Management Bits and Tips

“… those people who are really good at what they do and yet are at the bottom of a management hierarchy have a power that no one else in the hierarchy has. They can’t be demoted.” 

Robert Glass, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering

Understanding and overcoming resistance is one of the tasks of a manager. A public performance (transcript) of the manager is different from an inner transcript and the same can be said about transcripts of engineers. I now recall that in one of my previous companies I worked for, a senior engineer was telling one recently hired junior colleague in a private setting (canteen) to always tell VP of Engineering how he loves the work. I recently became interested in analysis of managerial domination and of various forms of hidden resistance and stage performances of subordinates and internal pressures they experience. Doing my research I stumbled across this book on Amazon and bought it:

Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts

The book is written in almost jargon free style and highly recommended as a stimulating and refreshing read to remind about additional perspectives on relations inside teams and engineering organizations, between customers and their relationship managers (inverse domination). 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

If you move to work in another country it is always useful to read about local workplace norms, redundancy regulations, various employment acts and other smart knowledge. If you happen to be the native of that country then you should prefer to read such books as well. More than 8 years ago when I moved to work in Ireland I bought this guide (one of the previous editions):

Working And Living In Ireland

Today I was visiting a local bookshop and browsing the bargains section where I found this book written by the same author and immediately bought it. “Exit” chapter is recommended to read during the current turbulent times in Irish economy.

Smart Moves at Work in Ireland

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

As you know I came back to an engineering role again after serving 2 years as a Team Lead and then almost 2 years as a Technical Manager:

The Importance of Being Technical

So instead of growing as a Manager vertically I decided to concentrate on growing horizontally because I have additional management roles as Editor-in-Chief of Debugged! magazine, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of OpenTask iterative and incremental publisher, President and Director of Memory Analysis and Debugging Institute. At the same I need to spend more time growing my technical knowledge and digging deeper in memory dumps.

I plan to continue this blog anyway and still commit to publishing this book next year:

Management Bits: An Anthology from Reductionist Manager (ISBN: 978-1906717131) 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

The title of this post employs an operating system metaphor for a team member as a thread in a process (team).  I recalled this morning a book that I was reading 3 years ago and dug it from one of my dark dusty office corners:

My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job (Pragmatic Programmers)

I think it is relevant in this economic downturn if you replace India as an empty set or empty string: My Job Went to ”".

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

To look at your salary expectations from a new angle I recommend at least to read the description of the following book that I “wrote” and published:

Salary Figures: A Codebook of Expectations

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

A book can serve the role of CV but a CV can serve the role of a book. Elaborating on this idea I decided to publish my old CV (1987 - 2003) as a book and as an example of a person with CV-writing obsession like I had 5 - 8 years ago. Book details can be found here:

Forthcoming CV as a Book

Front cover of my CV

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

To my shame I have never read the famous book “AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis”. Being interested in antipatterns which I often figure out myself in the practical domain of software technical support (see Crash Dump Analysis AntiPatterns) I looked for the most recent collection of the management ones and found this book which I’m reading now:

Antipatterns: Identification, Refactoring, and Management (Auerbach Series on Applied Software Engineering)

In addition to their own patterns, the authors of the book provide the description of Brown’s antipatterns (the book mentioned earlier, “AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, …”), provide two tables for easy antipattern identification in an organization or a team (Management Antipattern Locator and Environmental Antipattern Locator), list and comment on Myers-Briggs personality types, discuss Keirsey temperament groupings and Bramson’s human personality phenotypes. Highly recommended. I especially liked “All You Have Is a Hammer” antipattern of which I was guilty myself during my earlier Team Lead role experience.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

I found this book in a local bookshop a few months ago and now I recommend it to everyone dealing with customers, either internal or external:

Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, NOW!

Foreword was written by Gerald Weinberg.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Although I still use Preemptive Multireading throughout my working day I decided to try another approach similar to cooperative multitasking used in old operating systems like Windows 3.x. I identified 30 technical books I want to read (mostly related to software engineering, software architecture, design and programming) and allocated one hour every day to spend about 2 minutes on each book. Most software related books have low information density per page and plenty of information is repeated from book to book which allows using some speed reading techniques. These books are unlike mathematics, physics and computer science books where I have to meditate on proofs, formulae and examples. So I switch to another book every 2 minutes and do this 30 times. 2 minutes is usually sufficient to read and turn a page and these amounts to 60 pages per day (one page per minute). An average 300-page book can be finished in 7-8 months and therefore I can read at least 30 books per year using this approach, read all of them together and don’t wait for a second book until I finish the first one! The last point is psychologically very important to me because I want everything now

A technical note: it might look that we still use preemptive multitasking with a fixed quantum here but in reality there are no external interrupt sources. All I do is to voluntarily yield reading control from one book to another. I can always spend one or two minutes more with a book if its current chapter is very interesting.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Many people ask me how do I manage to read all the books that I have. The trick is to employ Preemptive Multireading similar to Preemptive Multitasking using natural interrupt mechanisms. Here is an example from one of my common daily reading schedules:

• - Commuting to work from home in the morning: reading a history book.

• - Working hours: round robin reading of software engineering books and encyclopedias during breaks.

• - Lunch time: reading one of selected fiction / science fiction / health / food / chemistry / popular science books.

• - Commuting to home from work in the evening: reading a selected math / physics / popular science book.

• - Waiting for bus/train: one of selected philosophy / popular science books.

• - Home: one of selected management / psychology / parenting books.

• - Walking with my sleeping son on weekends: English language and writing books.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -