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In Search of Stupidity
Rick Chapman, on the back of the dustcover, features an impressive resume of MicroPro, Ashton-Tate, IBM, Inso, Microsoft, Novell, DataEase, Stromberg, Sun Microsystems, Teradata and Ziff-Davis. For those who just recently caught up to speed with the computer industry, some names might sound unfamiliar. Indeed, a great many tech companies were driven into the ground either by poor management practice or poor product planning.
About the book
The author explores the stories of Digital Research, MicroPro, Ashton-Tate, Borland, Motorola, Novell, Netscape and a slew of ASPs (Application Service Companies), as well as dot-coms, to derive lessons on mismanagement. Chapman also talks about current behemoths, IBM, Intel and Microsoft, telling stories of numerous product failures and the ways the companies have managed to deal with each blow. Apple Computer is also mentioned, but don't forward a copy of the title to your local friendly Mac zealot -- contemplating Apple's current market share and influence on the market (with some speculations on what could have been done), Chapman calls Apple the world's largest irrelevant company.
Want to learn secret skills of ruining a perfectly good product line? How about being a great company for thousands of developers and then pissing off almost 100 percent of them? Want to get a clear roadway on publishing two parallel software products that compete with one another, while even the sales people are unable to clarify the differences? In Search of Stupidity takes the reader on the joyous ride, following closely the growth and downfall of technological giants.
Developers! Developers! Developers!
Famous Joel Spolsky provided a preface for Chapman's title, where he provided some interesting statistics about world's largest consumer software companies as well as thoughts on the issue of who runs the company better -- programmers or business majors? "When Pepsi-pusher John Sculley was developing the Apple Newton, he didn't know something that every computer science major in the country knows: handwriting recognition is not possible. This was at the same time that Bill Gates was hauling programmers into meetings begging them to create a single rich text edit control that could be reused in all their products," writes Spolsky, implying that people who run software or hardware companies better have some knowledge about their business.
Chapman's critique of that preface runs throughout the book -- the famous setback that can be expected from the developer's community is the notion that the code should be re-written for the new version, as the old one simply is too buggy and it's easier to start anew.
What's good about the book
In the introduction chapter Chapman provides a great overview of what to expect in the book. His style is lively, full of analogies and old tales. The book is marked by a good sense of humor, without actually going into jokes (except for occasional re-telling of Intel Pentium FPU-related humor). All the companies who were not big enough to deserve a separate chapter but still stupid enough to be in the book are mentioned in introduction. Street Technologies, who in an advertising brochure bravely claimed the owner of its software could "eliminate half of the work force," and whose literature probably never made it through the mail room. Syncronys, who sold the SoftRAM product, which promised to "double your computer memory," except for the fact it didn't actually do it. Project Iridium from Motorola, which burned through $5 billion before figuring out that market for thousand-dollar phones and hundred-dollar service charges was a bit limited.
The table of contents can be found on the book Web site, and from the subchapter names like "The Great Pentium Bunny Roast" one can deduct that the book is full of good humor mixed with sarcasm. Sometimes Chapman is merciless when mentioning some of his stories' subjects. Here's his introduction to a chapter on Netscape vs. Microsoft battle:
If you like the horror movies, you know the cast usually sports a character you've come to think of as The Idiot Who Deserves to Die. He's the knucklehead who runs screaming into the path of Godzilla just as the giant reptile is heading out to spend a relaxing afternoon destroying Tokyo, and gets squashed like a bug. The dimwit who sticks his noggin out of the deserted cabin in the woods and yells out "Mad slasher? What mad slasher?" just before the mad slasher decapitates him. The space-bound fumble-fingers who always manages to drop his blaster right when the Tentacle of Doom is zeroing it on him for lunch. If Marc Andreessen, co-founder of one-time wonder company Netscape, ever gives up high tech for a career in horror movies, he'll play that character.The author does provide a pretty good collection of facts on just what Netscape has done wrong, and how Microsoft's onslaught could have been avoided, so the quoted paragraph is not just an attempt to personally insult Andreessen. Here's a story of Ashton-Tate and its leader Ed Esber, who eventually ruined the company:
Esber did fancy himself something of a business guru, and one of his favorite quotes was "A computer will not make a good manager out of a bad manager. It makes a good manager faster and a bad manager worse faster." He had something there. It had taken George Tate about 5 years to build Ashton-Tate to software giant status; it would take Ed Esber only 2.5 years to put the company on the road to ruin. And Esber had a PC on his desk the entire time.
Debunking the myths
Besides providing a lot of good stories from the history, Chapman also tries to dispell some myths about the industry. Most of the myths somehow involve Microsoft, which is hardly surprising, provided Chapman dedicated more attention to software companies than hardware companies. He describes the attitude towards the company in the early stages of the industry development, points out why ISVs flocked towards DOS/Windows instead of more stable OS/2, and denies the common belief that Bill Gates' project owes most of its success to the deal with IBM to put DOS on the PC.
Chapman also analyzes the mistakes made, and shows how Apple Computer could've been the 99% market share vendor right now, but a few stupid mistakes in the company's past allowed for better short-term gains while leading the company into oblivion. In the last chapter, the demise of dot-coms and application service providers is told in a sort of haphazard way, without going into details of any specific company. Chapman keeps his sense of humor and is not so full of sarcasm and "I told you so" attitude as Philip Kaplan's F'd Companies .
Overall
The book is an enjoyable read, and with roughly 250 pages of interesting and fact-packed text makes an informative one, too. Even if you have been in the industry long enough to know better about the mistakes Chapman names, the book is worth reading just to re-fresh the past memories and learn some juicy details about the companies' internals (Chapman personally worked in MicroPro's WordStar team and at Ashton-Tate, among others). For others, it's a great learn to take a look at serious and less-serious screw-ups by major technological companies.
Each chapter is preceded by a caricature. The chapter on MicroPro shows WordStar and WordStar 2000 pointing a gun to one another's head with an apparent attempt to pull the trigger. The chapter on OS/2 (titled The Idiot Piper) shows that very idiot piper playing apparently a tune of OS/2, while the products designed for the operating system are heading off the cliff. Chapter on Intel's Pentium flop features bunny suits dancing around the barbecue fire with equations like "9/3 = 2.999" on their aprons.
In Search of Stupidity is an excellent source of information, analysis and good laughs. It's one of the few industry titles that will give you a large supply of stories to re-tell to other developers over a beer. Chapman's book is also an excellent case study collection of anti-management rules that one should avoid when running a high tech company.
You can purchase In Search of Stupidity from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This is a great read:
THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY by Carlo M. Cipolla
Excerpt:
"... human beings fall into four basic categories: the helpless, the intelligent, the bandit and the stupid."
See also:
True Stupidity
-kgj
-kgj