Micro Review: Coders & Ask your Developer

So here is a bonus.2 Book reviews in 1 :) I am catching up on these reviews. I recently read 2 related books —Coders by Clive Thompson & Ask your Developer by Jeff Lawson. What I thought were 2 related books actually turned out to be very different books about my favorite people — Computer Programmers / Software Engineers (Coders? Developers?).

Lets tackle Coders first. Written by Clive Thompson, a New York Times Journalist, Coders was both an interesting read and a disappointment. Clive takes an anthropological view of coder culture (BTW there are 4 waves of coders and I am apparently part of the second wave !!!) and covers different aspects of coder culture and has stories about many of them who have had prominent experiences. So it is interesting to read about all of that. The disappointing part is that (as a former coder and current tech exec), I did not find many new insights. The pitfall of trying to generalize and write a book like this is that there are many things you cannot generalize without stereotyping and run the risk of missing out on many nuances. The challenge of the software engineering field (or us software engineers not just coders :)) is that the field is very complex and varied and the people who work in it are even more varied and have pretty diverse backstory, motivations, passions and life. Its hard put those in boxes. So Yes, an interesting read if you are in the technology field but not sure if you will walk away any wiser.

Now lets talk about the book “Ask your Developer” by Jeff Lawson, the founder and CEO of Twilio. This is a very different book and Jeff delves a little bit into the history of Twilio, how software (and building your own software) is becoming (or has already become) the key to every business’ strategy. Thebulk of the book is dedicated to how to run engineering organizations as a tech exec and does cover many of the key tenets of doing that. His central idea on asking your developers (or empowering your developers) to drive many decisions in an engineering organization is pretty spot on. The only thing I will call out is that similar to coders, you cannot generalize many things and context is everything. The book reflects Jeff’s own experiences working / running for a tech product company and thus is still shallow in covering other contexts. However, if you had to pick one of the above 2 books, I would suggest this one. There are actual takeaways that would either be new or would reinforce your perspective.