrible chore to Blunden, disillusionment set in, frustration rose, and then things got even worse. The stories he tells here seem extreme, but anyone who has ever worked in a cubicle or been assigned an oar to row a captainless ship going nowhere but down into a deep, dark, watery grave, knows just what he is talking about. Few experiences are as ridiculously awful as his, but even the best and the brightest encounter similar experiences to some degree.

This book is meant to help those to come, to warn them of the dangers ahead, but I'm not sure how helpful the book is in terms of overcoming such problems. Certainly, Blunden met with virtually no success in terms of coping to professional life in his own twisted environment. To Blunden's credit, he does commiserate with individuals who do what they have to do in order to care for their families. Management, however, is viciously hoisted on its own petard - and seemingly justifiably so.

Knowledge is power, and one can clearly seek a destination much more efficiently when the blinders of naiveté and ignorance are removed. In order to tell his own story, Blunden does take the time to explain a few technical matters involving programming, but he does a great job of conveying such necessary information in terms a layman can understand. Some would say that Blunden is far too cynical, but who can blame him given his horrifying experiences? Others would blame him for his own lack of success, and maybe there's a grain of truth to that. Clearly, though, he faced challenges deeply embedded in the managerial infrastructure, and I feel he has done a great service to all workers, especially cubicle dwellers, by pointing the harsh light of truth on problems systemic in too many workplace environments.

I wish I had this book when I was finishing my degree. (Disclaimer: I'm a classmate of the Reverend Bill's.) I'd already begun working by the time I finished my degree, but I figured some of the silliness I put up with was just one bad company.

Boy, was I wrong. While I've rarely been in situtations as bad as the author's, big companies excel at creating people gifted at the art of Orwellian double-speak. If you're not prepared, your sanity or your job security may be more tenous than any HR director or career center counselor will tell you. If you're headed for a career in IT, take heed.

Bill Blunden's book is a wickedly funny account of a bad career in software, starting with an Ivy League education (in Physics), detouring through food service, and ending up at one really bad company. Along the way we get to meet the cast of goons he worked with, with names that are easy to remember. (Why can't all novels have easy-on-the-brain characters like Long John Silver and The Godfather?)

The book rises above being black-humor Schadenfreude by giving lessons at the end of every chapter that we otherwise have to learn through bad personal experience. This book packs a lot of good advice, and warning signs to watch for as you learn to navigate cubicle land.

I don't think I'd be accused of being as cynical as Reverend Blunden. I'm still in the industry (if grad school counts), and I really liked some of my jobs. Still, I've learned some hard lessons along the way, like:

1. Your manager is lying to you

That's his job. When I was a manager, I realized people didn't really want the truthful answers to some questions. (Think otherwise? Try answering, "Are we going to run out of money?" with a straight face when you know you will in a couple weeks unless something happens.)

2. Don't pay attention to what people tell you, pay attention to what they do

Everyone has agendas and reasons for telling half-truths. If you want to know the real scoop, watch what people spend money on to find out their real priorities.

Save yourself some angst by grabbing a copy of this. It's a quick, fun read, and a great stay-awake device in boring meetings (or classes.)

Cube Farm should be an insightful look at a disfunctional company. But I found the author's glib style and the lack of thorough editing to be rather distracting. I read the book in short bursts, but usually found myself aggravated at the poor editing -- typographical errors and incorrect use of words -- which, for me, detracted significantly from the points the author was trying to make. In addition, the author has a very "black and white" view of the world, and uses expressions like "There are only two possible reasons for this..." when there are clearly other options as well. Given these defects, I cannot recommend this book without serious reservations.

Rev. Bill Blunden, Cube Farm (Apress, 2004)

Perhaps the most amusing thing about this amusing book is that Blunden, describing the mindless stupidity of corporate culture, obviously wrote it for, at best, those with a casual understanding of computers. And yet it was published by a press who specialize in computer books. Go figure.

The eighties were filled with novels of young, hip twentysomethings with nothing to do except destroy themselves. Cube Farm is the nineties nonfiction version-- guy in grad school basically falls into job because he has nothing better to do. The funny thing is, once he actually has a job, the characters get a lot weirder than anything you'll find in a Bret Easton Ellis novel.

The result is your basic "corporations suck" expose, but Blunden makes it work by keeping his tone conversational (he's the guy telling the story next to you at the bar after you've both had one too many), and being possessed of a humor blacker than pitch that either comes out in the sardonic tone of the writing or little jokes that are sure to appeal to the geek contingent.

I liked this book. Lots. If you work in the IT field, are thinking of going into the IT field, or generally think corporations suck, you'll probably get a kick out of it. ****

Bill Blunden started off as a physics major looking for a job and ended up at a software firm. Along the way he loses his idealism through various scrapes and run-ins with different corporate personalities: The Puppet Master, The Shill, The Milquetoast, The Mad Prophet, The Last Mohican, and so on and so on. In the preface he sets the tone for all corporate behavior with a quote from Larry Ellison: "It's not enough we [Oracle] win, everyone else must lose." Indeed, all of the personalities he encounters have their own agenda which they try to push forward invisibily and from a distance.

If I had read this book before I got into the workforce, I would have thought it was just absurd fiction exxagerating everything to make a horror show world. However, I've worked in the balkanized, in-fighting world that Bill describes. As a technical person I had the tendency to think people acted for the good of the team. Now I know better.

At the end of each chapter, Bill summarizes the salient points he learned at that stage in his job, such as:

* People with a monopoly on information are extremely leveraged

* If someone asks you to go somewhere without giving you a reason, don't

* Establish connections in other groups; you'll need them one day

Sadly, Bill can only tell his story. He (or anyone else, really) can't give you a recipe to solve the things you encounter in these sorts of environments. The real solution is getting a job at a better company. However, simply knowing the types of personalities and how they act can help you understand why the people around you do what they do.

As a side note, don't let the "Reverend" title or the SubGenius stuff in the introduction throw you. It's the only place in the book that stuff shows up. I was wary at first, but kept reading and was glad I did. Besides the abundance of commas, this is the only thing I can point at as bad.

Although this book is about a software company, I think anyone in a corporate environment may like it. He does mention technical details here and there, but you really don't need to understand. Simply realizing that these people like Unix and these other people like Windows and they fight over it takes care of most of that. It doesn't matter that they are fighting over technology since it could be anything. It's the characters, not the props, that drive the plot.

Bill Blunden is a mirror image of my experience half way round the world. If I had this advice before I had gone into this industry, I will not even think of going into it. It is an industry where every dollars and cents spent in a project needs to be justified by the Return of interest.

It is a good book in warning the next generation of professionals, be prepared where you never see the sun again because you had become a victim of avampire. You will go to work before the sun rise and come home long after the sunset even you are staying in countries with the 4 seasons.