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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. :)

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. :)

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

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.

Comments about oreilly Team Geek:

Brian Fitzpatrick leads Google's Data Liberation Front and Transparency Engineering teams.Ben Collins-Sussman is one of the founding developers of SVN and now manages the engeneering team for the Google Affiliate Network.
Both have a lot of experience with Open Source Projects.

The Book has a clearly defined goal – to help programmers become more effective
and efficient at creating software by improving their ability to
understand, communicate with, and collaborate with other people.

And that is the essence of this book. It explains why each relationship (not only related to Software projects) should be based on Humility, Respect and Trust (HRT).

The message of the book also applies to the relationship between team mates, team leader and team and above all to the relationship with end users.

The book gives useful tips on how to cope with complicated team mates and how managers should lead their team.

Brian and Ben explain why a team culture is so important and should be protected right from the start.

Last but not least the reader gets some tips on how to promote himself better within his company.

I really enjoyed reading this book.