I am not sure why I love Michael Lopp’s writing. It is far from perfect. And yet very enjoyable and often eye opening. I think the key here is that he and I are both on the same career path: software engineer evolved into management role. The difference is, Michael is 10 years ahead. Reading him for me is like talking to a wiser, more experienced version of myself.

“Managing Humans” is largely based on entries Michael posted on his blog and it shows. It is not sequential systematic material. Rather, it is a collection of related articles. And chapters do vary in quality.

This review is a chapter-by-chapter guide, which designed to direct you to the good parts of this book.

SKIP: Chapter 1 – Don’t Be a Prick. Covers why book is called “Managing Humans”. We usually see this sort of material in preface. As most prefaces it is optional.

READ: Chapter 2 – Managers Are Not Evil. Probably the best chapter in the whole book. Michael reveals the nature of relationship between you and your manager at the level which was new to me:

Ironically, the second most common complaint I’ve heard from frustrated employees is, “My manager has no idea what I do.” There are a couple of possible causes for this situation. Your manager may not care what you are doing. It doesn’t mean the work you are doing is good or bad, it’s just not on his radar. Some folks find this arrangement of ignorance to be a cozy, warm blanket. It’s a no-fuss job. No awkward hallway conversation, just me and my code and . . . I’m what? I’m fired? Holy shit. Well, that’s the risk of having a covert job.

He describes a great strategy to evaluate your manager, and covers a touchy topic of over-delegation . Wonderful, wonderful material. Read it, know it, love it.

SKIP: Chapter 3 – The Monday Freakout. Chapter explores a situation when somebody on your team starts to panic. Another chapter to skip on your first read. You can go back to it when you have time for a couple of laughs.

READ: Chapter 4 – Agenda Detection. Chapter describes a systematic approach to ancient problem of meetings. It provides a framework to identify who wants what from a meeting. Get in, detect the agenda, help to move the issue in the right direction and get the hell out. Choice of true managers. Must read. Also see Chapter 26 – Meeting Creatures – on the same subject.

READ: Chapter 5 – Mandate Dissection.Team is not sure what to do next and everybody argues? But you will have to make a decision! And half of your team will not be happy about that. Chapter explains how to deliver controversial decisions so that rioting does not start. Five stars to author for this one.

READ: Chapter 6 – Information Starvation. Somewhat flaky chapter but worth reading nevertheless. Your job as a manager is to provide your team with relevant information and feedback. If you don’t – they might waste their time worrying, gossiping, and being otherwise unproductive. Author describes “Aggressive Silence” technique to determine how much information team needs.

SKIP: Chapter 7 – Subtlety, Subterfuge, and Silence. There is only one important message in this chapter: managers should listen more:

Managers lead, and a lot of managers translate that into “managers lead by talking.” We think we’re guiding you by filling the air with our thoughts. There’s a time and place for that, but in order to fill the air with something relevant, you’ve got to gather and process data. In silence, you can assess

READ: Chapter 8 – Managementese. Management lingo, “managementese”, is important language which helps different part of organization to understand each other. Author warns us, however, that we should refrain from using it when talking to our team:

The main issue folks have with managementese is not that they don’t understand what is being said; their issue is that they don’t trust it.

MUST READ: Chapter 9 – Technicality. Oh, my god, this question tortured me for ages! As a manager – should I write code or should I not? Pros and contras are all well known. Author’s answer makes a lot of sense: “stop coding and start programming again”:

1. Use the development environment to build the product.
2. Be able to draw a detailed architectural diagram describing your product on any whiteboard at any time. I’m not talking about the three-boxes-and-two-arrows versions. You need to know the detailed one, the hard one that isn’t pretty and is tricky to explain.
3. Own a feature. You are still a manager, so make it a small feature, OK? You’ve still got a lot to do. If you can’t imagine owning a feature, my backup advice is to fix some bugs.
4. Write a test script. I still do this late in the product cycle when folks are losing their minds. This is a simple script that you run with each build. Think of it as your checklist for understanding what your product does. Show it to coworkers. Do it often.

READ: Chapter 10 – Avoiding The Fez. Even though this chapter is build around fictional problematic programmer named Fez, it is in fact about how to prepare for annual review and evaluate an employee. Another must read.

READ: Chapter 11 – Your Resignation Checklist. Great chapter with some do’s and don’ts when leaving a company. Some of them is plain common sense, but some surprised me. For example – “Don’t volunteer to do work after you leave” and “Don’t give to much notice.” Worthy read.

SKIP: Chapter 12 – Saying No. Not particularly coherent chapter about courage to say “no” to your manager when he is not making sense.

READ: Chapter 13 – 1.0. This chapter is mostly about fundamental structure of a technical startup. It operates in such terms as “pitch”, “people”, “process”, and “product”. The chapter is addressed to an entrepreneur rather then to a manager. It is hard for me to judge since I never worked in a startup, but ideas author describes seem to make sense. Read if you work in a startup and let me know what you think.

READ: Chapter 14 – Taking Time To Think. Chapter describes in very specific, prescriptive manner how to harvest and work on ideas for a new product. Two meetings a week: one for brainstorming and another for prototype review. Participants must change, venting should be limited, records must be kept. Lots of meat in this chapter, good read.

READ: Chapter 15 – The Soak. Author describes a brain phenomena of background processing and decision making. He shares some ideas on how to leverage this ability:

I break soaking activities into two buckets: active soaks and passive soaks. The active soaks are activities that you can direct and usually involve gathering content, whereas passive soaks are activities when you just point your brain in a random direction and pray. Passive soaks are where the real work gets done.

READ: Chapter 16 – Malcolm Events. Chapter defines Malcolm Events as “Seemingly insignificant events that are intent on screwing you in an unlikely way.” Because of their insignificance, it is hard to recognize a Malcolm Event. To mitigate the risk of Malcolm Events author suggests proper artifact capturing system and provides some guidelines regarding what proper artifact capturing technique for this cause should be.

SKIP: Chapter 17 – Capturing Context. Skip, unless you are not familiar with the concept of version control.

READ: Chapter 18 – Status Reports 2.0. Author explains how status reports emerge as organization grows, and why everybody stops reading them. Author provides a recipe how to fix status reports. Chapter is worth reading and recipe is worth considering.

SKIP: Chapter 19 – Trickle Theory. If you estimated a task to take 45 hours, it might only take 7 hours, as it happened with author. Yeah, right. Happens to me all the time. Yet in some cases it worth attacking an impossible task without thinking too much. The question is how to identify those cases? Author does not answer this question. I say, tentative reading.

READ: Chapter 20 – A Glimpse and a Hook. Do you know how resumes are processed by recruiters and hiring managers? Author provides solid advice on how to write a resume which will go through camel’s ear of this process and get you a phone screen. Its a great summary of what you already know from other sources. Most definitely read it when it is time to update your resume.

READ: Chapter 21 – Nailing The Phone Screen. A decent overview of how to successfully pass a phone screening interview.

READ: Chapter 22 – Ninety Days. Through an interview you will only get a hint of what your new life is going to be. On a new job you have 3 months – 90 days to complete your interview. Mark these 90 days on calendar and roll up the sleeves. Chapter contains a list of things to do. A must read for anybody starting on a new job.

READ: Chapter 23 – Bellwethers. What kind of people you involve to interview a candidate? Author suggests involving Technical Bully, Culture Compatibility Detector and Vision Detector. After each one speaks to the candidate, make sure to have interview feedback meeting with all three.

SKIP: Chapter 24 – NADD (Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder). Author describes a NADD phenomena which seems to affect many modern programmers. I think you can safely skip it.

SKIP: Chapter 25 – Nerds Cave. Author talks about his home office and how he gets in the zone. Definite skip.

READ: Chapter 26 – Meeting Creatures. Aaah, good stuff again. Wonderful article about meeting inner structure and logic. Describes some of the most popular meeting creatures including The Anchor, Chatty Patty, Mr. Irrelevant, and other famous people. Read this chapter three times in a row to get +25% bonus to your meeting handling skill.

SKIP: Chapter 27 – Incrementalists and Completionists. One of the oldest holy wars in the book (yes, there is a book of holy wars). Author recommends that you figure out whether you are incrementalist or completionist and look for complementing qualities in your coworkers.

READ: Chapter 28 – Organics and Mechanics. Do you approach problems in systematic orderly fashion or you try different things and reach out to people chaotically? How about your boss? Is he different? Does that create problems between you? In this chapter author introduces Mechanics and Organics to describe these two types of problem solvers:

Mechanic: “An itch. Well. This itch seems familiar. In fact, I scratched this type of itch in January 2001. Let me first dig up my notes regarding that itching. Excellent. We’re going to need a matrix. The vertical column will be action items I can think of that will assess different scratching scenarios and the vertical axis will measure our progress against these different scenarios. OK, we’re going to need a meeting to form a committee . . .”
Organic: “Wow, an itch. Hmmmm . . . well, this sucks. Hey Frank, we’ve got an itch . . . whaddya think? Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. You know, this itch seems familiar . . . I think I’m going to deeply consider this itch while I drive home, but first, where’s Mary? She knows all about itches and I bet she’ll have some ideas . . . I wonder what happens when I type itch in Google . . . Hey . . . there’s an idea . . .”

It might be a challenge for Organic and Mechanic to understand each other. The chapter provides an advice on breaching the gap.

READ: Chapter 29 – Inwards, Outwards, and Holistics. Chapter describes three different types of managers depending on where their attention is directed to: Inwards – to to their team, Holistics – across the organization, Outwards – outside of the organization. Apparently I am an Inward with a hint of a Holistic. Interesting way of looking at management.

READ: Chapter 30 – Free Electron. Author describes a phenomena of Free Electron. Most likely you know this type of a guy. Very bright technical person who can quickly solve a wide range of technical problems. Somebody who writes code 10 times faster than anybody else and being thrown to put out most difficult fires. Got the picture? Know the guy? Alright. Besides that there is some advice regarding how to use a Free Electron properly so that he keeps solving these hard problems for you.

READ: Chapter 31 – Rules for Reorg. A number of wise observations regarding how to weather a reorganization and use it to your advantage:

Well, if we’re going to solve problem A right now, we should take a stab at problem B since we’re going to be mucking with everything anyway.” If you’ve got an agenda, if you’ve got a change in mind, it’s time to consider pushing it because the chances that you can effect change are vastly higher in the midst of a reorg.

SKIP: Chapter 32 – Offshore Risk Factor. Chapter outlines a method to evaluate whether you are at risk of being outsourced. Mostly common sense, therefore skip.

SKIP: Chapter 33 – Joe. Another chapter on outsourcing. Sort of a case study and an attempt to apply principles from previous chapter.

SKIP: Chapter 34 – Secret Titles. There is an official title – what is printed on your business card – and secret title – what you actually do. Author claims that some problems with managers occur because they don’t understand what your secret title is. Make them aware of your secret title and these problems will go away.

Ooookay. Will do.

Skip it.

Bonus! Memorable quotes from Michael Lopp:

• Managers don’t start crazy. Its a learned trait.
• Meetings are always going to be inefficient because language is hard.
• Part of management is getting folks to comfortably bend in an uncomfortable direction
• As a manager you are representing the company until the moment you are out the door.
• Shipping a 1.0 product isn’t going to kill you, but it will try.
• Panic is the mother of the path of least resistance.
• The best sign of a productive design process is that the players change.
• Call it bureaucracy, call it group think, but understand that very large groups of people working together barely looks like working because they move so slowly.