The Soul of a New Machine

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tracy Kidder’s, The Soul of a New Machine, particularly as it tied many concepts discussed during the module together.

Topics and themes which stood out for me were Management and the Importance of hard work.

The management style visible in the Eagle project was Mushroom Management. That is, management appeared almost absent. The “kids” were given a general idea of work expected of them and then they were expected to complete the work independently. No one knew who to go to and any issues that occurred between the “microkids” and the “hardy boys” needed to be negotiated among themselves.

It can be argued that this management style brought out the best in the “kids”. Many of them commented on the level of responsibility they were given, something they would not have received at rival companies, such as IBM.

Something which stood out for me was the way that Carl Alsing announced that it was Tom West who built the Eagle. To me, this underlined that although he did not appear to be actively involved in the project from a management perspective, he really was, and this mushroom management style was deployed by him as a way to increase participation and a way to get all team members to “sign up”

The book also underlines the importance of hard work. The Eagle team were initially motivated by the belief that the Westborough office would never build anything worthwhile again, and that all exciting projects would be given to the North Carolina office.

One of the best management decisions was hiring young, recent graduates as they did not know what was impossible from a work perspective. They wanted to make a good impression and so worked long hours on challenging pieces of work to prove themselves.

The kids were happy with the level of responsibility they were given at Data General considering their lack of experience. Many of them commented that they would not be given that level of responsibility if they worked for a competitor.

Data General had this concept known as “signing up” , where employees agreed to do everything in their power to get a project over the line. This involved long hours and unpaid overtime and as we see in the book, many of those who had signed up too many times before had lost friends and family as a result.

Another contributing factor for the data general employees to work hard is the idea that they would get something out of the building with their names on it. This seemed to be a great motivator for the Eagle team to do all in their power to get the project over the line. However, we see it also as a demotivator as many were hesitant to work on the project due to having projects cancelled, loosing the opportunity to get something out the door with their name on it.

Nothing underlines more the theme of hard work in the book than the debugging process. Those working on the debugging process would do everything in their power to resolve issues and we saw great level of satisfaction among those who successfully uncovered the reasons behind issues.