The best books about working in the computer industry

This is one of my cherished books! I was introduced to it in the late 1980s by a college classmate. Reading it affirmed my aspirations: a career in the computer industry. The book revolves around Tom West, a computer engineering manager at Data General in the 1970s. West is a highly competent and determined technical manager. He needed to be in order to navigate the pressures of creating a brand-new computer out of thin air.

The book conveys what a computer company feels like. The maze of machines strewn in a lab. The concentration required to debug a hardware problem. The allure of midnight programming and playing Adventure. Tracy Kidder won the 1982 Pulitzer Prize (general nonfiction) with this book. It’s a vivid and invigorating read.

Most of my work experiences have been with startups, but that statement is a bit misleading. To be more accurate, I worked at early-stage companies, since the smallest company I worked for was already 35 people. Chaos Monkeys conveys both the excitement and drudgery of founding a real start-up (Antonio starts with two other co-founders).

Antonio’s book takes us from his cushy job on Wall Street to making the leap to running his own venture. Antonio’s flavorful style is the perfect voice as he takes you into those meetings at which money is exchanged, contracts are signed, and options are handed out. His company’s exit and his summation of what was gained and lost are the bread and butter conversations of anyone who’s ever worked in a high-tech startup. This is an illuminating and insightful book.

Dan Lyons’ book is the “fish out of water” trope applied to high-tech. Working in high-tech usually means buying into the grandiose vision of transformation that the company’s technology will produce. In industry parlance: you will be drinking a certain amount of Kool-Aid. Dan doesn’t do this. Instead, he applies a certain skepticism to the work his bosses have asked him to do.

It takes a bit of time to develop cynicism and skepticism in high-tech. By its nature, tech companies are optimistic. When you’re fresh out of school, a high-tech company’s vision and working style seem completely natural. But this isn’t Dan’s first job, and he maintains a near-constant level of incredulity at all the high-tech traditions that he sees around him. This is an intense delight to read.

Anna’s memoir is about her time working in various high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. She does not name the companies she worked for, but they’re not necessary to understand her story, which is that of a wholly innocent newcomer to tech. How she managed to land a high-tech job is revealing, but anyone who’s spent any time in high-tech will have met people with “non-traditional backgrounds” (writers, musicians).

Her book is also a portrait of Silicon Valley and its environs. She writes about the nature of technical companies, their leaders, and whether their workers are happy and engaged. She presents the technical support side of the industry which is long unsung. Her book is a welcome perspective.

This superb book describes the creation of the Internet, the very network on which you’re reading these words. The key company behind its creation was a little consulting company called Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). It was full of smart technical people, and Hafner and Lyon paint vivid portraits of their personality traits and their working styles. 

The authors also spend a lot of time describing how the network was put together, and its early growth. I like this book because the key ideas behind their work endures to this day. And this book shows the effort and energy needed to design and build something enduring, something that everyone aspires to do in the industry. It’s a marvelous history!