Cube Farm

Sarusa writes "Stop me if you've heard this one: Bright, innocent, bushytailed overachiever geek, inexorably crushed by the harsh realities of corporate America, turns into paranoid shaven-headed slacker (and Church of the Subgenius minister) who sees conspiracy theories under every rock. 'Heard it?' you sneer, 'I've lived it!' So why would you want to read a book about it? Cube Farm by Bill Blunden proves that if nothing else, you can always serve as a bad example." Read on for the rest of Sarusa's review. Cube Farm author Bill Blunden pages 150 publisher Apress rating 7 reviewer Sarusa ISBN 1590594037 summary Welcome to Hell, here's your cube.

The book chronicles Blunden's travails as a fresh Cornell grad finding out his degree is useless. After waiting tables, he discovers Java is hot, and gets a job in the incredibly dysfunctional R&D department of Lawson Software, one of those companies that makes horribly dull but necessary business software. Young Blunden is shunted from one doomed project to the next as internal divisions compete with each other (and internally) for territory. The code base is millions of lines of ancient K&R C with all the comments stripped out (!) for speed of compilation. Only a few people understand the entire system to any degree, and these Illuminati crush any attempt to create or disseminate any documentation since that would erode their power base. Any projects that might threaten their monopoly are dispatched by the simple expedient of not responding to any emails or phone calls or attending meetings.

Cube Farm is written in a conversational, semi-edgy style that I found very easy to read, though occasionally annoying when it gets too hip. The subject is technical, but the theme is purely human foible, and Blunden makes an effort to make things understandable even by the non-geeky. So you don't have to be a nerd to understand the book - it would sure help you appreciate it, though.

Important characters are assigned descriptive names such as the Puppet Master, the Godfather, the Wax Master, Mike and Ike, and the Mad Hungarian. This may sound a bit cheap, but works well and makes it easy to keep track of the defectis personae. Everything is well partitioned, and Dance of Death woodcuts enliven the pages.

The obvious question, Why you would read something so horribly depressing? There are only negative lessons to be learned here. Well, in many ways Cube Farm is the informal, nasty version of what you'd get by reading books like Death March (Yourdon, 2003 2nd ed), Herding Cats (Rainwater, 2002), and Software Runaways (Glass, 1997). You can learn a lot from a bad example, like what it means if they won't say Yes or No. Perhaps it'll make you feel better about your own company, which is probably not quite this screwed up. Or there's always good ol' schadenfreude.

Would you give this book to an eager young programmer? Either it would be a bit like taking a sledgehammer to a kitten, or (more likely) it would just all cascade off, unheeded -- "obviously, this could never happen to me." For everyone else, if you've had at least one job or failed project under your belt you might find this horrifically fascinating, similar to watching Repligator. It might help with your next (knock on wood) fine project. Finally, it's a quick read, so I felt my time was well (or at least enjoyably) spent.

You can purchase Cube Farm from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Re:the last thing

[maximilln]

That will feed your average geek for a week

That's not learning to cook, though. You definitely need some green peppers with that. Rice doesn't cut it alone, either. Get some noodles. And butter. You want a snack? Try shredded cheese and diced and fried sausages. Everything must be lightly sauteed in oil. I'd better not catch you using crappy corn oil either. It'd better be high grapeseed or sesame oil for the vegetables and maybe I'll allow extra virgin olive oil for the chicken. How about cookware? A good set of the simplest cookware will cost $80. There are monetary barriers to get into cooking. Oh, you want a mixing bowl with that, or cutting boards? That's all extra.

Of course not, because it's *expensive.*

Expensive is $2.49/lb. for tomatoes when it takes 4 tomatos to make a single serving of tomato sauce. You want to make your own biscuits? Unless you're a baking prodigy you'd better figure on making at least 4 batches of biscuits which are just bad.

Oh yeah, and try acing a bechamel sauce on your first try to make the food worth eating. If all they're living on is rice and chicken breast in some light vegetable broth they might as well eat at McD's or Burger King for $10/day.

My food for today? 3 liters of free water and two cups of free coffee, plus a $4 meal at home

Mine: 4L of iced tea (I make tea at night and then mix some with water to dilute for iced tea the next morning, every day, every night... 4L), some chocolate, and two glasses of porter.