In a perfect world, software engineers who produce the best code are the most successful. But in our perfectly messy world, success also depends on how you work with people to get your job done.
In this highly entertaining book, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman cover basic patterns and anti-patterns for working with other people, teams, and users while trying to develop software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.
Writing software is a team sport, and human factors have as much influence on the outcome as technical factors. Even if you’ve spent decades learning the technical side of programming, this book teaches you about the often-overlooked human component. By learning to collaborate and investing in the "soft skills" of software engineering, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort.
Team Geek was named as a Finalist in the 2013 Jolt Awards from Dr. Dobb's Journal. The publication's panel of judges chose five notable books, published during a 12-month period ending June 30, that every serious programmer should read.
Chapter 1 The Myth of the Genius Programmer
Help Me Hide My Code
The Genius Myth
Hiding Is Considered Harmful
It’s All About the Team
The Three Pillars
HRT in Practice
Learn to Both Deal Out and Handle Criticism
Next Steps
Chapter 2 Building an Awesome Team Culture
What Is Culture?
Why Should You Care?
Culture and People
Communication Patterns of Successful Cultures
High-Level Synchronization
Day-to-Day Discussions
Using an Issue Tracker
Communication as Part of Engineering
It Really Is About the Code After All
Chapter 3 Every Boat Needs a Captain
Nature Abhors a Vacuum
@Deprecated Manager
The Servant Leader
Antipatterns
Leadership Patterns
People Are Like Plants
Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Motivation
Final Thoughts
Chapter 4 Dealing with Poisonous People
Defining “Poisonous”
Fortifying Your Team
Identifying the Threat
Repelling the Poison
A Final Thought
Chapter 5 The Art of Organizational Manipulation
The Good, the Bad, and the Strategies
The Ideal: How a Team Ought to Function Within a Company
The Reality: When Your Environment Is an Obstacle to Your Success
Brian Fitzpatrick leads Google's Data Liberation Front and Transparency Engineering teams and has previously led Google's Project Hosting and Google Affiliate Network teams. He cofounded Google's Chicago engineering office and serves as both thought leader and internal advisor for Google's open data efforts.
Ben Collins-Sussman, one of the founding developers of the Subversion version control system, led Google's Project Hosting team, and now manages the engineering team for the Google Affiliate Network. He cofounded Google's engineering office in Chicago and ported Subversion to Google's Bigtable platform.
In general it have good tips, but in some parts, specially in the two last chapters, they could deep more in the subject.
1/20/2014
5.0
Better than I was expecting
By Guillem Fernandez
from Barcelona, Spain
Pros
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Expert
Intermediate
Novice
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
It's written in a very understandable way and easily you'll find many situations where you've been involved or seen others involved.
It is very well focused to users who are or want to become managers, but also for those who doesn't' want to as those behaviours and solutions apply to any situation in a team no matter which position you are at the moment.
I'd recommend it with no doubt, a good reading to leave for some time the pure technical reading.
7/10/2013
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
HRT for the win!
By Masci
from Perugia, Italy
About Me Developer
Pros
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Cons
Best Uses
Expert
Intermediate
Novice
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
As a software developer and a team member, I know how difficult is dealing with people in respect of writing code sitting comfortably at my desk, so I am usually very skeptical of technical books that promise to teach you how to deal with this "human stuff" like it was a programming language. I had the pleasure to meet Brian Fitzpatrick at a conference and I was very impressed by his brilliant personality and his fascinating personal story and this somehow convinced me on reading this book. And I was not disappointed because since the first pages you have the strong feeling you're reading something written by developers, so you mostly and easily get the point of the authors.
The book is full of good advices, best practices and even a list of antipatterns you better avoid to apply to your team. Some of the advices derives from common sense and you or your team likely apply them already, nevertheless it was very useful realizing how important some behaviours, habits or attitudes me and my team already have but wrongly take for granted, or worst, miss to improve.
The authors keep saying a sort of mantra during the book: HRT, an acronym that stands for Humility, Respect and Trust. Apply this mantra and you will soon become an excellent team player, whatever your job is. For this reason in particular I'll do my best to have my colleagues read this book.
12/9/2012
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Simple, yet effective
By AndrewBit
from Athens, Greece
About Me Developer, Maker
Pros
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Intermediate
Novice
Student
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
Choosing Team Geek was an interesting experiment for me. That's because I am not a developer and I don't, usually, have to coordinate a team of developers. BUT, I work closely to developing teams, and sometimes I have to advise them on how they can better run their company, so I gave it a try. What surprised me a lot, is that I found more than plenty good similarities for teams that co-develop knowledge oriented items, such as a team that is creating feasibility studies or conducts a market research. I was stunned by the fact that these two worlds have so many common stereotypes and archetypes, but then I realized that it has to do with the nature of Humans when they are co-creating something using their mental powers.
To make a long story short, it is a great book even if you are not the coding guy. That's because it has easily comprehended examples that you give you a taste of the coders' mentality. It's heavily focused on people and how they feel. It covers a variety of issues, such as the need to become more "managerial", the team culture, how a team can be "manipulated" and of course, about the different types of poisonous people.
In the end, it's all about people collaborating under a specific context.
What I keep is HRT: humility, respect, and trust.
12/2/2012
5.0
For make a good project team.
By Shinsuke
from Japan
About Me Developer
Pros
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Intermediate
Novice
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
Don't be afraid title "Geek". This book is written for a variety of "Team Project Members". Has been written about it to improve teamwork - how to better the project in this book. To deal with "Poisonous People", Don't be "Poisonous People". This book contains how to build a Good Project Team.
10/14/2012
5.0
Excellent Book
By Juri
from Italy
About Me Developer, Software architect
Pros
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Expert
Intermediate
Novice
Student
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
The book is amazing. From now and then I always again like to read books which aren't strictly related to a specific technology, also because technological problems are usually the easy ones. "Software development is a team sport" after all. There are lots of interpersonal communications going on. As such it is important to know how to keep people motivated.
From that perspective, this book is great. The authors continuously refer to real-life examples which makes it even more interesting and practical-oriented.
A more extensive and detailed review can be found here: http://juristr.com/blog/2012/10/hrt-humility-respect-and-trust
10/1/2012
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Must Read book for Team Leaders
By Bibu
from Vijayawada,India
Pros
Cons
The Book Has Only Few Top
Best Uses
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
This book explores the daily situations in software team. Every person need to have HRT. Thats a nice concept.Many things we will learn after reading this.
Hope they will release part-2. :)
9/17/2012
5.0
A must read book for anyone in IT
By Serge Broslavsky
from Riga, Latvia
About Me Developer, Technical Project Manager
Pros
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Expert
Intermediate
Novice
Student
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
A very practical and easy to read book, where I've not found many confirmations for my own experience, but also learned many new things. It authors haven't spent in vain the time it took to write it - kudos to them for sharing their experience.
Don't think - buy and read it. You'll have quite a bit of things to think about (and try) after doing so. :)
9/5/2012
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Developer social skills
By horalass
from Lomé, Togo
About Me Developer
Pros
Helpful examples
Cons
Best Uses
Expert
Intermediate
Novice
Student
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
Brian and Ben, through their personal experience in open source projects and their current job at Google have shared with us the social skills every developer need to have nowadays to succeed. They have shown us all the social skills you need to build as a person, team and finally how to sneak into a company's gears. Most of developer think that writing great code is what matters the most. This book explains that it is not enough and gives us some tricks about how to work with "bad" teammates, managers and also in "bad" organizations (it may be or has been the case for most of us) and get things done. This book is interesting for both managers and engineers no matter the field you are working in. Some examples are focus on software engineering but you can easily transpose them in your daily job. This book can be divided into four basic sections: You, The Team, The Organizations, Users. The pillar of all the sections is Humility, Respect and Trust HRT as they have contracted it in the book. One quote of the book which emphasizes this pillar: "Managers worry about how things get done, while leaders forge the way" It's worth reading this book
8/30/2012
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Book full of practical knowledge
By Przemysław
from Kraków
About Me Developer
Pros
Easy to understand
Entertaining
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Best Uses
Everybody
Comments about oreilly Team Geek:
This book is great. It is full of practical useful tips, a lot of insights. Authors did a good job to present different points of view. 6 chapters helps to understand different aspects from developer's, manager's, team member's and user's perspective. Book is pleasant to read. It contains many anecdotes and pictures which made me laugh. Take your time and read Team Geek. It is absolutely worth it.