The backlash has begun. Four months ago, everywhere was proclaiming that working from home was both the New Hotness and Here to Stay. In the last few weeks, those same venues have switched gears, documenting how people can’t wait to go back to the office. What changed?

Nothing. Simply the novelty wore off.

I get it. The last time I had a work-from-home job I didn’t really enjoy it. It was a decade ago and the technology wasn’t quite there. No Slack, an emphasis on phone calls rather than video-chats and much weaker collaboration tools like wikis. I was also one of only a few people working remotely. But, perhaps most significantly, I was at a different stage of my life.

I’m not a big fan of Facebook. And the odd thing is that it feels like Steven Levy isn’t either¹.

I’ve read most of Levy’s previous books and, while he’s never been uncritical, there has always been a mostly positive spin. From Apple¹, to Google¹, to the “hacker culture¹” (including Stallman) I don’t recall any of his previous works quite being so down on their subjects.

It’s to the credit of Zuckerberg and his crew, then, that they were so involved in its creation. All the big names were interviewed on the record and, frankly, few come off well. Zuckerberg himself comes across as petty, jealous, arrogant and not terribly likeable. Even Steve Jobs had a fun, mischievous side.

Sometimes I can’t help being a bit of a liberal caricature. James O’Brien is one too, and he knows it.

In his book “How to be right… in a world gone wrong” [affiliate link] he goes through a bunch of topics, from Islam to Political Correctness, and debunks the common arguments, often using transcripts from his radio show. The chapter on The Age Gap is, perhaps, the one that made me think the most.

Since the whole world is now working from home (terms and conditions may apply), everybody else is writing their working from home tips. I didn’t want to feel left out.

The way I see it, there are two related aspects: first, how you deal with it; two, how your office culture deals with it.

If you’re asked to work from home, you need to make the most of it. But right out the gate, it’s important to note that it doesn’t suit everyone. It sounds good, but some people just find it hard to be productive when there are distractions, from housework to a Nintendo, and they find it hard to manage without the face-to-face social interactions. There are many reasons and there’s no shame in admitting it’s not for you.

This [affiliate link] is probably the geekiest book I’ve read in a long time. It’s basically one step up from reading the source code for your favourite operating system. Or perhaps having a favourite operating system.

What I would say is that Unix has been pretty much the only constant throughout my career. I started with Solaris and HP-UX at university. I installed an early version of Linux on my personal machine to avoid the thirty-minute walk from home to the university labs. I’ve done consulting, I’ve developed both vertical and horizontal applications¹, C and C++, Swift and Java, banking and telecoms. Pretty much the only thing they’ve all had in common was some sort of Unix underpinning.

If I took this book [affiliate link] to heart, I should try to convince you to read it.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure I’d like this book, and I mainly took it out of the library so I could make the joke in the first paragraph (and others like it). I mean, negotiation isn’t my job. I’m not, like the author, a hostage negotiator. I’m not even in sales. The key, of course, is that we all have to negotiate from time to time. While I may not often have to negotiate money in my day job, I do have to agree on the scope of work. This is a form of negotiation. We all have to buy stuff or hire someone to deal with jobs around the house.

As the Downing Street clock reaches zero, as Whitehall is lit in red, white and blue, as the Union Jacks blanket Parliament Square, I wanted to commemorate Brexit actually happening.

In fact, I’ve wanted to say something about Brexit since before the referendum, but what is there to say that’s new? But original or not, I needed to write something.

Far from a celebration, 11pm on 31st January 2020 marks the culmination of years of misdirected anger and politicians harnessing that for their own personal gain.

Matthew Syed’s “Bounce” [affiliate link] is a pop-science book that I borrowed from the library on a whim. It’s about the the “science of success” and starts with the idea that experts have at least 10 000 hours worth of experience in their field.

It’s… fine. I think I believed the thesis before I started but, while it was easy to read, I’m not sure how much it added.

The third chapter — about deliberate practice — almost had me for a minute, until I realised I’d seen it many times before. You see people at work who claim n years of experience but it doesn’t take long to understand that they just have the same year repeated over and over again; they didn’t grow or learn.

I failed.

By half a book! I missed my goal of twelve books in 2019 by a few hundred pages¹.

In my defence, “Guns, Germs and Steel²” is very long but the real culprit (like the previous year) is my lack of a commute. Not that I’m sick of working from home yet but that was my reading time and now I just don’t have a time that I consistently set aside.

I should have believed the reviews. This is not a good book [affiliate link]. A few light sniggers and that’s about all.

The conceit is that Tony Hawks, writer and comedian, gets fan mail for Tony Hawk, celebrity skateboarder. He writes back.

I’ve loved many of Hawks past books but, despite only paying 99p for this one, I still feel like I overpaid for it.