If you didn't know this about me, I buy more books than I read. So for 2021, I have the goal to go through 12 books from my book shelf. One for each month. That should be doable, right?

So to kick this new year's resolution off, the book for January is Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister. This book tackles the terrifyingly difficult question; How to create a good working environment.

Let me start of with a warning, this book is highly pathogenic as it spends most of its energy on describing bad management practices. Only a few examples on things better companies do are given during the roughly 200 page long book. And it is a great book.

The major points I want to shine extra light on are the following:

• The actual office is incredibly important. I've often heard that working in an open office plan is as detrimental to your productivity as being drunk. The authors elaborates on the importance in great detail by sharing information from their own surveys which helps strengthening the case against this horrible practice. The best office is the small office.

• The book briefly touches on Flow, and how measuring un-interrupted time has shown to be the best metric for showing workplace quality. I've actually had a boss which meant that constant interruptions and priority changes was a good thing, as that shows that our customers (internal customers), needed our work. In reality it just made everyone unwilling to invest any time or effort in anything and a general feeling of directionless despair covered the hallways.

• Another area where it gives a great eye opener are the hidden costs of employee turnover and how you can strive for a company culture which combats that. It is supposed to be fun working here. Do what you can to embrace people's passions, give them space to be passionate, give them room to make mistakes and learn. Give them time to try something completely different. Most of the time, we're too busy chasing unrealistic deadlines and worrying.

• The book also propagates a view I've had since before I started my career, that striving for a feeling of eliteness is a good thing. Not in a gatekeeping kind of way, but in that "what we're doing here is great, and we're amazing at it" kind of way. Quality is almost always the first thing to go out the door, so make it a point that no, we do not work like that. Show that you cherish quality and make people feel proud of what they do.

This book resonated very strongly with me. It's the war stories we've heard, the rumor's we've been told and the actual horrors we've experienced at the office put into print. With the underlying attitude that most managers are just awful. Something there are a lot of books about already, but this one's from IT.

PS: I know there are other, longer and better reviews and summaries written on this book.