Andrei's Updates en-US Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:46:44 -0800 60 Andrei's Updates 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Friend1413829333 Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:46:44 -0800 <![CDATA[<Friend user_id=30793608 friend_user_id=145445376 top_friend=true>]]> ReadStatus8590416324 Sun, 03 Nov 2024 11:29:52 -0800 <![CDATA[Andrei is currently reading 'Thinking, Fast and Slow']]> /review/show/6976430729 Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Andrei is currently reading Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
]]> Review6961300668 Sun, 03 Nov 2024 11:29:14 -0800 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win']]> /review/show/6961300668 The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim Andrei gave 4 stars to The Phoenix Project: A Novel About IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win (Paperback) by Gene Kim
This was quite captivating, I could barely put it down once I started. I think that to fully enjoy it you have to disregard the story and the characters. The message _behind_ them is way more important and the fact that the characters are one-dimensional serves to accentuate that. Erik's dialogues did seem very cheesy and I felt during those points that it would be better to just drop the story and deliver the ideas directly.

Nevertheless, I think everyone that has worked in software engineering knows a Brent, and I imagine that if you've worked in management then you know a Sarah; if you're in security then you know a strict person like John. This is what makes this book so relatable; at times I felt like _I_ was one of the people around Bill and was almost stressed about the (imaginary, but plausible) problems that Bill was facing.

The problems described in the book appear quite often in disfunctional companies, broken releases, constant firefighting, communication issues. It was very interesting to see how many of the DevOps practices served to solve those issues, and to realize how many of them are now standard across software engineering companies (although their implementation leaves to be desired more often than not).

There's definitely a lot to be learned from the book, although at times it felt difficult to separate the lessons from the riffraff. I'll read The DevOps Handbook in the future, I hope that one is more to the point. ]]> Review6931432722 Mon, 28 Oct 2024 10:28:35 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'Det mest förbjudna']]> /review/show/6931432722 Det mest förbjudna by Kerstin Thorvall Andrei gave 3 stars to Det mest förbjudna (Paperback) by Kerstin Thorvall
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
]]> Review6847877856 Wed, 16 Oct 2024 10:02:40 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind']]> /review/show/6847877856 Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari Andrei gave 4 stars to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Paperback) by Yuval Noah Harari
I think you have to approach this book (and pop-science books in general) as a collection of cool and interesting facts (usually backed by solid research and evidence) from which the author might sometimes draw conclusions which aren't necessarily correct, _and that is fine_. I read some opinions about this before getting into it and remarked how people were disappointed that the book's ideas were not rigorously presented and oftentimes were not logically sound. I feel that as along as you are aware of this and just approach the book wanting to learn something about our history (as someone that doesn't know much about it to begin with) and accept that the author might simplify and even twist things just to draw you in, then you're in for a decent ride.

I had a hard time putting this down even though I found the first few chapters to be kind of boring. The money and religion chapters were the places where I got hooked. I probably got a better feel for how money was "invented" from this book's chapter on it than the entire The Ascent of Money book by Niall Fergusson.

So if you can accept that books like these can serve as a gateway drug for wanting to learn more and at the same time you are willing to accept that some of the presented things are simplified and exaggerated in order to increase the appeal to the common (and oftentimes uninformed) reader then this is a fantastic book. Just don't go preaching it as gospel, OK? :) ]]> Review6847877856 Wed, 16 Oct 2024 09:36:19 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind']]> /review/show/6847877856 Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari Andrei gave 4 stars to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Paperback) by Yuval Noah Harari
I think you have to approach this book (and pop-science books in general) as a collection of cool and interesting facts (usually backed by solid research and evidence) from which the author might sometimes draw conclusions which aren't necessarily correct, _and that is fine_. I read some opinions about this before getting into it and remarked how people were disappointed that the book's ideas were not rigorously presented and oftentimes were not logically sound. I feel that as along as you are aware of this and just approach the book wanting to learn something about our history (as someone that doesn't know much about it to begin with) and accept that the author might simplify and even twist things just to draw you in, then you're in for a decent ride.

I had a hard time putting this down even though I found the first few chapters to be kind of boring. The money and religion chapters were the places where I got hooked. I probably got a better feel for how money was "invented" from this book's chapter on it than the entire The Ascent of Money book by Niall Fergusson.

So if you can accept that books like these can serve as a gateway drug for wanting to learn more and at the same time you are willing to accept that some of the presented things are simplified and exaggerated in order to increase the appeal to the common (and oftentimes uninformed) reader then this is a fantastic book. Just don't go preaching it as gospel, OK? :) ]]> Review6752800512 Sun, 15 Sep 2024 02:09:03 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference']]> /review/show/6752800512 The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell Andrei gave 4 stars to The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Paperback) by Malcolm Gladwell
There is a framework here which attempts to explain how epidemics start and the computer guy in me really wishes that some graphs were used during the presentation since I all kept thinking of were nodes and edges. I am willing to bet that there are papers out there that present some of the same information in a more mathematical way using graph theory.

With that aside, there are many cool and interesting ideas presented in this book and many of them are rooted in actual science (if one is to rely on the references) but I felt that things never really clicked for me, by the end of it I didn't feel like I got a "so this is how it works" explanation but more like fragmented "this part seems to work like this, this part like that" ideas. Which is perhaps everything that one can ask for given the complexity of the subject. I do wonder if advances in this area have been made in the last 24 years (the book was originally published in 2000), especially given the rise of social media. There is probably no better way at the moment to study this than analyzing the propagation of ideas (disinformation campaigns in particulare) in social media, since the companies that run those medias have logs of _everything_ going on in their backyard. I do hope that a revised edition comes out at some point.

I was happy to see the Broken Windows Theory being mentioned which is something that I firmly believe in, especially in the context of software engineering. And was shocked to hear about the Micronesian suicide epidemic, how can that even be a thing?

Overall really interesting writing as long as you don't take the connections made for granted, and focus instead on each individual idea and try to understand the spirit of the book. ]]> Review6623925621 Mon, 12 Aug 2024 11:49:59 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'How Google Works']]> /review/show/6623925621 How Google Works by Eric Schmidt Andrei gave 4 stars to How Google Works (Paperback) by Eric Schmidt
Quite a bit of overlap between this and No Rules Rules, many of the problems and advice on how to handle them can be found in both books. I would absolutely love to read a book on how to transform a company with traditional management style into one that uses the approaches described here and what the challenges are (and if at all possible to do a full transformation).

Just like I wrote in the No Rules Rules review, I have a hard time seeing companies in older, conservative industries (like automotive and aviation) and countries with stronger employment laws adapting to this style. I realize that the safety issues present in those industries go against the "move fast and break things" mantra but I also feel like there is a risk for companies in those industries to be left behind. As usual, the answer might be somewhere in the middle.

There's a lot of good stuff to grok in here and each mini-chapter deserves reflection time. A problem with having so much information is that it is hard to remember it all (especially as someone that does not work with these things on a daily basis) so this is definitely a book worth revisiting especially if you hit some of the discussed topics in real life. ]]> Review6367373195 Fri, 28 Jun 2024 11:56:40 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'No Rules Rules']]> /review/show/6367373195 No Rules Rules by Erin Meyer Andrei gave 5 stars to No Rules Rules (Hardcover) by Erin Meyer
This was a really fun read, the way the book is structured and how the chapters are written makes it very accessible and easy to digest. Kudos to the editors for this.

The book starts right off the bat describing a premise that, from what I know, is only applicable in the US: that you can fire people very easily. Sculpting high performing teams by firing those that can't keep up the pace is the foundation for everything that follows later on. As far as I know this doesn't work in Europe, where workers have more rights. This is acknowledged in the last chapter but the book doesn't go into details exactly how this is handled in countries with stricter employment laws. I would be really interested in reading about that. Naturally, when you read a book like this and you live outside the US you can't help but think how applicable the lessons in there are to a company located in your country.

There are, nevertheless, methods in the book that I think can work even without being able to fire people at will. For me the biggest one is that transparency and clear communication (especially about failures) leads to better results. This can be implemented in most companies but it can be extremely painful if management is not on board with it, I don't think it's something that can be pushed from the bottom.

I also really enjoyed the fact that the book recognizes that some of the methods described are not applicable to companies where safety is important (in those, process should be favored so that risk is minimized, as opposed to a culture with little processes and great freedom to experiment).

All in all, a fantastic book. I would love to read something similar from a company based in Europe and see some other approaches. ]]> Review6201596208 Sat, 23 Mar 2024 06:09:06 -0700 <![CDATA[Andrei added 'Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas']]> /review/show/6201596208 Calculus Reordered by David M. Bressoud Andrei gave 3 stars to Calculus Reordered: A History of the Big Ideas (Paperback) by David M. Bressoud
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