Joel Spolsky

For those of you not familiar with Joel's writings, I strongly recommend that you sign up to his blog at (www.joelonsoftware.com), as well as read his column at Inc.com Joel is an amazing writer, and owner of the FogCreek company. Even if none of the texts that Joel write is your cup-of-tea, the pure fact of his writing ability, and way of thinking should make you a devoted reader.

Peopleware

I've just finished to read Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. The first few chapters (essays) where great. However, as I dwelled deeper in the book, I've encountered myself feeling less and less interested. Now, I understand that the book might be a bit out-dated (being written more than 20 years ago), but the extra chapters in the 2nd edition were suppose to handle that. Instead, they felt like the writers lost a bit of they touch - the original essays are amazingly written (even those that interested me less), but the new one were just "weaker". Another thing that I felt, was that I am not really the right audience for this book. Although I lead a team of several software engineers, I am not really a part of the Enterprise community/politics. Our company, being somewhat smaller, more agile, and less "formal", does not fit in the corporate image that that the authors try to paint. Some of the mental adjustments that I had to make were just not that easy to make. All-in-all, I believe the book is a good read, and I'd recommend it to at least some of my peers, but wouldn't insist that they read it too fanatically.