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Books Media Book Reviews

Cube Farm 306

Posted by timothy from the square-pegs dept.
Sarusa writes "Stop me if you've heard this one: Bright, innocent, bushytailed overachiever geek, inexorably crushed by the harsh realities of corporate America, turns into paranoid shaven-headed slacker (and Church of the Subgenius minister) who sees conspiracy theories under every rock. 'Heard it?' you sneer, 'I've lived it!' So why would you want to read a book about it? Cube Farm by Bill Blunden proves that if nothing else, you can always serve as a bad example." Read on for the rest of Sarusa's review.
Cube Farm
author Bill Blunden
pages 150
publisher Apress
rating 7
reviewer Sarusa
ISBN 1590594037
summary Welcome to Hell, here's your cube.

The book chronicles Blunden's travails as a fresh Cornell grad finding out his degree is useless. After waiting tables, he discovers Java is hot, and gets a job in the incredibly dysfunctional R&D department of Lawson Software, one of those companies that makes horribly dull but necessary business software. Young Blunden is shunted from one doomed project to the next as internal divisions compete with each other (and internally) for territory. The code base is millions of lines of ancient K&R C with all the comments stripped out (!) for speed of compilation. Only a few people understand the entire system to any degree, and these Illuminati crush any attempt to create or disseminate any documentation since that would erode their power base. Any projects that might threaten their monopoly are dispatched by the simple expedient of not responding to any emails or phone calls or attending meetings.

Cube Farm is written in a conversational, semi-edgy style that I found very easy to read, though occasionally annoying when it gets too hip. The subject is technical, but the theme is purely human foible, and Blunden makes an effort to make things understandable even by the non-geeky. So you don't have to be a nerd to understand the book - it would sure help you appreciate it, though.

Important characters are assigned descriptive names such as the Puppet Master, the Godfather, the Wax Master, Mike and Ike, and the Mad Hungarian. This may sound a bit cheap, but works well and makes it easy to keep track of the defectis personae. Everything is well partitioned, and Dance of Death woodcuts enliven the pages.

The obvious question, Why you would read something so horribly depressing? There are only negative lessons to be learned here. Well, in many ways Cube Farm is the informal, nasty version of what you'd get by reading books like Death March (Yourdon, 2003 2nd ed), Herding Cats (Rainwater, 2002), and Software Runaways (Glass, 1997). You can learn a lot from a bad example, like what it means if they won't say Yes or No. Perhaps it'll make you feel better about your own company, which is probably not quite this screwed up. Or there's always good ol' schadenfreude.

Would you give this book to an eager young programmer? Either it would be a bit like taking a sledgehammer to a kitten, or (more likely) it would just all cascade off, unheeded -- "obviously, this could never happen to me." For everyone else, if you've had at least one job or failed project under your belt you might find this horrifically fascinating, similar to watching Repligator. It might help with your next (knock on wood) fine project. Finally, it's a quick read, so I felt my time was well (or at least enjoyably) spent.

You can purchase Cube Farm from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Cube Farm

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  • I saw the movie (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @03:53PM (#10779868)
    And the sequel Hypercube... and it was just okay.

  • the last thing (Score:4, Funny)

    by kin_korn_karn ( 466864 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @03:54PM (#10779878) Homepage
    The last thing I want to do after living this for 8 hours a day is to go home and read about it.
  • "Would you give this book to an eager young programmer? Either it would be a bit like taking a sledgehammer to a kitten..."

    Goodness, how graphic. If someone wants eager young programmers to knock off kittens, there are alternatives.

  • Disenchantment (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 )
    I was disenchanted, frustrated, and paranoid in middle school (6th-8th grades). It got worse in high school. In college I gave up on learning anything in class because most of my profs were idiots. When I graduated, I got a job and realized that almost everyone I worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent.

    I complained about all this, and you know what they told me? Welcome to the world.

    • Everyone everywhere sucks and I am great (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:05PM (#10779996)
      Parent poster reminds me of a Tim Wilson line: been divorced four times? Hell, maybe its you.

    • Re:Disenchantment (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I enjoy the phrase "cynical enough to see the system, not motivated enough to exploit it."

      There's nothing worse than realizing everyone around you is incompetent and being lead around like sheep but not wanting to sell your soul to be in charge (i.e. politicians). You're just stuck somewhere in the middle.

      • Re:Disenchantment (Score:4, Insightful)

        by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:47PM (#10780451)
        There's nothing worse than realizing everyone around you is incompetent and being lead around like sheep but not wanting to sell your soul to be in charge (i.e. politicians). You're just stuck somewhere in the middle.

        I disagree. Drop out of the system. I did. I'm never going back to a cube farm again. Ever. The only reason people feel stuck is that they have very expensive lifestyles to pay for. It's surprising how little you miss all of the shit once it's gone (new cars, cable TV, new computers, overpriced clothes, etc.).
        • I disagree. Drop out of the system. I did. I'm never going back to a cube farm again. Ever. The only reason people feel stuck is that they have very expensive lifestyles to pay for. It's surprising how little you miss all of the shit once it's gone (new cars, cable TV, new computers, overpriced clothes, etc.) Ah, good point. But there is a reason you're missing for why people might not drop out of the system. Alimony, and child support.
          • Ah, good point. But there is a reason you're missing for why people might not drop out of the system. Alimony, and child support.

            Very true. Once you have a kid, you're screwed. You've got to support that kid for at least 20 years. That's a hell of a lot of pressure. I didn't even think about that. But then again, people only have kids if they're well off enough that they can afford the kid... right?

    • Re:Disenchantment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ltbarcly ( 398259 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:09PM (#10780031)
      I doubt it. More likely you are just a prick who thinks everyone is dumb if they don't see things exactly the way you do, or if they disagree. I find it very very unlikely that you knew more than your professors in college, and then went on to a cookie cutter cube-job. Are you just that much of an underachiever? Something about your story just doesn't add up. You're smarter and more competent than everyone else, just like everybody else.

      Welcome to the world, hotshot.

      It is alot harder to be competent than to point out the incompetence of others. Noticing incompetence only requires the right knowledge on one topic at one moment in time, BEING competent requires the right knowledge/skill on every topic you deal with all the time, and the energy to actually do it.
      • Or maybe the profs were like some I've dealt with... who mutter in a broken english accent reading straight off the (often incorrect) PowerPoint slides that came with the book... or waxing longingly about the architectures of IBM mainframes while not teaching anything about computer architectures designed after 1970.

        I took an OS course like this once. By that time, I was already doing driver-level hacking in the MkLinux kernel. I corrected the professor at least once or twice in nearly every class meeti

    • Re:Disenchantment (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Remember all those times when you were a little boy, and your mommy told you how great you were?

      Well, now you know she was lying.

    • Re:Disenchantment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Phixxr ( 794883 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:12PM (#10780073)
      Then you suddenly realized that it was you who was incompetent all along, but you were just in denial...

      -phixxr :)

    • Re:Disenchantment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by microTodd ( 240390 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:13PM (#10780074) Homepage Journal
      I got a job and realized that almost everyone I worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent

      Do you consider yourself above average intelligence? If you are, that means that by definition most (i.e. more than half) of the people you meet are dumber than you.

    • Re:Disenchantment (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I got a job and realized that almost everyone I worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent.

      Sit back, take a deap breath and look around. Maybe it is you who are the problem, not everyone else.

      When someone says "Everyone is an asshole" or "everyone is stupid" the chances are that the person making the comment is the stupid asshole.
      • I agree. Chances are, someone in that position is the problem. As they say with poker, if you can't identify the sucker at the table then it's probably you.

        I should probably have tempered my statements. I'm the only one here who knows the people to whom I'm referring. I'm a little disappointed that my post was modded in such a way; I clearly wasn't trying to be flamebait.

        I don't feel that everybody is incompetent... just a lot of the people I deal with frequently. I get to hear all kinds of ridiculous sta

        • Re:Disenchantment (Score:3, Insightful)

          by gcaseye6677 ( 694805 )
          Putting up with different opinions, even if you know they're wrong, is part of maturity. Yes, it's a tough pill to swallow, but you're going to keep slamming your head into a brick wall if you don't. You are doing the right thing by forming your own company, it sounds like you are smart enough to keep it running, but business acumen is very important as well. That included seeing things from the client's point of view, and some clients will definitely be morons. You can't cause them to lose face, or you'll

  • soul of a new machine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @03:59PM (#10779935) Homepage
    The tracy kidder book is quite good, about the creation of a new Data General Computer. Although that book too will likely make anyone reading it question if they want to be an engineer. Won a pulizer prize if I remember correctly.

    • It was a brilliant book. I worked for DEC at a later date, so it was an amazing picture of my former employer war of competition, and as someone who worked on those machines as a programmer, a fascinating insight into the hardware development process.

      But its really about people, not technology.

  • Save yourself the time... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:01PM (#10779959)

    ...and rent Office Space [imdb.com].

    • I, Blasphemer (Score:2, Insightful)

      by EtherAlchemist ( 789180 )

      ...and rent Office Space.

      Why do we always come back to this movie? Other than a few funny sequences and lines, it's basically boring. Yeah, I said it, but we're all thinking it!

      It's because we've got nothing else that even comes close to the sad truth that is our life. It sucks so bad we've elevated the one movie of closest relevance to cult status.

      As for books, 80% or more of the people here could fill volumes on the subject with anecdotes about management, TPS reports, shitty office hardware etc,

      • but we're all thinking it!
        And your reason for coming to that conclusion is what again? (Other than a desire to invent facts to support a point).

        I liked it, and still like it after about four viewings. I am not a member of that "all" that you are referring to (which means it was a lie to say "we all".)

        • Hey, congratulations- you like the movie. That must mean that everyone did, then?

          Hmm, maybe I should add a disclaimer to my sig (notice I said I and not we all) that qualifies all preceding text by the author as opinion unless stated otherwise.

          Perhaps it's a fact that there is always one or more people who will take what's said by others as literal and not figurative. Some are people who are just dicks about it, but that's my opinion.


          • (notice I said I and not we all)
            Since you're memory is so short, here's your exact words to remind you again:

            Yeah, I said it, but we're all thinking it!
            A person is entitled to his own opinion. He is not entitled to dictate the opinions of others.

            Some are people who are just dicks about it
            I do not apologise for demanding honesty.
      • Office Space isn't a movie that a lot of people 'get' in one sitting. It's definitely in the same relm as The Big Lebowski in this respect. You probably won't like it all that much after seeing it once, but it really grows on you after a few viewings. But that's just my opinion.
      • I've seen it three times now. The first time I thought it was brilliant. The second time, I thought it was kind of boring. The third time I thought it was more clever than the first time, and I caught a bunch of things I missed then.

        unfortunately, it's not nearly as good as "The Office" on the BBC. I can't think of anything that will exceed that for artistic critique on the modern office environment.
      • "Yeah, I said it, but we're all thinking it!"

        No, we're NOT all thinking it, as several others have already confirmed. People usually don't like being spoken for like that.

        Yes, I read your rant agaist the other guy about how that's just your opinion, but you need to learn how to phrase it as your opinion, and not as a generalization.

        What's wrong with saying, "I bet we're all thinking it", "I imagine we're all thinking it", "I suspect we're all thinking it", "I'm sure we're all thinking it", or something
    • >...and rent Office Space.

      Everybody's seen Office Space already. Anyone who like it should run out immediately and find a copy of Bruce Bethke's novel, "Headcrash". Think of it as a cyberpunk-ish version of Office Space, only funnier.

  • Conspiracy..bah (Score:5, Funny)

    by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 ( 718736 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:03PM (#10779976)
    turns into paranoid shaven-headed slacker (and Church of the Subgenius minister) who sees conspiracy theories under every rock.

    There really are no conspiracies, however 'THEM' is surreptitiously trying to make us believe that there are conspiracies in an effort to draw our attention away from what is actually going on. You see if I actually believed in copnsipiracies, then I would be waisting my time trying to prove said conspiracies, instead of trying to uncover the REAL truth. However, since there are no conspiracies, 'THEM' cannot conspire to create conspiracies, and therefore I do not have to waste my time trying to figure them out. Then again, if 'THEM' is trying to make us believe there are conspiracies, when there are really no conspiracies, then there is a conspiracy to creat conspiracies. Hah, they will not fool me - Since there are no conspiracies, there cannot be a conspiracy to create conspiracies, therefore I will still be able to focus on discovering the truth.

    Wheres my tinfoil hat, and my 712th printing of Catcher in the Rye, although I don't know why I need another, but I do know that I need it because it hase the new extra black ink.

  • Whats so bad about K&R C? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by torpor ( 458 )
    .. been writing it now for 20 years, still going strong ..
    • Whats so bad about K&R C?

      Nothing, unless you have a million lines of it with no comments. In that case, you would be fucked backwards and forwards. Bonus points if variable names are less then or equal to 4 characters in length, double your score if they always begin with "a", "b", or "c".

  • Or is this roughly the plot of 'The Matrix'...

  • An easy way out... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:07PM (#10780013)
    1. Get hypnotized, kill therapist halfway through session.
    2. Hatch grand scheme to fleece company with couple of geeks at work.
    3. Wait for scheme to go horribly wrong...if possible engage in flirting, drinking, movie watching and general merry making during this period. Heineken and Kungfu movies are the preferred varieties of entertainment.
    4. Engage local frustrated employee to burn up office and evidence of scheme hatched in (3). Members of said species are easily found in office basements usually mumbling to themselves.
    5. Quit software job, and obtain employment at neighbor's construction facility.
    6. ???
    7. PROFIT!!!

  • Cube Life (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kc0re ( 739168 )
    I don't have a cube, I have an area. But it's quite disconcerting to think that corporate America has thrown us into this "worker bee, sit at your desk and produce" model. It sucks. But on the other hand, I get paid to sit right here, so I'm good. I'd be interested in reading the book, however, I am afraid it would discourage me more than I already am.

  • Hey, he stole my life! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RealProgrammer ( 723725 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:08PM (#10780020) Homepage Journal
    But he can have it. I've got a new one, trolling on blogs.

    The pay isn't great, but the complete lack of any sense of accomplishment makes me feel guilty for what I get anyway.

  • hah I'm like that (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Naikrovek ( 667 ) <jjohnson@ps g . com> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:09PM (#10780034)
    All my previous jobs have been positions where I was in control of what happened. I was the sysadmin and primary developer. I was the regional MIS Manager. etc.

    Now I work at S**** F*** and I'm just a Technical Analyst. The shock of going from ruler on-high to "cube occupation device" has been tremendously shocking.

    It took weeks to get admin rights to a machine I have physical control over. I cannot install any software on my own, under any circumstances. The only software that can EVER be installed is done remotely via SMS issuance. I do most of my coding in Notepad because I don't want to waste seven weeks on an absolute beginners Java course so that I can install WSAD.

    The rules in place here are unbelieveable. I can't even run FireFox from my USB key. (I can't use a USB key at all!)

    If Galilleo worked here he would have never discovered anything. He would waste away and the only thing he'd have to look forward to is his 30th anniversary ceremony, which lasts an entire 5 minutes.

    Now I'm becoming a conspiracy theorist.

    We buy all our software (all of it, even pay-for software) from a company of unknown origin (more on that in a second) who provides indemnification for us. We can't even use Perl unless we buy it from this company and have them provide us a binary. Same for every other common-sense utility or peice of software that I used to install with reckless abandon at my previous employers.

    This company (known as STA) charges hundreds of dollars PER LINE OF SOURCE CODE to provide indemnification, including lines that consist entirely of "}" or "{". I believe that STA has been formed by some of the higher up lawyers in S**** F*** and since they mandate that ALL software (even things like MS Windows XP) be purchased through STA, that they stand to benefit from its existance. Whoever decided to start up companies to provide indemnification against software was a genius. I wish I'd thought of that. I woudln't be a cube occupation device, I'd be a tropical beach occupation device.

    So yeah, *takes drink of 35th cup of coffee* you can say I've changed. My company has over 130k employees. I simply cannot change anything, and am forced to spend my energy coming up with reasons why I can't do the things I'm so very used to doing.
    • So yeah, *takes drink of 35th cup of coffee* you can say I've changed. Jeez, maybe you oughta lay off the coffee a bit?

    • Re:hah I'm like that (Score:5, Funny)

      by djdavetrouble ( 442175 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:29PM (#10780248) Homepage
      Now I work at S**** F***

      you work at Shit Fuck !?!? I have been trying to get a job there for years !

    • Re:hah I'm like that (Score:5, Interesting)

      by relaxrelax ( 820738 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:31PM (#10780258)
      Been there, done that, got the "laid off but still not paid after 6 months" T-shirt!

      My boss was too busy learning to play flute to provide any leadership. Good thing too, because his leadership would be some kind of short int overflow negative.

      People got fired every 2 years to be replaced by rookie academics with no work experience. Without warning. Without documentation. All at once, so no between-company leadership could occur.

      We were not allowed to leave the company for lunch more than 2 at a time. And I got blamed for taking lunch at 11h. Go figure!

      Every file had to be labeled as written by the boss - who does not code (which made tracking who makes bugs impossible).

      The printer has a lock and the only time in 18 months I was allowed to print something, the key was in Japan with the boss promising a demo of things not implemented yet for tomorrow.

      As part of the 4th cycle of worker recyclement, I had to read code commented in 3 different language. On my first day it wouldn't compile at all!

      I've never seen a backup. Ever. My boss believes in God a bit too much...

      After being 4 years late on schedule, the boss decided to switch from C++ to C# completely. OUCH!

      This isn't cube farm. It's goto-ridden code incubation farm!

      ALL HAIL MURPHY'S LAW!
    • While a feel for you there is nothing unusual about not being able to use a USB key. Disabling those in becoming common practice to prevent data theft.
    • If the S**** F*** you're talking about is the S**** F*** I'm thinking of, I use to work at the Corporate HQ in B**********, I******* (hey, this is fun!). I almost cancelled my c** i******** p***** when I saw what went on inside those buildings. Oh, the stories...
    • It took you weeks to get admin rights on a machine you had physical control over??

      All you need to take care of that is a small power "glitch" ;-) and an handy little utility CD.
    • You claim you were a sysadmin, but you can't understand why you are not allowed to install any software you want on your company-owned computer? You are angry that you are not allowed to run unauthorized software from a USB key? Maybe these issues are the reason you are not in your previous all-powerful job.

      You claim that the company that provides your software charges hundreds of dollars per line of source for indemnification. Well, for that price, the cost of Windows XP indemnification would probably exc

  • Oh, good! (Score:5, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:10PM (#10780042) Journal
    More pampered Western silkyboy angst.

    I just can't enough of that. Honest.

    conversational, semi-edgy style

    Translation: Usenet readers will feel at home.

  • Do what I did.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:11PM (#10780053)
    Get a job at a college or university.

    I ended up working full-time in the IT dept of the university I graduated from. I didn't plan on, it just kind of happened. The salary isn't as good as "corporate" IT salaries, but it does have other benefits. I can take classes at the school free of charge (not counting the textbook). I can take one class a semester (3 semesters in a year) at another local college for my Masters degree, tuition free. And the benefits are pretty good to. If I had any college age kids, they could go to school tuition free here as well. All in all, a good job without the stress that seems to go hand in hand with corporate IT jobs.
    • Almost as good...

      Get a government IT job. You know, some place cool like NASA, the DOE or the DOD where they actually do some real computing.

      Government jobs are great for slackers...no stress, great job security, decent pay, lots of vacation, and hey if you don't know how to do your own job, there's 50,000 contractors out there waiting in the wings to accomplish your task for the lowest bid.

  • Awww (Score:4, Funny)

    by NetNifty ( 796376 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:14PM (#10780090) Homepage
    I thought this was going to be about a beowulf cluster of GameCubes.
  • Bright, innocent, bushytailed overachiever geek, inexorably crushed by the harsh realities of corporate America, turns into

    A corporate former-programmer evil brain who uses his monopoly to crush the competition!

    Yes! That'd be a wonderful story - oh, wait...

  • Can't touch where I am. (Score:4, Funny)

    by i_r_sensitive ( 697893 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:21PM (#10780156)
    Imagine a direct marketing company. At that company, all technical needs analysis and general IT/IS decision making is done by sales managers.

    And no they do not do a good job of it.

    Nor do they do an inspiring job of sales management either.

    In fact the only department which has put forward a successful sales initiative or proposal in 15 years has been the technical group.

    And teetering over it all is a peroxide blonde Manager of IT with delusions of CIO-dom, courtesy of a class she found on the back of the matchbook she lights her bong with, dismissed by her subordinates as incompetent, and her peers as "hyper-thyroid." I almost forgot, she is as territorial as all get out, can't manage machines, people, office politics, or even to fill the coffee machine, and makes banker's hours look like double-overtime...

    Don't get me started on the accountants, or the Dept of Leguminosae Enumeration as they insist on being called...

    Cube farm sounds like an upbeat bed-time story to the denizen of this cubicle.

  • I read this book (Score:5, Interesting)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) * on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:25PM (#10780196) Homepage Journal
    I read this book in a single setting on the airplane (Salt Lake City to San Francisco, so wasn't that long) and it was a fun one to read. It's basically an auto-biography of a guy who graduated with a degree in Physics to find out his best job opportunity was waiting tables at a local restaurant.

    The interesting thing about author's career at Lawson, as he emphasizes that in several places in the book, is that he always managed to work for departments that have never shipped a product. A lot of the time was spent in maintenance, planning, high-level design and then high-level redesign, office politics and what not.

    There's also a funny story about back-stabbing inside Lawson with some guys separating from Technology department and creating the Advanced Technology department (as if to imply that the other one is some kind of non-advanced, backward, technology).

  • Lawson's Crappy Site (Score:5, Funny)

    by megamouse ( 459865 ) <{ten.tsopria.ciryl} {ta} {todhsals}> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:32PM (#10780270)
    I like how Lawson's site renders horribly (in IE as well as Firefox) and contains broken image tags.

    Witness their News tab here. [corporate-ir.net]

    Perhaps it's OT, but would you buy enterprise software from a company that can't even manage a web site?

    • Having used their procurement software -- that site is a thing of beauty compared to their product. The client looks like it was thrown together by someone 20 minutes into Learn Visual Basic In 24 Hours.

  • I got a job and realized that almost everyone I worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent

    That's the Dilbert Principle [brainyencyclopedia.com] in action. Or I suppose the Peter Principle really (where *everyone* is incompetent, not just managers), but Scott Adams made it funnier.

    Things could work out well:

    1. Get job where almost everyone worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent.
    2. Leave job and instead write about job where almost everyone worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to w

  • A fleeting thought (Score:5, Insightful)

    by asliarun ( 636603 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:38PM (#10780327)
    You know, i've realized that it's easy to write sad shit, but incredibly difficult to write happy stuff. The funny thing is that most of us, at least the self-fashioned highbrows, deign to write favourable critiques only if it's depressing enough for you to slash your wrists! This penchant for despair is also something that i've been noticing in some of the /. comments and posts.

    I've been there and lived through that. I'm also sure that most of us have had our periods of depressions and frustrations too (choose your timeframe: junior school, high school, college, limbo between college and first job, stuck in a dead-end job etc.). I just want to say this, and i'm quoting here: THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

    Jobs will never come easy, and they'll never be a perfect fit for your skills and your interests. Money'll not come easy either. As for love, heck, we're all geeks here. We'll manage to find someone if we're incredibly lucky, brave and desparate enough to go through the trial and error process, and only if we're reasonably good looking to boot! What's left? NOTHING, except for unconditional love, perhaps, if you buy a dog. Yes, this is tabula rasa and it always will be.

    What i do, or at least try to do nowadays, is to stop reading this kind of depressing garbage and just focus on the little things. The joy of coding is not to be found in managing to decipher uncommented legacy code or what have you, but in managing to decipher a gem in the uncommented legacy code. It's not sneering at the 101 coding errors that we can find in someone else's code but in finding the one inexplicable construct in someone else's code and the thrill of discovering a new thought pattern.

    Or, as the Hagakure suggests:-
    "Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: Matters of great concern should be treated lightly. Master Ittei wrote: Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."

    I'm sorry if i've completely digressed here, as this is supposed to be a book review. However, i do feel an undercurrent of depression in most posts nowadays and just wanted to share my thoughts with all of you.
    • Thank you for your post. Slashdot has been depressing lately between the bush/kerry zealots and the IT layoff crap.

    • Re:A fleeting thought (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shostiru ( 708862 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @06:44PM (#10781862)
      (I'm not directing this at the parent post so much as making observation on issues raised therein).

      For the vast majority of people out there -- including us geeks -- all it takes to find a good partner, a good job, or most anything else in life is an understanding of primate social behaviour and courage. You can either wait around to "get lucky" (with relationships, jobs, etc.), or you can go out and put your ass on the line *every fucking day* until confidence with social skills becomes natural. You don't need to *be* the alpha primate, you just need to fake it in appropriate situations well enough to fool everyone else.

      No, there's no unconditional love, at least not outside of family and pets (and you can screw up either if you try hard enough). Seriously, why would you expect any different? Would *you* stick around in a job or relationship no matter how much it sucked? People respect you more when you expect the best of them, not tolerate the worst, and once you lose people's respect in a relationship or on the job, you're shark bait.

      You don't need to be "reasonably good looking" to find a relationship; even if your appearance is well below average you can more than make up for it with attitude and experience. You *do* need to act like you've got a pair. That took me a long time to figure out (damn shame Heartless Bitches International wasn't around then), even longer to put into action, mostly because I didn't want it to be true. As if the world cares what I want.

      What's certainly not going to work is expecting the rules of the game to change because we want them to. People -- all people, including us geeks -- are animals first, rational second, and behave accordingly. Either play that to your advantage (ethically, one would hope) and win, ignore it and lose, or do your best to opt out completely.

      For a lot of people out there, being depressed may be out of one's hands, but *staying* depressed isn't. I have great sympathy for those who cannot get medical or psychiatric treatment. I have absolutely none for those who can, but refuse to do so (or who see a shrink but won't do any of the hard work). Having been there myself I don't think I'm too far off the mark. It is my belief -- and I realize it won't be shared by all -- that some people go through periods in life where we'd sooner stay depressed and whine than get off our asses and fix things. I was there, many of my friends have been there. All the pity in the world doesn't help as much as one person saying "suck it up, everyone's got problems."

      And "suck it up" applies to bad IT jobs as well. I like reading about peoples' shitty IT jobs, I think most of these Death March stories are funny in a sick sort of way. But if you're in that position, either get (or create) a better job, or detach yourself emotionally, slack off, and think of it as absurdist humor. Either way *try* to remember that there are people in this country getting paid minimum wage, or worse, to do things you probably wouldn't do for many times your current salary.

  • Jobs at that place? (Score:4, Funny)

    by gmletzkojr ( 768460 ) <gmletzkojr@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @04:41PM (#10780353) Homepage Journal
    Did anyone else go to that guys' (old?) company, Lawson Software, just to see if there were any jobs available? Or was I the only one?
  • My dad used to work at Lawson software back in the 80's! I got to get him this book.

    I think the times my dad took me into Lawson's big computer room with it's raised floor and tall computers spinning those big tape reels probably helped spark my interest in computers a lot... and probably part of the reason why I'm a CS student now.

  • Lived it, litterally. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kamelion ( 12129 ) on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @05:07PM (#10780707)
    I'll have to read this book. I'm an ex-Lawson employee. Laid off in 2002.

    I need to defend something here. Although Bill might have been fed another story. The K&R code base did not lack comments for compilation speed. Back in 1997 I was told that it was because the code was meant to be "self documenting", that is, it was meant to be plain enough that you didn't need comments to understand it and comments got in the way and made the code more difficult to read. Also unless you are talking Universe 2.x or earlier it wasn't K&R any more, it was a mix of ANSI and K&R. We adjusted the compiler flags on the Unix platforms to allow for the mixture of syntaxes.

    Bill might have been fed a different story though. I always added comments above functions that I went in to maintain. I was never told that I could not comment my code, just that I shouldn't litter the code with comments.

    I liked working for Lawson up until the end. Lawson started going down hill when they started focussing on their IPO. Once Lawson focussed their goals on market cap rather than producing a quality product, the company started to spiral, IMHO.

    I also feel the company lacked vision. Since '98 we had a Linux product that Lawson refused to market or offer to interested customers. I doubt it exists any more as I was the only one maintaining it when I was laid off in 2002. The last official line I got for The Godfather (if it is who I think it was) was that offering the product would offend MS and Lawson would never risk offending MS. Lawson's Web product used to be browser agnostic until some MS zelot got in control of the project and decreed that it would only work on IE. There was no real technical reason for that limitation.

    Sadly Lawson was the best employer I ever had. I came from a worse environment and the one I'm in now makes Lawson look really good. Sigh.

  • Small world (Score:2, Informative)

    by PorkCharSui ( 583216 )
    Bill Bluden is my data structures TA at UC Davis. I had him for discussion at 8am this morning. He spent about 10 mintues at the beginning of the quarter telling about his book. Small world.

  • For me it used to be fun (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 10, 2004 @05:14PM (#10780782)
    I started out working for a small company experiencing, what seemed to be, exponential growth.

    It was owned by a really smart guy who just cared about results and understood that people are a package deal: if you like the good things about a person (like skill at coding/design), then you have to take that with the bad (like keeping odd hours, forgetting to attend meetings cos you are so zoned out in a coding trance).

    Our team consisted of about 5 guys who liked to have a good time at work. There was lots of noisy horseplay and practical jokes. The thing that infuriated everyone else is that we (5 guys) worked on a project that made 1/3 of the revenue for the whole company (which by then had grown to 300+ people) so there was no way they were going to fire us.

    Because of our highly unique work style, they decided to isolate us one one floor of an old building (the company had grown so fast that it had to lease space in several buildings)

    That's when the fun really started. While we never made pretesne of keeping normal business hours now we came and left any damn time we chose. Sometimes I'd come in to work at 11:00 hack a bit of code and take off at 2:00. I remember my boss telling me that we had to come in by at least 10:30. We'd hoot holler and yell inside jokes at each other and past anyone who dared show up on the floor.

    The end came when were were bought by a large borg like software multinational. Then the old gang kind of split up some fired some trying unsucessfully to get fired some drifting off to become consultants.

    Since then I have bounced from one contract to another, making a lot more money, but really missing the camaraderie we had back then.

    If I had any advice to offer it would be to pay as much attention to social factors when choosing a job as the salary. You want a nice team of people you can have fun with at work. In the end it makes your life a lot better than some extra cash.
  • I thought this was going to be a story about a Macintosh Cube render farm.

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