title: 
]2
date:
A book I read a while ago was The Phoenix Project, which is the
canonical book on DevOps (the fancy IT name for the process of
tricking your developers into doing both software development and server
admin work.)
::: {.tweet attrs=”{“url”:”https://twitter.com/vboykis/status/1009402512489762818″,”full_text”:”Well, I’ve finished The Phoenix Project and have a ton of thoughts that I’ll write about, but first I want to suggest the authors work on a follow-up book that’s just Twilight but with developers versus ops people based mostly on the stereotypes in this passage. “,”username”:”vboykis”,”name”:”Vicki Boykis”,”date”:”Wed Jun 20 11:48:07 +0000 2018″,”photos”:[{“img_url”:”https://pbs.substack.com/media/DgIeOwRX0AIb_6S.jpg”,”link_url”:”https://t.co/sFQ1UYXGfo”}],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:0,”like_count”:12,”expanded_url“:{}}”}
::: {.tweet-header}
[Vicki Boykis ]{.tweet-author-name}[@vboykis]{.tweet-author}
:::
Well, I’ve finished The Phoenix Project and have a ton of thoughts that
I’ll write about, but first I want to suggest the authors work on a
follow-up book that’s just Twilight but with developers versus ops
people based mostly on the stereotypes in this passage. ![][5]
::: {.tweet-footer}
June 20th 2018
[12{.like-count} Likes]{.likes}
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:::
I wrote this review a while ago, but didn’t have a good place to publish
it. But the newsletter is the perfect place. So here it is!
According to a blurb on the back cover from Tim O’Reilly, “every person
involved in failed IT project should be forced to read [The Phoenix
Project].”
Hopefully this review will convince you otherwise.
In a nutshell, The Phoenix Project is written as a case study of DevOps,
for an audience of IT managers who are no longer technical. It covers
the case of “Parts Unlimited”, a creatively-named struggling auto parts
retailer with an IT department that can’t get its deal together enough
to make payroll.
The book is meant to make the reader appreciate how much agile practices
such as kanban, and closely integrating operations and development work,
can speed up a company’s workflow. Instead, what it really does is help
you understand why your boss is always stressed out and why American
work culture is awful.
We meet the main character of the book, Bill Palmer, coming out of the
doctor’s office, where he spent the morning with his sick toddler,
“trying to keep the other toddlers from coughing on us, constantly
being interrupted by my vibrating phone.”
Why is his doctor’s waiting room not separated into parts for kids that
are sick and kids getting check-ups? Why not wait the half hour until
after the appointment is over to take a call? These questions remain
unanswered, but even in the first page, I’m already stressed out for
Bill and everyone that was at the doctor’s office with him.
By way of introduction, he says he works “in the technology
backwaters” at Parts Unlimited, and it’s not entirely clear whether he
means that the company is small, that that the tech stack is bad, or
that he considers IT to be a backwater with a wink and nod to the
C-suite target audience reading the book. We never actually learn what
the company’s tech stack is, probably because the authors are trying
not to focus the reader on the technology, but rather the business
problem, but my deep dark suspicion is that PartsUnlimited.com is
probably written in PHP, or maybe even Java applets.
We find out within the first couple pages that Steve Masters, the CEO,
has picked Bill to replace the VP of IT Operations, who he fired. Bill
is not pleased. He says,
I’ve figured out that the trick to a long career in IT Operations
management is to get enough seniority to get good things done but to
keep your head low enough to avoid the political battles that make you
inherently vulnerable. I have absolutely no interest in becoming one
of the VPs who just give each other PowerPoints all day long.
Bill spends the rest of the book making PowerPoints to make his case for
IT modernization.
As his first job in the new role, he comes into an emergency. The
emergency is that payroll is not working because of some glitch in The
System, and if it’s not fixed by 5 PM that day, employees won’t get
paid. Bill reflects,
Suddenly, I realize that my family’s mortgage payment is due in four
days, and we could be one of the families affected. A late mortgage
payment could screw up our credit rating even more, which we spent
years repairing after we put Paige’s student loans on my credit card.
Do you have ulcers yet?
Bill gets together with Wes and Patty, two senior managers in the IT
Operations organization, to try and fix the situation, but he finds them
in the middle of a Sev 1 incident related to SAN data.
After much, much arguing and troubleshooting, they finally get the issue
resolved, with the help of Brent, a developer who is so valuable that
hes always on several projects at once, and is always working until
very, very late, because people like Bill, Wes, and Patty constantly
keep coming by to ask him things on their way to PowerPoint meetings.
So far, we have:
- a stressed executive who needs the job because he can’t pay for his
mortgage - a CEO who loves firing people like it’s nobody’s business
- two middle managers who don’t know what’s going on, and
- a star developer who is constantly interrupted in his work and has
to stay late as a reward for his competence.
We didn’t even get to the part yet where we meet Bill’s spiritual and
career advisor (yes), who takes him to a physical factory and extols the
virtues of running a software department like an assembly line.
The book only unravels from there. After Bill manages to solve the
payroll crisis, even more pressing projects are slapped on his plate. He
is constantly undermined by the marketing department, deals with failed
website launches, and spends nights and weekends on never-ending
burn-out work related to departmental politics.
Can’t wait to be a senior manager!
Ultimately (huge spoiler), he overcomes all these problems and gets a
hefty promotion once he Implements DevOps and has everyone working in a
factory line like they’re orphans in a Dickens novel. So everyone wins
(but mostly Bill and the CEO.)
The book is meant to be a warning against seat-of-your-pants management,
and an argument for closer coupling between operations and development
in an IT department. Mostly, though, I ended up feeling sorry for how
Bill got into a situation he couldn’t back out of. Sometime midway
through the book, he writes, “Even though I can’t take the entire day
off, I take Paige out for breakfast.” As he thinks about how stressed
he is, he writes,
First and foremost, my most important responsibility is to be the
provider for my family. My pay raise will help us get our debt paid
down, and we can start saving money again for our children’s college
education like we always wanted to….with my promotion, we can pay
off our second mortgage sooner.
There is nothing more depressing than this part of the book, and, to me,
this was the crux of it. The real reason Bill is dealing with the stress
of management is not because he wants to and enjoys tackling tactical
problems, but because he’s forced to – he has no other financial
choice.
And here is the heart of the matter – many times, we can try to improve
our work environment. But in an IT market that’s booming, for both
developers and managers alike, it seems like insanity for Bill to stay
where he is, and not seek out a role at a smaller company where he’ll
be more appreciated and can set up DevOps to his heart’s content.
In Antifragile, which is a book, unlike the Phoenix Project, that I
truly believe everyone should read, Taleb argues that the only way we
can truly survive an “unpredictable capitalistic climate” is to be
anti-fragile, or flexible, in the face of negative stresses.
The example he gives in the book is that of a college professor versus a
taxi driver. The taxi driver is more anti-fragile because he always has
to be on the lookout for his next job, and as a result has to hustle, to
understand where the market is going – does he need to try Lyft or Uber?
Should he learn different skills and quit being a taxi driver
alltogether? Whereas the college professor never has to worry about
this, and therefore stagnates, meaning that, if somehow, he manages to
lose tenure, he’s completely out of luck in the market economy.
Obviously this is a very broad generalization (because I know many
people from academia who have moved to industry when they were stuck in
their careers), but the idea stuck with me.
The same is the case for developers and managers. Each should always be
growing, networking, interviewing, and keeping their resume fresh. A
rolling stone gathers no moss. But, because Bill has been at Parts
Unlimited for so long, or maybe because he lives in a geographical area
with few alternative opportunities, or for whatever other reason, he’s
now stuck in this ulcer-inducing job, paying off a second mortgage he
hates.
How many people live and work like this? Probably enough that the
authors of Phoenix felt it was important to have a character that
reflects reality in this way. But instead of writing a book pushing
DevOps, why not talk about how people can become more antifragile and
reduce stress at work, regardless of the operating environment there?
Just as importantly, why not talk about the increasing amount of debt
Americans are forced to accumulate through systemic problems: flatlining
wages, increasing student loan costs (I genuinely believe this problem
will be strongly related to the next market bubble), rising healthcare
costs, and economic agglomeration and regulation that forces Americans
work in high-cost markets like San Francisco and New York, for
diminishing returns?
(Good thread on this here, by the way: )
::: {.tweet attrs=”{“url”:”https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1148428751732006913″,”full_text”:”A very good book about why houses are expensive.nn”,”username”:”patrickc”,”name”:”Patrick Collison”,”date”:”Tue Jul 09 03:08:45 +0000 2019″,”photos”:[],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:65,”like_count”:725,”expanded_url”:{“url”:”https://www.amazon.com/Zoning-Rules-Economics-Land-Regulation/dp/155844288X”,”image”:”https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/fb1abde3-95e6-4c1b-904d-b0d491fd7fc5_1x1.gif”,”title”:”Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation: William A. Fischel: 9781558442887: Amazon.com: Books”,”description”:”Zoning Rules!: The Economics of Land Use Regulation [William A. Fischel] on Amazon.com. FREE shipping on qualifying offers. This best-selling book describes how zoning has been overused by local communities to block new housing development in ways that exacerbate sprawl and social inequity. It lay…”,”domain”:”amazon.com”}}”}
::: {.tweet-header}
[Patrick Collison ]{.tweet-author-name}[@patrickc]{.tweet-author}
:::
[Zoning Rules!:::: {.tweet-footer}
July 9th 2019
[[65]{.rt-count} Retweets]{.retweets}[[725]{.like-count} Likes]{.likes}
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:::
Why not discuss the growing FIRE movement? Or some of the efforts to
work around the traditional education system? More importantly, why not
discuss whether, in a theoretically DevOps environment, we need middle
managers like Bill at all? (The book/essay Bullshit Jobs does just
that).
The reason, as usual, is that digging around for root causes that are
deeper than the root causes you’re focused on is hard. Humans are very
much short-term view, small-picture animals, and looking at the larger
picture is hard and inconvenient, particularly if you’re trying to sell
a book about DevOps.
But you know what else is hard and inconvenient? Reading Phoenix
Project. And being Bill.
Art: Bird Phoenix, Nina Tokhtaman Valetova 2011
What I’m reading lately:
- I just finished How to Do Nothing and I didn’t like it …but
maybe you will - What don’t people get about going to Russia is that it will most
likely kill you. - Erik is on-target, as usual:
::: {.tweet attrs=”{“url”:”https://twitter.com/fulhack/status/1149044954922201094?s=12″,”full_text”:”Management consultants are underrated by engineers. Especially data scientists can learn a ton about the craft of making a great presentation or answering a super open ended business question (like “what should our refund policy be” or “what market should we launch in next”)”,”username”:”fulhack”,”name”:”Erik Bernhardsson”,”date”:”Wed Jul 10 19:57:20 +0000 2019″,”photos”:[],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:9,”like_count”:94,”expanded_url”:{}}”}
::: {.tweet-header}
[Erik Bernhardsson
]{.tweet-author-name}[@fulhack]{.tweet-author}
:::Management consultants are underrated by engineers. Especially data
scientists can learn a ton about the craft of making a great
presentation or answering a super open ended business question (like
“what should our refund policy be” or “what market should we launch
in next”)
::: {.tweet-footer}
July 10th 2019[9{.rt-count} Retweets]{.retweets}[[94]{.like-count}
Likes]{.likes}
:::
::: - I’ve only read a little of this piece so far, but it’s beautiful
::: {.tweet attrs=”{“url”:”https://twitter.com/errrica/status/1149125465799573504″,”full_text”:”I’m late to reading this piece today even though I read the rest of this great project earlier. Such a lovely piece by <span class=\”tweet-fake-link\”>@JasonNark about the river that defines Philadelphia. “,”username”:”errrica”,”name”:”Erica Palan”,”date”:”Thu Jul 11 01:17:15 +0000 2019″,”photos”:[],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:1,”like_count”:10,”expanded_url”:{“url”:”https://www.inquirer.com/science/inq/delaware-river-philadelphia-pennsylvania-20190710.html”,”image”:”https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cbb34424-e585-4e23-92d7-7b43510abab8_1200x800.jpeg”,”title”:”The Delaware River: The river that made Philadelphia”,”description”:”The Delaware River was born before words, flowing namelessly through an unmapped world without factories or fishermen, to a sea no ship ever sailed upon. Over the next year, Inquirer journalists will explore the river and its watershed, focusing on its challenges and its promise.”,”domain”:”inquirer.com”}}”}
::: {.tweet-header}
[Erica Palan ]{.tweet-author-name}[@errrica]{.tweet-author}
:::I’m late to reading this piece today even though I read the rest of
this great project earlier. Such a lovely piece by
[@JasonNark]{.tweet-fake-link} about the river that defines
Philadelphia.
[The Delaware River: The river that made
Philadelphia]{.expanded-link-title}[The Delaware River was born
before words, flowing namelessly through an unmapped world without
factories or fishermen, to a sea no ship ever sailed upon. Over the
next year, Inquirer journalists will explore the river and its
watershed, focusing on its challenges and its
promise.]{.expanded-link-description}[inquirer.com]{.expanded-link-domain}
::: {.tweet-footer}
July 11th 2019[1{.rt-count} Retweet]{.retweets}[10{.like-count} Likes]{.likes}
:::
::: - DAGster looks pretty cool
::: {.tweet attrs=”{“url”:”https://twitter.com/schrockn/status/1148305587400138752″,”full_text”:”1/ Today we at Elementl are excited to launch an early release of Dagster, an open-source Python library for building data applications. Here’s a post about what Dagster is, why I moved to data infra, why data is hard, and why we need a new system. “,”username”:”schrockn”,”name”:”Nick Schrock”,”date”:”Mon Jul 08 18:59:21 +0000 2019″,”photos”:[],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:89,”like_count”:357,”expanded_url”:{“url”:”https://medium.com/p/dbd28442b2b7″,”image”:”https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/83193008-b553-459c-86a7-4aa06049b2db_420x344.png”,”title”:”Introducing Dagster – Nick Schrock – Medium”,”description”:”A open-source Python library for building data applications”,”domain”:”medium.com”}}”}
::: {.tweet-header}
[Nick Schrock
]{.tweet-author-name}[@schrockn]{.tweet-author}
:::1/ Today we at Elementl are excited to launch an early release of
Dagster, an open-source Python library for building data
applications. Here’s a post about what Dagster is, why I moved to
data infra, why data is hard, and why we need a new system.
[
[Introducing Dagster – Nick Schrock –
Medium]{.expanded-link-title}[A open-source Python library for
building data
applications]{.expanded-link-description}[medium.com]{.expanded-link-domain}][21]
::: {.tweet-footer}
July 8th 2019[[89]{.rt-count} Retweets]{.retweets}[[357]{.like-count}
Likes]{.likes}
:::
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————————————————————————
About the Author
I’m a data scientist in Philadelphia. Most of my free time is spent
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[21]: https://medium.com/p/dbd28442b2b7 {.expanded-link}
![https://pbs.substack.com/media/DgIeOwRX0AIb_6S.jpg”,”link_url”:”https://t.co/sFQ1UYXGfo”}],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:0,”like_count”:12,”expanded_url](https://pbs.substack.com/media/DgIeOwRX0AIb_6S.jpg){kind=link}
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