Slack 140
| Slack: Getting past burnout, busywork and the myth of total efficiency. | |
| author | Tom DeMarco |
| pages | 220 |
| publisher | Broadway |
| rating | A |
| reviewer | David Kennedy |
| ISBN | 076790768X |
| summary | A highly entertaining, and informative survey of the state of the high-tech and software industries today, which suggests that companies have been taking exactly the wrong actions under pressure and further decreasing their ability to handle rapid change. |
Summary:
A highly entertaining, and informative survey of the state of the high-tech and software industries today, which suggests that companies have been taking exactly the wrong actions under pressure and further decreasing their ability to handle rapid change. The book is peppered with interesting asides and examples, but is always informed by the central thesis that companies need more Slack built back into their structures.
Check your sources.
Tom DeMarco is an established industry management guru who has the respect of many of the technical community. He's written several previous titles, including the notable Peopleware and the collection, Why does software cost so much?. I'm not normally keen on any books in this genre, but have always found DeMarco's writing very readable and though-provoking -- most importantly for me, he has a habit of trying to find NUMBERS to back up any claims.
What's this book about?
This is a 2001 title, and I find it slightly shocking that, in a maturing industry, we still need a book on this topic (from the blurb):"To most companies, efficiency means profits and growth. But what if your 'efficient' company - the one with the reduced headcount and the 'stretch' goals -- is actually slowing down and losing money? What if your employees are burning out doing the work of two or more people, leaving them no time for planning, prioritizing, or even lunch? What if your super-efficient company is suddenly falling behind?"
So far we're just talking about the state of the modern software industry right? What's he proposing we do about it?
"[...] what you need is not more efficiency, but more slack. What is 'slack'? Slack is the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change."
It seems a very simple concept to me, but then I'm an engineer, his writing is persuasive, and I have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight when reading. How can he get a 220 page book out of such a simple concept? After all, all we programmers know that your general purpose solutions always sacrifice speed for flexibility right?
What he discusses is a business model where you keep people, say, 70% busy. This leaves time for unexpected business, for reflection on why X takes so long and how to fix it, for self-training, for discussion about how things are done. These are all good things -- but the winner is that when people are stressed by sudden change or a deluge of new work, they have some slack to take in. Things change, you suffer a reduction in productivity, but hey, you had some slack to take in so the week's work is still getting done, you've just dropped that Ruby book for a week or two. You're swamped by a rush on finishing Product X before a competitors Product hits the market first -- just drop that tinkering with a novel memory pooling thingy you were considering slotting in to replace the adequate-but-inelegant solution in your product. I'm simplifying and reducing his argument here, but that's the idea. The other corollary to the 70% busyness level is that the system is responsive -- some nodes are 100%, some are 20%, but overall things are flowing. A system where most nodes are at 100% means some nodes are hanging waiting for other nodes to catch up -- total throughput drops. This'll make more sense reading his version ('underworked but responsive secretary' vs '100% busy, cannot help until Friday secretary'), but it's a good central topic -- simple, but not trivial.
220 pages isn't much -- he states that the book should be comfortable reading for a business trip -- and the bulk of the space is taken up by rationale for his suggestion, and discussion of the consequences. What I found valuable about the book was the description and subsequent debunking of several management techniques -- for example, he has a severe go at management-by-objective. I recognise it. I suspect you too will recognise it, and several other common variations.
Let's have a quick skim of the contents -- this isn't a technical book, more one massive opinion column, so the section titles aren't that useful, but I feel like I'm cheating if I don't do this in a review ...
- Slack
Madmen in the halls, busyness vs business, the myth of fungible resources. This section sets up the case by setting out the assumptions, and describing what actually happened to most businesses when put under pressure in the last 10 years. I loved the word "fungible" too -- describes a resource that can be freely interchanged -- like paperclips are and software designers aren't. - Lost, but making good time
The cost of pressure, aggressive schedules, overtime, culture of fear, quality, management by objective. This is a meaty section and basically describes how the heck things got to be this way, what practices were adopted, and how they made things worse... - Change and growth
Vision, leadership, fear and safety, trust, what middle management is there for, change management. This section talks about change, specially why a lot of the measures adopted to prepare for it help make things worse, and how we should instead consider other approaches. - Risk and risk management
Working at breakneck speed, learning to live with risk. This seems like a short section from the contents, but it's reasonably long. There's less to discuss here for what we have is a 2-by-4 to head of businesses who refuse to plan for failure. A discussion then follows of the classic problem -- scheduling -- and why you'll never do a decent job of that without risk management. This is the only section where the tone is hectoring rather than persuasive -- or else that was my own frustration at the experiences I've had coming into play!
Target audience
It's aimed at a particular segment according to the cover: "A handbook for managers, entrepreneurs, and CEOs." Well, I'm none of those, but I enjoyed it and found it useful. I'd prefer that my bosses were reading this than most of the other pap from the same shelf, but let's face it, change comes from all levels in the organisation, and if you can't spot mistakes being made within your team then you can't plan for your own career either. Read this book, it'll come in useful either when your managers start going awry and making you suffer, or it'll come in useful when you float up the org chart and have to start dealing with a team of your own.
What's good?
Most of it. This is a highly entertaining read, and does present some genuinely useful ideas. It's also great as a collection of management anti-patterns. I think any career programmer in a medium-sized or above business would find this book interesting. Actually, come to that, anyone who enjoys Dilbert will enjoy this book.
What's bad?
Not much. There were a couple of areas where I would have liked more case studies or evidence. As I said above, the recourse to surveys for the truth is something of a trademark of DeMarco -- he certainly references quite a lot of material in this book, but doesn't produce any solid evidence to back his ideas. Granted, probably hard to experiment on this scale!
You can purchase Slack from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:1, Informative)
Save yourself some money.
(Tan) One-click patent (Score:3, Funny)
bn.com has the book listed for $18.40. Amazon has it for $16.10
That's $32.20 after you've given an equal amount to the Electronic Frontier Foundation to counter the amount that you give to Amazon to retain a lawyer to enforce the dubious patent on "one-click shopping", or sending a personal identifier along with a request to buy a product.
I give $65 annually to EFF. I don't spend more than $65 annually on products of the nine members of MPAA union RIAA. It works out
Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:1)
Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:2)
Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:2)
I've got a better book about slack... (Score:2)
This is the original book about slack... and its even cheeeaper.
And it also puts more bull in your bulldada.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067
For the Canadians (Score:1)
Re: Half.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:2)
Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:5, Insightful)
RedWolves2 pointed out to a populace reading a book where they could save some money on it. Pointing them to his affiliate page doesn't cost the hypothetical
Besides which, it looks like
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:1)
The bn.com link given by slashdot tracks the referrer as well. Better send an angry email to Taco.
What do you have against RedWolves2, anyway?
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:2, Insightful)
This is great. We've got a microcosm of the whole Libertarian-accepts-sketchy vs. Ethical-demands-authority debate that always crops up on
RedWolves2 is a whore. I hate namecalling, but that's the fact. As soon as I saw him shill for Amazon, I checked to make sure that he had included his affiliate code in the link, and sure enough. He will make some money on being the first 3+ post on the article, with a link (unless he subsequently gets modded down). I have a friend that, despite my chiding him, maintains an Amazon affiliate link for a book that he recommends as his sig, and pulls in a modest ~$15 a month. That's not even half as shady as RedWolves2 though.
What upsets us about RedWolves2's action? The fact that he didn't disclose that he had included his referrer tag? I'm not bothered that he referred Amazon for a discount, and it would only make sense that he'd include *someone*'s affiliate code. If he was a true humanitarian, he would have picked a worthwhile organization that had an affiliate code and used theirs, and disclosed that fact. No, I'd say it's the fact that he used his own, and didn't disclose it, that has got our hackles up.
That being said, that it's fairly unethical behavior that many of us would find distasteful, do we need a new method of dealing with it? He was modded up by folks who apparently wanted to reward his post, dubiously in the public interest. He could be modded down by people who want to punish it. Ultimately, you'd believe that most people clicking through his link would understand the Amazon referral program, and would realize who they were rewarding. Maybe people just keep a list of affiliate codes for worthy charities by their monitors for just such purchases.
Some AC mentioned [slashdot.org] that the Tattered Cover [tatteredcover.com] is a more worthwhile book store to support, and that they have it for $14. They might have an affiliate program, perhaps someone should find a decent organization and buy it from there.
I just double-checked, and sure enough, RedWolves2 has already lost 2 mod points. Looks like the people are speaking...
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:2)
What upsets us about RedWolves2's action? The fact that he didn't disclose that he had included his referrer tag? I'm not bothered that he referred Amazon for a discount, and it would only make sense that he'd include *someone*'s affiliate code. If he was a true humanitarian, he would have picked a worthwhile organization that had an affiliate code and used theirs, and disclosed that fact. No, I'd say it's the fact that he used his own, and didn't disclose it, that has got our hackles up.
What's the big deal? He referred people to a book and included a link which said (to amazon) that he did so. That's not unethical, that's normal. It'd only be unethical if he had defrauded people about the book's value or done so in a story submission.
Also, what's this about being a humanitarian? Do you have anything against people making a buck?
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm. Why do you draw a distinction between shilling for amazon in a story submission and doing so in a post? I think it's the same behavior, either way. The only thing that would make it worse in my book about a submission would be that the behavior had the tacit approval of the story's editors.
I think what rubbed some of us wrong, including myself, was that he sounded like he was motivated to help slashdot readers to save a couple bucks, but upon realizing he's trying to reap 15% of a large number of sales, you realize that he has much shadier motives. You wonder why he didn't disclose it to begin with. It suggests that he didn't want people to know he was shilling, that he had a financial interest in the behavior. In the US, we usually require our politicians to disclose conflicts of interest in the stocks they hold when recommending certain companies for public works contracts, or journalists to indicate whether they have any interest in a story, such as when they're reporting on a company that owns or is related to the company they work for. It's just integrity.
Do you have anything against people making a buck?
I think he could have had it both ways, by saying something like
"Buy from Amazon, it's only $16! Click my link [dummy] (don't forget I referred you
Works for me. I might have bought it from his link if he'd done it that way... that would be a great way to quickly make a lot of bucks, without compromising your integrity.
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:3, Insightful)
My opinion is that continuously trying to hijack referral benefits away from Slashdot is not ethical, and damaging to the community as a whole.
Here in all it's naked glory is evidence that half of the most recent 24 of Redwolves2's posts are attempts to drive Amazon affiliate benefits to Redwolves2:
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42004&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42004&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42014&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=42014&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41395&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41811&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41392&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41789&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41393&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=41660&c
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=40460&c
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:1)
My screwed up HTML - sorry (Score:1)
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:2)
I commented because I agreed with the parent that it was shady behavior, but what was even more interesting was his expressed desire for a way to punish such shameless shills. The first thing that came to mind is how often people claim to want increased authority to combat excesses or abuses, especially in the moral arena. I thought that was probably characteristic of a sizable minority of slashdot readers, with the majority leaning more towards a Libertarian outlook, and I thought it would be interesting fodder for intelligent debate. If your post is all we've got to go on, obviously I was wrong...
Guess I struck a nerve, calling you a whore, eh RedWolves2? =)
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:1)
Actually no. Me and my co-workers have been sitting here watching the comments laughing all day at this thread.
This is great seeing this many comments about my little post. Let the debate rage I don't care that is what the first ammendment is for. And what I did is not sleezy. What would have been sleezy would have been if the link would have been a one-click purchase of the book. But instead I used an associates link that you can easily tell is an associates link by looking in the status bar. It is not like I redirected you without you knowing.
PS. I am no coward I'll post with my name!
Some of you need to read this book [amazon.com].
Re:Unethical Behavior: RedWolves2's Amazon Link (Score:2)
It's $14.00 at the Tattered Cover (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's $14.00 at the Tattered Cover (Score:2)
Re:It's $14.00 at the Tattered Cover (Score:2)
Sheesh... I think I'll stick with Amazon.
Re:Don't click on Slashdots book link (Score:1)
And alldirect.com has it for $13.80 [alldirect.com]
$10 at buy.com for the paperback version (Score:1)
Why pay more,... or amazon and RedWolves2...
I am not associated with addall.com, I like cheap books.
Yes! Buy it at the tattered cover! (Score:1, Informative)
ACLU on Tattered Cover Decision [aclu-co.org]
Free Expression.Com [freeexpression.org] on the tattered cover case
Interview with Tattered Cover's owner. [ioba.org]
Re:Yes! Buy it at the tattered cover! (Score:1)
A history of being right... (Score:4, Insightful)
These are the great books of Software Engineering written by people who know, and can prove it. headed by The Mythical Man Month and Peopleware everytime I re-read them it depresses me. Another year on, and still the same mistakes as 30 years ago.
Re:A history of being right... (Score:1)
Re:A history of being right... (Score:1)
a Broadway show on IT? (Score:5, Funny)
Marge: You know, when I was a little girl I always dreamed of being in a Broadway audience.
M@
Another OBSR (Score:1)
SLACK! The musical. (Score:2)
I was curious how they managed to integrate an educational theme like the subtitle suggested, "Getting past burnout, busywork, and the myth of total efficiency" into the narrative. I figured it was some neo-educational-broadway-drama-storytelling production. But a book isn't that bad.
Re:a Broadway show on IT? (Score:1)
Yup ..... (Score:2)
Slack (Score:4, Funny)
Slack? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Slack? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Slack? (Score:2)
Re:Slack? (Score:1)
Re:Slack? (Score:1)
Re:Slack? (Score:2)
Shouldn't Slack have a Trademark sign (Score:1, Redundant)
Bob Dobbs would not sue (Score:1)
Remember people, those deck chairs should be neat and orderly, we need to look good when we are sinking (- someone on the RMS Titanic)
Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic [starshiptitanic.com]
get it at a little less (Score:2, Informative)
And moderators, this isn't redundant. A lot of people actually think Slashdot links the cheapest site.
Alas... (Score:2, Interesting)
[Word to the wise geek: never work in a public library if you will be the only geek on staff--you'll thank me for this advice]
That said, this book seems destined to be purchased by managers nationwide, only to collect dust on their shelf, next to the One-Minute Manager and Dummies Guide to Management.
Re:Alas... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it... (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Why is it... (Score:4, Funny)
University work (Score:5, Insightful)
The culture here is such that people are hired to handle a set of responsibilities rather than to produce 40 hours of solid work every week. Because there is no one clear goal in most University departments, you find a wide disparity of workloads.
I think there is one crucial distinction between people that needs to be judged before such a management is widely deployed, however. There are some people, when given spare time, will increase the quality of their work. Others however, will simply waste their extra time. I'm inclined to say that techies, being generally more interested in their work than the average full-time employee would fit into the first category. Upon reflection, however, I do not believe this is true. I think it just boils down to personal work ethic. I've seen people in what I consider to be dreadfully dull positions (retail management, facilities) coming up with all kinds of great ideas to further the goals of the organization. As with many things in business, hiring seems to make all the difference.
Work ethic versus motivation (Score:1)
What really differentiates people is the level of confidence they need to have in their own idea before they disobey their manager to do it. People with a low threshhold implement a lot of things ... good or bad, depending if they're smarter than their manager.
Re:University work (Score:2)
This puts a huge pressure on management to know what their people are doing. Checking that responsibilities are satisfied is much harder work than checking that hours worked >=40.
It also means that if someone slips up regularly they have to be sacked. But, is that because you expected too much of them, or because they suck. And does legislation allow you to sack them?
You can see why management stick with the hour counting!
moer truth to be ignored (Score:4, Insightful)
Where I now work we have exactly THREE people to cover a backlog of tickets (some going back almost SIX MONTHS) along with the current issues of a 10 building, 250+ computer WAN. They wonder why we get stuck working a bit of OT (average of 1hr/week - and that's usually divided between the 3 of us), but they also expect us to get the department totally caught up (hey - there's 3 of you now instead of the just 2 of last year).
The world really needs to kick a few of those highly paid corporate officers out of their palaces and make them work a week or 2. I bet that would let us start seeing a change in working conditions (or at least pay).
I don't mind WORKING but this whole "we're going to cut your department, and your pay but you sill have to get everything done on time without overtime" idea is nuts.
Re:Grow up (Score:2)
I managed a consulting company for 10 years prior to deciding working for idiots that would give regular pay and benefits beat trying to do consulting where people prefer to hire inexperienced incompetents who've read the "idiot's guide to..." as consultant instead of hiring those with certs and experience.
We were supposed to get one more MIS tech, but some nitwit in bean counting decided that it was "more effective" to replace the Tech with a non-technical trainer using our salary budget. Yet, we still have an official, on paper goal of "totally completing all backlogged requests by 12/1".
In the 3 years (and 2 cities) that I've worked for others since canning my consulting company, I've worked for a series of managers making a minimum of TWICE my admin pay who never lifted a finger to help no matter how busy we were and often had absolutely no clue what was involved in the business of the department beyond making sure they got paid on full and in time. I've spent 3 years working diligently while watching my supervisors make personal calls (honey, we have to hire carpet cleaners because the cat keeps peeing in our bedroom - is NOT work related), play solitaire and often just kick back and eat.
I have no problem with the fact that managers tend to make more than their subordinates, but they shouldn't be expecting us to each do the work of 2 or more people while they let us watch them pick their noses while often making enough pay to hire the people the deparment is short yet still have a fat paycheck for themselves.
I'm a CCNA, and Solaris 7 Admin certified. I'm working on an MCSE (only because I'm stuck in a "microsoftville"). I have a college degree. I know what it takes to manage both departments and companies. Most company executives and top level management are very overpaid when compared even to the pay of middle management. Look how many CEO's got large BONUSES for running a company into bankruptcy after putting lower level workers through pay cuts and layoffs.
Re:Grow up (Score:2)
Don't bother arguing further with the anonymous cowards (maybe all the same person?). My last job was my first small step onto the management ladder, and it ended when the VP that hired me decided I was not working out. This guy wouldn't know slack if it ran him over, but the "peter principle" being what it is he was in a position to do what he did.
Come to think about it, slack is a good way to explain what happened. I was the team lead of a group of about 8 or so developers, and we were getting towards delivery time for a pretty aggressive round of new product features. I was the only one suggesting that the schedule was too agressive, so that was being ignored. Some form of risk management to put more slack in the schedule would have gone a long way. The VP also had the habbit of using up any slack we might have had with three times weekly meetings where he always went over pretty much the same list of points. He also has no idea how much slack just disappears when you fire someone for no reason and dump all the remaining work on the rest of the team. It is all really unfortunate because I really liked the company and the job, and I still thought we had a chance of making all the important stuff happen.
Now, had the CEO had the forsight to can the VP when he suggested I needed to go, there would have been all sorts of slack to go around. Part of the reason I was blindsided by this guy was that I was busy working extra hours trying to make up for lost slack. I was planning on talking to various people about the problems that were developing after we got the release out.
One last word to the wise. If nobody above you in the organization sees the need for more slack, then you'd better start making plans to leave. Keep in mind that slack is much more than just time in the schedule or flexibility to do things a better way, or even time to experiment or just shoot the breeze. Slack is also the confidence and trust someone has in you that allows you to get more slack in the first place. If you have organizational slack, but some of your managers don't have any slack, get them to read this book (buy it for them). Slack is anything that gives you the wiggle room to get what you really need/want.
Ok, so maybe I got carried away already, but I want to also mention how this relates to freeloading and such. One of the objections you are going to see to slack in organizations is that it encourages people to be lazy, and you can end up with a very pleasant environment where nothing ever gets done. The key to slack is to use it in ways that increase the available slack. If you use it all up playing minesweeper, showing up late and posting/reading /., then you won't have any when you need it. When you have plenty of slack, you can spread it around and generally increase the amount of slack in the neighborhood.
Re:Grow up (Score:1)
My office uses this method... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, business has picked up, and before our last two large projects, he's hired somebody to help me with them. Now, I've got a close-knit team of 3, and I'm still doing the same amount of work as always. I get a little stresed about busy weeks, but a "busy" week usually means cutting the hour of Unreal Tournament, coming early and leaving a little late -- not working 80 hours a week. As a result, I'm always "on". I don't feel burnt out. I even enjoy my work most of the time, though it can be monotonous. (web scripts are all the same after you've written too many)
Honest hint: (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a big hint from the universe that you need to abstract further. Spend some time factoring out the similarities, and you can make those drudgery scripts more quickly, with fewer bugs, and move on to more interesting problems. Plus, the challenge of factoring the functionality is itself an interesting problem.
Just trying to be helpful; I have no vested interest in you listening or otherwise
Abstraction is king! (Score:1)
Re:Abstraction is king! (Score:2)
Abstraction = less code
Less code = shorter project
Shorter project = less expensive project
Less expensive project = happier customers
Happier customers = more business for you and less for the competition
Please, do me a favor and ignore my advice.
some people working at 20%... (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a dangerous book to hype during a time of layoffs and cutbacks. I've seen alot of folks that were tinkering with skunkworks projects lose their jobs because they were viewed as non-essential.
Skunkworks projects are most often... (Score:1)
1. Assigning staff to "Special Projects" is often done with the idea that you must have a manager directing staff and keeping them busy at all times. Clearly, the staff involved couldn't come up with any productive use of their own time, so they have to be given a project.
2. These projects tend to have a very low code to documentation ratio. In fact, they often only produce a lot of documentation (usually of processes). Morello notes in Slack that processes often standardize the simple parts of application development and ignore the subtler and more difficult aspects.
3. Staff working on a "special project" aren't spending time creatively improving existing applications. This goes back to point one - management assumes that the technical staff won't have good ideas.
Re:some people working at 20%... (Score:1)
I don't see how this could be a dangerous book to hype... Having read this book in the last month, I don't see this as doing anything other than advocating having more people on a project...
You obviously didn't read the review...
Also, if you're doing the jobs of 5 people either accept it, realize that perhaps you're doing more than your job ( i.e. stop doing other peoples' work), or get a new job... :P
if you're reading slashdot right now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:if you're reading slashdot right now... (Score:2)
Especially if you're using the One and Only Linux distro.
A two-fisted, no bullshit approach to working. (Score:1)
I personally try to keep my maximum loading on any given day at or below 70%, but I also have a tendency to do some work on the weekends. It's no accident that 5/7ths is about 70%, so scaling a 5 day workweek to 7 days gives 100%. At least in theory. In the position I'm in, there's an infinite amount of work I could be doing. I work in bursts, get lots done, and then coast until the next burst. It works out great, because there are usually a lot of 'fires' that erupt during my coasting periods, and if I were working slavishly, I wouldn't be able to 'firefight.'
Ultimately, I think I do a better job of serving the company, as I'm able to work on projects and activities that are orthogonal to my "critical path tasks", and that helps out the productivity of everyone around me. I can spend the 10 minutes to look at someone elses code and spot a silly bug, or float an idea past someone about some project they're working on and so on. I love it.
I actually spend probably 1/2 of my day hopping between email, browsing websites to keep up on the news, avoiding conference calls, and generally ruminating about the state of the universe as it applies to our group. The other half of the day, I'm slacking off. And then on the weekend, I churn out code. ;-) For some reason, they keep promoting me. (It sometimes has an Office Space feel to it -- "You're firing Michael and Samir, and you're giving me a raise?" -- but really, I'm not that bad.)
Ok, I'm not *quite* that slacked all the time. But when I'm coasting, it's not too different. It balances the occasional mania-induced 14hr days and code-a-thons. I much prefer the work-in-bursts sprinting to sustained drudgery. It keeps it more interesting in the long run. And I am more likely to maintain a healthy reserve of slack.
--JoeSeems to build on Jay Galbraith 1973 (Score:4, Insightful)
Underutilization (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Underutilization (Score:1)
Regardless, if employees are bored, I would think that a good manager would be able provide methods by which the employee can be challenged and motivated to grow and learn. When is there ever "nothing else to learn"?
Re:Underutilization (Score:1)
Re:Underutilization (Score:1)
DeMarco is a pretty cool guy... (Score:2)
Also check out "The Deadline" - a novel about project management. Really.
I've got this book... (Score:3, Interesting)
... and I agree with the basic premise. This is a great "new" look at the problem of stressing effectiveness over efficiency, especially in the design house. However, most career managers have little incentive to rock the good ship status quo, and the majority of business contexts are production-oriented, not design-oriented, so efficiency over effectiveness is the name of the game.
Slip it into your boss' carry-on luggage before a big trip. Maybe you'll luck out.
read it!! (Score:5, Informative)
This book absofuckinglutely rocks. After I was about 50 pages into it, I started evangelizing it to all my game programmer and IT friends. I wish that every manager and project manager would read this book. There are some amazing ideas and concepts in that book that are no big surprise, but you'd think that these concepts would be impossibilities looking at how people manage!
There are some "amazing" ideas like: (paraphrased)
* 'If a project fails to meet a deadline, it's not the fault of the employees doing the work, it was the responsibility of the project manager to make a realistic project plan'
* 'No matter how many hours you force your knowledge employees to work, they'll still only be as productive as they would have been in 8 hours of work.'
* 'Interrupt your knowledge workers often, and it reduces their productivity'
* '100% efficient means no flexibility'
* 'Constant meetings make managers not able to manage'
* 'It costs money and time ($$$) to train a new person, so keep your old people happy if they're doing their jobs.'
The scenarios presented in this book rang so very true with the dotcom paradigm and the game industry. I couldn't believe how well everything applied. That whole book should be applied.
Most of these ideas aren't big surprises, but damned if people don't listen. I reiterate: I wish that every manager of knowledge workers would read this book, and that members of upper management would take time off from their busy meeting schedules and read it too. I think that it could make some kind of difference and even a tiny one would be amazing.
Us dotcommers burned out and used that severance period to get our lives back, but a good number of companies are still behaving like they did back then, and currently employed people are burnt out and/or burning out.
As someone who was an IT manager and still intends to be an IT manager, it was an excellent read. I just wish that my manager and the the COO would have read that damn book.
Burnt out employees is a bad thing. This book in the hands of managers is a very good thing.
Re:read it!! (Score:2)
The people in charge, the important people, the managers, are never going to read this book.
At my company (which shall remain nameless) we were recently assigned a book (The Trusted Advisor) to read. Management hyped it so much that they actually bought one for every engineer. It was a good book, actually an excellent book, about building high-level relationships with customers, and I found several sections that were actually philosophically diametrically opposed to some new policies and procedures that had just been instituted along with the hyping of this book. Apparently it was a "feel good move" passed on from some consultant to soften the blow of the policies (and a round of "performance-based" layoffs that were just around the corner that we hadn't been told about yet). Management obviously never read the book.
The funny thing is - the policies were put in place so that the managers could root-out slackers. They involved doing reviews of all their team members every 30 days, and team members had weekly status reports (which were not even read in the majority of cases). And the managers were too lazy to actually carry out the policy themselves. They did the reviews for the first and second month, then the next review was 4 months later (and everyone was working their asses off so they wouldn't be in the bottom 10%).
In the end, some layoffs did come, mainly politically motivated layoffs, rather than "performance-based" as they had planned.
And the end result was the workers left behind are all getting burned out - because the workload didn't go down when the pressure increased.
Too much slack is as bad as too little (Score:1)
Re:Too much slack is as bad as too little (Score:2)
It all boils down to: (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies, especially in the cut-throat US market, consistently choose immediate gains over long term gains. This is why we can have billion-dollar corporations just crumbling within days. At some point you can no longer borrow from Peter to pay Paul, and it all falls apart. Companies should be looking not only 1 or 5 years (or god forbid, just months!) into the future, but 10 or 20...not only with respect to human resources, but all the other resources and strategies available. Unfortunately, when you are surrounded with competition which will gladly eat your lunch if you attempt to forego immediate efficiencies for long term efficiencies, this can be very hard. Somehow this premature optimization needs to be disincentivized, but I'm not sure how that can be done. Also, with such "premature optimizations" the damage is long done before the long court process can resolve any wrong doing (HOW many years has the MS trial been going on without any ramifications or reparations so far?) Perhaps corporations should be forced to submit long term business strategy documents or have their charter revoked (maybe make this public record, so that companies cannot eat each other's lunch?) Who knows. But it a larger issue than just human resources. The free market optimizes very locally (and while some may argue the failure of those that optimize too locally, and the subsequent emergence of other companies support, not detract, from the free market - remember, big giants make BIG fucking holes when they fall...maybe we should be wary of letting the giants get that big without looking where they are going)
modelling and slack (Score:2, Insightful)
Decent paper. Yes, he tends to belabor points the reader should see coming, and the model is clearly simplistic - but these very points might make it accessible for managers, particularly those still enamored of their MBA degrees.
My trick... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:My trick... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:My trick... (Score:1)
Adolf Hitler would be delighted to see plenty of justification for the shoah just by watching how israël acts
I really do have to take exception, however, to expressing such a sentiment. Let me list the ways in which this is flagrantly wrong.
First, you are implying that there can be justification for genocide. Now most people, from the Noam Chomsky left to the Pat Buchanan right, seem to be able to agree that there is no justification at all for genocide... It doesn't matter if you think Isreal is right, wrong, or if you think Israel is commiting genocide itself in its actions towards the Palestinians (which, I presume, is what you are referencing).
Secondly, not only are you claiming justification for mass murder, but you seem to be arguing from the typical anti-semitic viewpoint: Jews are evil and must be destroyed. I say this because you aren't suggesting that today's israel should be punished for actions you disagree with, you are claiming that Hitler was right in his desire to destroy the Jews and paint them as the source of evil in Germany. In effect, you are claiming that modern Israels actions are retroactively legitimating Hitler's intentions (and no one can deny that they were profoundly anti-semitic). The destruction of European jewry in the holocaust was a great evil, a crime of tremendous magnitude, period. This is true no matter what modern day Jews may do.
Lastly, you are actually hurting your own cause by espousing such rascist and offensive ideas. I might be inclined to sympathise with your sentiments if you criticised Israel in a more constructive matter (you could even invoke the holocaust (if you must) by saying something like "You would think a people who had undergone incredible oppression like the shoah would make every attempt to avoid oppressing others.") I recently read a book written by an aquaintance of mine, Art Gish, about his experiences in Hebron as part of a peace team, and have somewhat modified my views on realising that the lunatics on the Israeli settler fringe are just as stupid and violent as the Hamas "the Zionists must be pushed into the sea" terrorists. Reading an idiotic comment about the holocaust, however, gives me an urge to put an Israeli flag on my car and a Star of David on my jacket as a sign of solidarity with Israel against anti-semites.
Those of you looking for additional perspective on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict might check out Hebron Journal [amazon.com] for a first hand account... For Pig Hogger, however, i have some other reading suggestions. Try reading and applying this book on critical thinking [amazon.com] before you make any more editorial comments on the holocaust.
regards
Simeon
Re:My trick... (Score:2)
Adding programmers to a late project ... (Score:2)
Re:Adding programmers to a late project ... (Score:2)
You totally missed it. Instead of adding new people, you:
No mystic man months here. Move along.
Re:Adding programmers to a late project ... (Score:1)
It's a long term strategy for the whole organization and won't help with the project that's due next month. Your organization will be healthier and stronger in the long run if each part has some slack.
Think of driving your car down the freeway. It's bad if it takes everything your car has just to keep up. It's much better if there is some extra capacity. That way, when the semi starts to squeeze you into the guardrail, you can accelerate out of the way.
popular with the managed (Score:1)
-- p
This slack costs money (Score:2, Interesting)
The truth is that you don't need slack, you need good managers. Should a business opportunity arise, good managers reprioritize and shift the focus of their employees, not complain that they have too few resources.
Re:This slack costs money (Score:4, Informative)
I have a car capable of going 143 miles per hour. However, I have only driven it that fast once, and most times I hover around 70 mph. The car is designed to perform for a long time when well maintained and driven at sane speeds. The same can be said for people. An employee can work 80 hours a week as fast as they can, but it is the equivalent of driving a car too damn fast for too damn long. On an average work day, I work at 70%. It's not that the other 30 percent is wasted, it is just extremely flexible. I'm currently using my extra 30% to refactor some stuff, read some good programing books, look at new technology and what not... all stuff I can drop at a moments notice so I can devote that extra 30% to something else.
Using the 30% as I want keeps me interesting and happy.
The false perception is that the 30% is lost. It is not.
Not a New Idea (Score:2, Interesting)
There are a lot of writers out there who have been talking about this concept for years.
Tom Heuerman calls the "slack" concept Organizational Mindfulness [shpm.com].
Not as snappy as "Slack," but essentially the same idea.
BTW, is somebody looking into grabbing the domain slackdot.org?
When I skimmed the article... (Score:2)
slack = 70% of time spent busy
debian = 5% of time spent busy
Granted, I know this isn't what it's talking about, but the idea of someone writing of - or even thinking - that slackware is a time-efficient distro is quite humorous.
Re:its the management stupid (Score:2)
Look after yourself - look for a position with better prospects, and once you've found one, then quit. Life is too short to waste working for (and enriching!) idiots.