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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.
I was disenchanted, frustrated, and paranoid in middle school (6th-8th grades). It got worse in high school. In college I gave up on learning anything in class because most of my profs were idiots. When I graduated, I got a job and realized that almost everyone I worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent.
I complained about all this, and you know what they told me? Welcome to the world.
...and rent Office Space.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
.. been writing it now for 20 years, still going strong ..
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Parent poster reminds me of a Tim Wilson line: been divorced four times? Hell, maybe its you.
I don't have a cube, I have an area. But it's quite disconcerting to think that corporate America has thrown us into this "worker bee, sit at your desk and produce" model. It sucks. But on the other hand, I get paid to sit right here, so I'm good. I'd be interested in reading the book, however, I am afraid it would discourage me more than I already am.
Why do we always come back to this movie? Other than a few funny sequences and lines, it's basically boring. Yeah, I said it, but we're all thinking it!
It's because we've got nothing else that even comes close to the sad truth that is our life. It sucks so bad we've elevated the one movie of closest relevance to cult status.
As for books, 80% or more of the people here could fill volumes on the subject with anecdotes about management, TPS reports, shitty office hardware etc, etc, etc and if we did, you can bet they would always be compared to this movie.
Even my company's chief strategist (whatever the fuck that is) think's it's the greatest movie ever and never fails to quote it.
Spinal Tap is closer to geek life than Office Space.
R(k)
I got a job and realized that almost everyone I worked with, worked for, or had to suck up to was incompetent
That's the Dilbert Principle in action. Or I suppose the Peter Principle really (where *everyone* is incompetent, not just managers), but Scott Adams made it funnier.
Things could work out well:
You know, i've realized that it's easy to write sad shit, but incredibly difficult to write happy stuff. The funny thing is that most of us, at least the self-fashioned highbrows, deign to write favourable critiques only if it's depressing enough for you to slash your wrists! This penchant for despair is also something that i've been noticing in some of the /. comments and posts.
I've been there and lived through that. I'm also sure that most of us have had our periods of depressions and frustrations too (choose your timeframe: junior school, high school, college, limbo between college and first job, stuck in a dead-end job etc.). I just want to say this, and i'm quoting here: THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS.
Jobs will never come easy, and they'll never be a perfect fit for your skills and your interests. Money'll not come easy either. As for love, heck, we're all geeks here. We'll manage to find someone if we're incredibly lucky, brave and desparate enough to go through the trial and error process, and only if we're reasonably good looking to boot! What's left? NOTHING, except for unconditional love, perhaps, if you buy a dog. Yes, this is tabula rasa and it always will be.
What i do, or at least try to do nowadays, is to stop reading this kind of depressing garbage and just focus on the little things. The joy of coding is not to be found in managing to decipher uncommented legacy code or what have you, but in managing to decipher a gem in the uncommented legacy code. It's not sneering at the 101 coding errors that we can find in someone else's code but in finding the one inexplicable construct in someone else's code and the thrill of discovering a new thought pattern.
Or, as the Hagakure suggests:-
"Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: Matters of great concern should be treated lightly. Master Ittei wrote: Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."
I'm sorry if i've completely digressed here, as this is supposed to be a book review. However, i do feel an undercurrent of depression in most posts nowadays and just wanted to share my thoughts with all of you.
I started out working for a small company experiencing, what seemed to be, exponential growth.
It was owned by a really smart guy who just cared about results and understood that people are a package deal: if you like the good things about a person (like skill at coding/design), then you have to take that with the bad (like keeping odd hours, forgetting to attend meetings cos you are so zoned out in a coding trance).
Our team consisted of about 5 guys who liked to have a good time at work. There was lots of noisy horseplay and practical jokes. The thing that infuriated everyone else is that we (5 guys) worked on a project that made 1/3 of the revenue for the whole company (which by then had grown to 300+ people) so there was no way they were going to fire us.
Because of our highly unique work style, they decided to isolate us one one floor of an old building (the company had grown so fast that it had to lease space in several buildings)
That's when the fun really started. While we never made pretesne of keeping normal business hours now we came and left any damn time we chose. Sometimes I'd come in to work at 11:00 hack a bit of code and take off at 2:00. I remember my boss telling me that we had to come in by at least 10:30. We'd hoot holler and yell inside jokes at each other and past anyone who dared show up on the floor.
The end came when were were bought by a large borg like software multinational. Then the old gang kind of split up some fired some trying unsucessfully to get fired some drifting off to become consultants.
Since then I have bounced from one contract to another, making a lot more money, but really missing the camaraderie we had back then.
If I had any advice to offer it would be to pay as much attention to social factors when choosing a job as the salary. You want a nice team of people you can have fun with at work. In the end it makes your life a lot better than some extra cash.
You claim you were a sysadmin, but you can't understand why you are not allowed to install any software you want on your company-owned computer? You are angry that you are not allowed to run unauthorized software from a USB key? Maybe these issues are the reason you are not in your previous all-powerful job.
You claim that the company that provides your software charges hundreds of dollars per line of source for indemnification. Well, for that price, the cost of Windows XP indemnification would probably exceed the cost of litigation resulting from the use of Windows XP.
Why is it necessary to take a beginners course in Java before installing WSAD? Perhaps your job as a Technical Analyst does not require such a comprehensive programming environment, and the sysadmins require you to justify the cost of a license and to prove you can actually use a part of the functionality.
Almost as good...
Get a government IT job. You know, some place cool like NASA, the DOE or the DOD where they actually do some real computing.
Government jobs are great for slackers...no stress, great job security, decent pay, lots of vacation, and hey if you don't know how to do your own job, there's 50,000 contractors out there waiting in the wings to accomplish your task for the lowest bid.
"...it was meant to be plain enough that you didn't need comments to understand it and comments got in the way and made the code more difficult to read."
This comment is actually true. In the extreme case, I teach University at times and I get submissions from Students who have heard me say "comments are good", they take this to heart. A 12 line shell script becomes a 400 line monster with all the comments including a cut and paste of the assignment sheet.
Good comments are the hardest thing in a programmer has to do. I don't think I have it right after many years of coding.
And a list of EVIL companies that do stupid stuf like the one you're in.
Just a question. This reminds me of the battered woman syndrome. Battered women would hate to sue their husbands because they have "nowhere else" to go.
Is yours a similar case? How long before the company brings you to tears and turns you into a complete mess of person, blaming yourself for everything?
Quit the damn company and screw them! Start selling your own software competing with them, and put them to shame.