Cube Farm

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.

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.)

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

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!