Kindle
he fundamental problem does not lie in any particular System but rather in Systems as Such. Salvation, if it is attainable at all, even partially, is to be sought in a deeper understanding of the ways of all Systems, not simply in a criticism of the errors of a particular system. Systems are seductive. They promise to do a hard job faster, better, and more easily than you could do it by yourself. But if you setup a System, you are likely to find your time and effort now being consumed in the care and feeding of the system itself. New problems are created by its very presence. Once set up, it won't go away; it grows and encroaches. It begins to do strange and wonderful things and breaks down in ways you never thought possible. It kicks back, gets in the way and opposes its own proper function. Your …
he fundamental problem does not lie in any particular System but rather in Systems as Such. Salvation, if it is attainable at all, even partially, is to be sought in a deeper understanding of the ways of all Systems, not simply in a criticism of the errors of a particular system. Systems are seductive. They promise to do a hard job faster, better, and more easily than you could do it by yourself. But if you setup a System, you are likely to find your time and effort now being consumed in the care and feeding of the system itself. New problems are created by its very presence. Once set up, it won't go away; it grows and encroaches. It begins to do strange and wonderful things and breaks down in ways you never thought possible. It kicks back, gets in the way and opposes its own proper function. Your own perspective becomes distorted by being in the system. You become anxious and push on it to make it work. Eventually you come to believe that the misbegotten product it so grudgingly delivers is what you really wanted all the time. At that time, encroachment is complete. You have become absorbed. You are now a systems-person.
The book provides food for though and a ton of examples on what can go wrong in systems. I found the style of writing hard to read. Only roughly half of the book is real "content", the other half is tests, worksheets, glossary and lists of referenced examples.
It's a one of a kind book -- it's the System as idiot blind Azathoth, piping a monotonous tune on a flute at the center of the Universe. It's the System at two in the morning, faking a human voice, blithely informing you there is no emergency and you have always been on fire. It's the System you created that tells you it's going to take your face to make its customers feel more comfortable.
It's a book that tells you every program that you write will have bugs, every company you work for will have policies that make no sense, and even the hacks you use to get around it have become ingrained into the System itself such that the System itself doesn't expect you to follows its rules, which is good because those rules would be illegal to follow in any case.
If you write code, if you're …
It's a one of a kind book -- it's the System as idiot blind Azathoth, piping a monotonous tune on a flute at the center of the Universe. It's the System at two in the morning, faking a human voice, blithely informing you there is no emergency and you have always been on fire. It's the System you created that tells you it's going to take your face to make its customers feel more comfortable.
It's a book that tells you every program that you write will have bugs, every company you work for will have policies that make no sense, and even the hacks you use to get around it have become ingrained into the System itself such that the System itself doesn't expect you to follows its rules, which is good because those rules would be illegal to follow in any case.
If you write code, if you're a manager, you're going to want to read this.
