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Cube Farm
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.
And the sequel Hypercube... and it was just okay.
The last thing I want to do after living this for 8 hours a day is to go home and read about it.
"Would you give this book to an eager young programmer? Either it would be a bit like taking a sledgehammer to a kitten..."
Goodness, how graphic. If someone wants eager young programmers to knock off kittens, there are alternatives.
There really are no conspiracies, however 'THEM' is surreptitiously trying to make us believe that there are conspiracies in an effort to draw our attention away from what is actually going on. You see if I actually believed in copnsipiracies, then I would be waisting my time trying to prove said conspiracies, instead of trying to uncover the REAL truth. However, since there are no conspiracies, 'THEM' cannot conspire to create conspiracies, and therefore I do not have to waste my time trying to figure them out. Then again, if 'THEM' is trying to make us believe there are conspiracies, when there are really no conspiracies, then there is a conspiracy to creat conspiracies. Hah, they will not fool me - Since there are no conspiracies, there cannot be a conspiracy to create conspiracies, therefore I will still be able to focus on discovering the truth.
Wheres my tinfoil hat, and my 712th printing of Catcher in the Rye, although I don't know why I need another, but I do know that I need it because it hase the new extra black ink.
1. Get hypnotized, kill therapist halfway through session.
2. Hatch grand scheme to fleece company with couple of geeks at work.
3. Wait for scheme to go horribly wrong...if possible engage in flirting, drinking, movie watching and general merry making during this period. Heineken and Kungfu movies are the preferred varieties of entertainment.
4. Engage local frustrated employee to burn up office and evidence of scheme hatched in (3). Members of said species are easily found in office basements usually mumbling to themselves.
5. Quit software job, and obtain employment at neighbor's construction facility.
6. ???
7. PROFIT!!!
But he can have it. I've got a new one, trolling on blogs.
The pay isn't great, but the complete lack of any sense of accomplishment makes me feel guilty for what I get anyway.
sigs, as if you care.
I just can't enough of that. Honest.
conversational, semi-edgy style
Translation: Usenet readers will feel at home.
--- Ban humanity.
Remember all those times when you were a little boy, and your mommy told you how great you were?
Well, now you know she was lying.
I thought this was going to be about a beowulf cluster of GameCubes.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Bright, innocent, bushytailed overachiever geek, inexorably crushed by the harsh realities of corporate America, turns into
A corporate former-programmer evil brain who uses his monopoly to crush the competition!
Yes! That'd be a wonderful story - oh, wait...
And no they do not do a good job of it.
Nor do they do an inspiring job of sales management either.
In fact the only department which has put forward a successful sales initiative or proposal in 15 years has been the technical group.
And teetering over it all is a peroxide blonde Manager of IT with delusions of CIO-dom, courtesy of a class she found on the back of the matchbook she lights her bong with, dismissed by her subordinates as incompetent, and her peers as "hyper-thyroid." I almost forgot, she is as territorial as all get out, can't manage machines, people, office politics, or even to fill the coffee machine, and makes banker's hours look like double-overtime...
Don't get me started on the accountants, or the Dept of Leguminosae Enumeration as they insist on being called...
Cube farm sounds like an upbeat bed-time story to the denizen of this cubicle.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
The scary thing is... they vote! :-(
;)
It's ok though, their candidate lost the last election.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Now I work at S**** F***
you work at Shit Fuck !?!? I have been trying to get a job there for years !
music lover since 1969
Now I work at S**** F***
That's what you get for working with a company called Shitt Fuck.
Seriously though, why do you even bother? Got a wife and kids now and are making serious sacrifices for "stability"? In a depressed area and no desire/energy to move to the Washington DC area where the job situation is hot?
Witness their News tab here.
Perhaps it's OT, but would you buy enterprise software from a company that can't even manage a web site?
apple nipple hungry
yeah, but he did still manage to stay president anyway.
Did anyone else go to that guys' (old?) company, Lawson Software, just to see if there were any jobs available? Or was I the only one?
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Yeah, I'm smart enough to figure that one out.
dumb ass
If the S**** F*** you're talking about is the S**** F*** I'm thinking of, I use to work at the Corporate HQ in B**********, I******* (hey, this is fun!). I almost cancelled my c** i******** p***** when I saw what went on inside those buildings. Oh, the stories...
Buy the President
Nothing, unless you have a million lines of it with no comments. In that case, you would be fucked backwards and forwards. Bonus points if variable names are less then or equal to 4 characters in length, double your score if they always begin with "a", "b", or "c".
... Why did you go to such a shitty school?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
It is alot harder to be competent than to point out the incompetence of others.
:-) ]
Um... "alot" is two words Brainiac.
[You're right, pointing that out was easy.
Ah, good point. But there is a reason you're missing for why people might not drop out of the system. Alimony, and child support.
Very true. Once you have a kid, you're screwed. You've got to support that kid for at least 20 years. That's a hell of a lot of pressure. I didn't even think about that. But then again, people only have kids if they're well off enough that they can afford the kid... right?
I don't respond to AC's.
No, it's S-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk F-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk-asterisk-. It's a foreign firm. Some people call it S-star-star-star-star-star F-star-star-star-star, but those are mostly newbies.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Is it interpretive dance?
I'm sorry we only hire people that can count
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar."
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
You asterisk nazis are worse than the friggin grammar nazis !
music lover since 1969