Cube Farm, by Bill Blunden

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It does a fantastic job of humorously describing the world of software development at a large(ish) company. I can’t count the number of times that the author described something that I’ve seen at my company! His depiction of the Web Group versus the Illuminati (code names for two groups within the author’s firm) is a scary parallel to BMC’s PATROL Express versus PATROL battles over the past few years. In addition to telling a very entertaining story, he calls out lessons in each chapter that we should take away from his tales of woe; again, BMC could learn from many of these: “Physical separation can facilitate rivalry;” or “Managers will often ignore a problem to make it go away;” or “If your boss substitutes consensus building for leadership, be afraid;” or “It sucks to live in Minnesota, unless you enjoy ice sports.” Well, maybe not that last one so much. If you are a fan of Office Space or Dilbert, then you’ll enjoy Cube Farm.

First Sentence:

In December 1992, after four years of intense study, I completed an undergraduate degree in physics from Cornell University.