Reviews and Comments

Why I picked it up ##

Because my bookclub wanted to read it.

## Who recommended it to me ##

Megan and Virtual Andy. They're both reading it right now and said it was good.

## Who I'd recommend it to ##

New managers, and seasoned ones looking for some reminders, refreshers, practical tips and tricks. Little of the content is specific to engineering, but some of it is specific to product development.

## What I liked ##

Short. Quick read. A lot of content packed in. Long list of Resources at the back.

## What I didn't like ##

The bit on your "communication color" had no context or explanation. I have no idea what the spectrum of colors is supposed to map to. Obviously red is fiery or something, and blue is calm? But what are yellow, green, and black all supposed to mean?

## What was interesting / useful ##

I've been telling my teammates to give feedback and ask for feedback, but I don't think any of them have been told HOW to give feedback. The formula from this book is a dead simple framework that I could use with them.

## What I want to remember ##

- The "Voltron Manager" is a cute analogy

- something as simple as moving a desk can touch on every aspect of ones core needs at work.

- I'll probably remember and think about the BICEPS and the 4 Manager Skills from now on

- We could use some RACI / venn diagram exercises on some of our projects to more clearly define roles.

## Summary ##

Spoilered because long, and mostly just useful to me:



an outline:

Intro:
- Tuckman's stages of group development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing

Part 1: Meet your team (forming)
- reduce threats: don't stimulate the amygdala, don't cause Fight Or Flight
- Core needs (BICEPS

three stars for content
five stars for delivery (organization / being well written)

This did in fact end up feeling very much like a magic bullet. The thing is, based on personal experience, and the science and methodology laid out in the book, I guess I'm not convinced that it isn't a magic bullet: continuous delivery and lean processes (together with "Transformational Leadership) are big, powerful concepts. I have no doubt that together, they drive performance.

I liked the bits on measuring culture, and burnout. There were some good tips about leadership and coaching.

I recoiled initially whenever the author insisted that Trunk Based Development is part of the magic bullet, but I think now that I had a different understanding of the term. Whereas I was imagining a no-branch flow and committing directly to Master, the author was describing few, short-lived branches. And I think I agree with that strategy. I definitely agree with preventing code lock, and long-lived, divergent branches (and merge conflicts).

I lacked the context / experience to appreciate other parts. I have only ever worked at lean / agile companies and never at huge bureaucratic or pathological organizations, so i often found myself thinking, "Of course the generative way is the correct way, why would you ever do it any other way?"

I recommend readers skim part one, glance at part two, and read part three. Read the table of contents, the quick reference, and the conclusion. This book was so well organized that you can read it very quickly. It was written to be an easy to use reference, and I will keep it on the shelf and refer back to it.

Hokey. Two stars because it's slightly less than "good."

A terrible novel. A pretty good allegory for how to get work done.

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Edit:

The more I think about this book, the more unfair I think it is to judge it as a novel, because it is so obviously not that. What it is, is a business book wrapped up in come kind of a fable or allegory. Like other good business books, this one drops a lot of authors' names and a lot of book titles, and a lot of models and lists like "The Three Ways Of Business."

Once finished with the fictional narrative part of the book, which was the most annoying part, I wanted to go back and reflect on the lessons of the book, maybe look up some of the other works mentioned, but the lack of an appendix or even a bibliography made that impossible without flipping back through the pages, which is a difficult thing to do with an ebook.

The "Gender Story" parts of this coming of age story saved it from being a two-star memoir. All in all, a perspective and voice that I really enjoyed. Would recommend.

Standout bits:

- The preface and bits of Part 1 resonated deeply with me as a fellow southerner. The oppressive toxic masculinity in that environment made me also very aware of the "right way" and "wrong way" to walk and talk, and sit and dress, etc. And I'm a very masculine looking cis hetero white male.

- They may have been oversimplifying their position, and I may have misunderstood the nuances of what they were saying, but I was startled to hear Jacob's tirade about the relative unimportance of gay marriage and its legal status.

- Jacob comes across as very young ("smacks of 20 year old" is how I kept describing the tone of the book to myself) which in turn made me feel really old. Wrapped up in this is--despite their very real trauma and angst over their gender identity--an overall impression of them being sheltered, protected, and cocooned: they had a (mostly, relatively) supportive family, a network of friends, a supportive church group (which, again as a fellow southerner with first hand experience of how oppressive and closed-minded church groups can be, was a surprise to me!). It sounds like they were super popular and successful both in high school and in college. They had the resources to be able to turn down Harvard in favor of a full ride to Duke.. there's just a whole lot of privilege here. And very little recognition or awareness of this. And I'm sure I'd sound obnoxious too if I started writing a memoir in my early/mid 20s. (The precociousness of which Jacob admitted to.)

- That weird, somewhat sexually violent fantasy surrounding the one instance of harassment they experienced on campus

I didn't like it that much at first, but I ended up loving this book. It was like an Agatha Christie closed room haunted house mystery with queer outer space necro wizards, lots of skeletons, and sword fights.

Cons:

- The narrator was randomly juvenile from time to time which was annoying and broke immersion.
- There was an awkward point at the beginning when it was just Gideon and Harrow by themselves in a vacuum and they were way too intense, and then suddenly there were almost 20 new characters all at once, and suddenly it was way too much, but eventually it kind of leveled out and you just got used to there being 16 primary characters for a while.

Pros:

- Neat world. I loved the magic and the tone and the planetary travel. Loved the 8 different houses, which felt like Hogwarts with depth.
- Harrow and Gideon were obviously an amazing relationship to watch, but there was also Gideon and Dulcinea and Harrow and Sextus, and more. There were so many characters, but none of them were throwaways. They were all fully developed and realized, with backstories and relationships.

Okay so this space ship crash lands on a farmer's house and ruins all his melons and he gets a magic cloak that doesn't do anything, so then the farmer and his new friend, a giant gun-toting space hippopotamus-man, are on the run from these fascist space spider-eels who want the do-nothing cloak and who have giant insect-ape slave/servants who sometimes carry them around like Oscar the Grouch and Bruno the Binman, and so Farmer and Hippo keep running and get the help of some crazy tiny scientists who live in a hollowed out volcano who build a new space ship out of spare parts, and they all run away into outer space.

Pros:
- fun, light, easy fantasy romp
- I wanted to read something in the spelljammer setting, and this was unarguably that
- The gnomes were funny

Cons:
- My copy had typos and grammatical errors, which was distracting.
- Tropey and predictable. Shallow, one-dimensional characters
- The cloak itself is a super lame plot device. The fate of the multiverse depends on it! But it literally does nothing. We should have been given some kind of a taste or a hint at its powers, assuming it has any.
- I wanted some outer space stuff, and didn't get any until the epilogue
- The entire sea-faring bit was.. very D&D campaigny: "Here's a tangential side quest so you can level up a little bit before the next big encounter."

Overall, very entertaining, but pretty poorly written and executed.