Just Read: Managing Humans

I’ve just finished reading ‘Managing Humans‘ by Michael Lopp, also known as Rands.

It’s a witty and amusing read for anyone who has any interest in office politics, particularly those in IT. It’s written from the point of view of a development middle manager, and highlights with surprising accuracy the stereotypes of employees and managers you find both in a large organisation or a startup.

For me (with particular personal relevance), the highlight of the book was a paragraph commenting on an average employee who’s drowning in work he’ll never be able to finish because he’s fundamentally not good enough, whom you should get rid of:

If you’re the manager in this scenario, you’ve got to make a major change because you cannot release crap. There are companies that do this and end up making a tidy profit. You are not this person, because once you are rewarded for releasing crap, you begin a blind walk down a path of mediocrity that ends up with you working at Computer Associates on a product no one has heard of and that no one cares about.