Coding Notes

Michael Lopp is a middle manager of software engineering teams, having worked at various companies in the Silicon Valley including startups from the age of the internet boom his experience is truly varied. He has worked from the standpoint of the software developer, QA engineer and naturally the software engineering manager. This broad experience in work is very apparent and adds greatly to his book, which in the first chapter he jokingly titles “Don’t Be A Prick”. The book is described by him as “insights, ideas, and opinions about how to manage people” and his emphasis on people is spread throughout the book. In fact the key to what this management book is truly about is Lopp’s emphasis on people.

Managing Humans is a collection of Lopp’s essays from his blog, edited and categorized into book form, which gives it a very loose and varied feel. Chapter topics range widely from dealing with freak outs in the office to the importance of CVS comments. Due to this widely varied nature of the book the actual content and impact of the book is far greater than just a management book. In fact, management in this book is taken less from the standpoint of corporate policies and politics and more from the perspective of how to dissect the various types of people and how to utilize those people effectively, and more importantly how to understand and communicate with those people.

In one chapter Lopp describes the various types of attendees at meetings, how they interact, and their meeting personality. In another chapter Lopp talks about the different people that are important in the interviewing process, and while he advocates that an entire team should be involved he discusses the different bellwethers that add the most valuable feedback on the potential employee. In a broader since, Lopp talks throughout the book (with a pecific chapter for each) about the two rare coders termed “the fez”, and “the free electron”, but as mentioned earlier he talks not only about how to utilize them, but also how to make them better (more in the case of “the fez” than the “free electron”).

However, while Lopp talks about the different people that may be managed and how to utilize them he also talks about a varying degree of other topics, as well as somewhat how to be managed. He talks about how to resign gracefully, how to pass the phone screen, how he does the interview process, and how to pass the 90-day interview. He also talks about how to keep 1.0 software development projects alive from a management perspective. The most valuable aspect of the book, I believe, is Lopps explanation of how to deal with different people in a productive way, instead of a contradicting way. Lopp even talks about how to deal with the different styles of managers and how to communicate effectively to them, while still maintaining your sanity.

Overall, this book is more a dissection of the common Software Development process within a company and how to work in this environment than it is a management book. However, it would do a lot of managers some good to read this book in order to understand what, and more importantly who they are managing. On top of this issue Lopp’s discussions of being managed adds an important aspect that the common software engineer can benefit from. I would suggest this book as default reading material for anyone that is in the technology industry, as well as anyone that wants a semi-comical look at the politics of the standard office place.

- Legit