My third-favorite technology company Google has an-online store. Love those “I’m feeling lucky” boxer shorts and shirts. Somebody I would love to get a blog is Donald Burleson the Redneck Oracle DBA. From the list of books he’s written it looks like he and his crew have some serious Oracle skills. The only other Oracle DBA I know is Chris - certainly not a redneck, who has a band called ScuzzyBus. I’m proud to say I had a small part to play in him choosing a geek name for his band.
I recently finished reading Leading a Software Development Team by Richard Whitehead. In 40 “question focused” chapters Richard covers topics like “How do I draw up a project plan?”, “How should I reward good work?” and “When should I let someone do a thing their own way, and when should I make them do it my way?”. The book covers a great deal of material so it can only really cover the basics of each topic, but it does so well. It is clearly written (something I realize is not easy after reading my previous sentence a few times….), and advocates a pragmatic and principled approach to team management. In particular some of the most interesting chapters cover the problems that occur when somebody very technical goes from doing technical things (like writing code) to doing more “human focused” things (like managing others), and the emotions the newly promoted manager goes through. Recommended.