I’ve been working from home for five years. I started well before the pandemic and, like many who have tried it, would have a hard time going back to an office full time. However, I used to spend my commute reading. In those years I have not managed to consistently find time to just sit and read.

What I’m saying is that 2022, from a book reading perspective, has gone not got well, even worse than 2021! I have only completed four books. I enjoyed two of them, the other two were a bit meh. Not actually bad but I wouldn’t say that they justified their word count.

I’ll be honest: I wanted to like “Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering” by Robert L. Glass more than I did. I’m not sure if it’s dated badly — it’s from 2002 — or I was in the wrong frame of mind, or something else, but it just didn’t work for me.

The book is structured as a list of facts grouped around areas such as “Management” and “Requirements.” For each fact, there is a discussion, the controversy, and then the sources and references. The writing aims to be friendly, but I found it a bit grating¹.

Before you ask, yes, it is weird that I’m reading a bunch of “management” books.

You can watch Michael Lopp’s career by following his various books. Start with “Being Geek,” the software developer’s career handbook. The move into management resulted in “Managing Humans.” And his promotion from manager to director and executive gets you “The Art of Leadership,” which is the book I recently finished.

My career has not followed the same trajectory. I continue to be an “individual contributor,” so why would I read this book?

“Radical Candor” is one of those phrases that I’ve heard and wondered about. Is it another vacuous management phrase? Does it mean anything? I saw it in the library and thought I’d find out. I’m cynical about these things but it doesn’t mean I’m closed minded!

The pitch is “Be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity” which sounds positive but I don’t manage people at work. Even if it contained genuine insight, would there be anything I could use?

A couple of years ago I did a conference talk called “On Cloud Nine: How to be happy migrating your in-memory computing platform to the cloud.” I wish I’d had “Cloud Without Compromise” back then. It covers much of the same ground but, as you’d expect in a book rather than a forty minute conference talk, in much greater depth. More importantly, it puts some concepts into context much more clearly that I did, either by explaining it better or by giving it a good name.