I recently finished listening to "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder.
I took almost zero notes when reading this book, but instead just listened and tried to absorb the story while cooking and cleaning.
To me, one of our greatest assets as humans is the ability to "Stand on the Shoulders of Giants"—to grow by passing on knowledge and experience from generation to generation. I turned to "historical non-fiction" in hopes of learning more directly from others' experiences.
Unlike everything else I've read, learned from, and posted about thus far, this book is a story book. What's different about a story is that it doesn't tell me in detail about something technical, and it doesn't tell me about how to do something, it conveys experience. My hope is to learn from others' successes and failures.
Tracy tells the story about a team of engineers employed at Data General making a new CPU, the Eclipse. He lets you talk with the manager, the senior engineers, and the "micro kids" (college grad new-hires) from a little bit before the CPU started being created to after it was released.
The engineers "didn't work for money." They we're building something awesome. West (manager) did not pat on the back. He stayed out of their way and let them design, build, and test it. Also, without them knowing, knew what was going on with project and solved problems no one knew existed (ex, the special cable). He did not show worries to team. Nobody asked the team to work overtime. They did it on their own and created a culture to foster living and breathing the project. West selected ambitious, smart engineers who really wanted to put their name on something and have an opportunity to build and not be some cog in a company like IBM. He hired intelligent engineers that were willing to forgo family and leisure for the chance to build something.
After the project was released, the regional manager had a pep talk: "What motivates people? Ego and money to buy what they and their families want." This was a new day. Clearly the machine no longer belonged to the team and its makers.
I think a lot of the learning of this book is stuck somewhere in my head, but I'd like to jot down a couple of thoughts.
It was good to read about the micro-kids. I too want to build something cool, and oftentimes I find myself driving too far toward the future and not taking a moment to enjoy life. Tracy's note was brief, but he did mention that the kids would be burnt out at some point. That's what happens to them. I think a better, longer-term plan is to balance drive with appreciation--to work towards the future and appreciate the present in concert. I think the modern-day analogy is working for a start-up. You do tons of work and with crummy compensation, for the chance to reap large rewards and create something that's your own. My plan is to instead slowly and steadily keep learning and keep building mastery until my skills and experience are great, not one product or idea. I'll reach my career prime much later, but in waiting I think I'll be much happier now and later. In the end, their product that they worked so hard on made up for 10% of the company's revenue and then the company slowly declined.
While I think the burn-out work-style was poor, I think West did something great. He helped the team succeed not by telling them what to make, but by communicating the importance of the thing they were working on, and by standing back and letting them have ownership. Ownership is one of Amazon's principles, and one I'm finding more and more important.