A book about work, felt like work.
I suspect this is very specific to me, but I found the majority of the story pretty triggering - specifically, I felt pissed off a lot of the time I was reading. After reading the About the Author section at the end of the book, it looks like I've had a similar timeline of a technical career to them (which perhaps is why the story got under my skin).
This is because I spent a decade in a company (over a decade ago) that treated it's employees a lot like the characters in the book and it was doing my in that the story seemed to centre around people who made their company the be-all of their lives.
Though the story (sort of) follows two main characters, you really don't meet anyone outside of the company, Gerbach, and there's a scene in the book where it seems pretty clear they all live in each other's pockets.
I didn't really have a good sense of timings until the very end (4 months). The story opens with outages the devs are firefighting, and I couldn't tell if they were still dealing with issues across the timeline or… if they'd just accepted it was all terrible and the characters swan off and pull sickies when their infrastructure is on fire 🤷.
Then there's the AI aspect that's sort of supposed to be looming, but, sort of not really… Around 2/3rds of the way into the story there's a development (not quite a plot twist) which I managed to guess how it related to the AI.
I think if you work in the technology industry, and you are (or have been) a dev, then this book might be worth a read. I'm not sure it's quite that accessible outside of the tech industry, specifically around some of the terminology (which, though I knew, I didn't realise there was a full appendix at the end, "log4j" might throw some people).
Read through a recommendation (later realising that the person who recommended it was listed in the author thanks!), I think I'd struggle to recommend it myself.
3 Highlights
They had started talking over a shared hatred of server virtualisation.
My note: That's a specific audience!
But practically, we know that systems evolve from compromise and necessity.
HR has asked all staff members to provide a CV and evidence of their accomplishments in the last two years.
My note: At which point, instead yiu fresh your CV and find a better paid job.