The best Information Management books: Reddit reviews

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

For more great stories of social engineering, I recommend checking out this book by a famous hacker named Kevin Mitnick called The Art of Deception

No offense taken. ☺️

You’re right. Secrets are not safe. Gay, straight, bi, cis... whatever it’s being labeled as these days is not the culprit IMO.

As a recovering/recovered addict, the most damaging secret is hiding a drug addiction.

This book was a fascinating read (well, to me), and it just goes to show that everybody lies.

Phoenix Project is a solid high-level overview of the concepts, and leads directly into the author's next book, The DevOps Handbook, which really digs into the details.

> My boss is an understanding person and knows that we're stressed, but the larger organization seems uninterested in reorganizing to lessen our burden.

That's all you really need to know. You expressed a concern about the health of the team(s), and the broader org said "no, this is fine". They can live with all the benefits and consequences that come with that decision. All you need to know is whether or not you can live with all the benefits and consequences of that decision.

> Are most jobs like this?

I would say no, but practices that promote burnout aren't exactly uncommon -- toil is one example.

It's not uncommon for organizational practices/structures to foster high levels of burnout, but most orgs who give a shit will tend to fix those problems because turnover tends to be more expensive than simply fixing the problems that cause the turnover. Kinda sorta depends on the business's priorities, though. Showing the value of strategic investment in technical resources is ... difficult at times. I like the approach taken by Accelerate -- numbers and figures are what your manager needs to be focusing on, though it is hard to do when you're drowning already and engagement from leadership is low to non-existent anyway.

Yes, there's plenty of great reads, e.g., Storytelling with Data.

At a high-level, I emphasize the following to my direct reports & clients:

• The normal English reading order is left to right, top to bottom
• 1 in 12 men are colour blind
• The colour wheel is your best friend
• "The best design is as little design as possible"
• Bar/Column charts with fewer than ~8 dimensions make great alternatives to slicers
• Your skill as an information designer correlates to the amount of white space in your reports
• More than 3 visuals per report (excluding things like cards) should start raising alarm bells

The error comes from focusing on the wrong filters. The "liberal media" is a thing (in two ways, really, but let's focus on the one people generally refer to) when you look at rhetoric. This can be determined through linguistic data analysis, which Seth Stephens-Davidowitz did in his book Everybody Lies. One of the interesting things he shows there is that the rhetorical bias varies not by ownership, for instance, but mostly through the dominant political leaning of the area in which the paper (which was the focus of the study) is sold. That is, a news outlet's rhetorical bias depends on its audience, not its owners.

This analysis is useful, but there is a glaring problem with it: In focusing on rhetoric, it ignores actual policy advocacy and, importantly, publication bias. And that's where the owners have influence. As long as the policy advocated agrees with the owners (and the media's inherent structural biases, re: the Herman-Chomsky Propaganda Model), how it is presented (the rhetoric) only matters to the extent that it influences revenue. And anything that is counter to these interests, will be ignored.

So, yes, there is a "liberal media" (and they're actually fairly dominant). Problem is, they are liberal in rhetoric only (and sometimes in actual policy, depending on what you mean by 'liberal'). What the media doesn't tell you is usually much more important than what it does.

Classic Brent. For anyone who hasn't done so already, read The Phoenix Project (or listen to it on Audible). It's great.

https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592

I agree with the overall point of learning and continuous improvement, but I think a lot of common sense and research indicates that Mean Time to Restore is a very important metric to measure and improve. And if I had to choose, I would definitely pick Mean Time to Restore over Mean Time to Retrospective. If you can measure both, great.

As an example, Time to Restore is one of four metrics included in Software Delivery and Operational Performance which predicts organizational performance, as shown in the State of DevOps reports and the related Accelerate book.

I’m one of the domain experts where I work so usually don’t need to interrogate too hard, but I am reading this excellent book on gathering requirements for BI projects.

Agile Data Warehouse Design

You can absolutely go faster. Not by saying "go faster," but there are practices and organizational techniques that make quantifiable differences in how fast you can deliver software. A lot of it's stuff we've already heard of: good version control practices, CI/CD, test automation, rapid feedback cycles, limiting work in progress, good communication, keeping processes lightweight, etc. There's even a research-backed book that delves into this.

The Only Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God doesn't think he's Larry Elisson

Now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.ca/Difference-Between-God-Larry-Ellison/dp/0060008768

If someone wrote 'The Game' on business, Larry would be the Oracle behind it.

I'm going to second that recommendation. DevOps is a really versatile role and you'll want to make sure that you have a solid understanding of the scope involved so that you can confidently set expectations when applying for positions.

It's become a bit of a buzzword in the last year, but for a good reason. It's pretty much essential for agile development and overlaps strongly with architecture / infrastructure development.

There are two books by the same team of authors I strongly recommend reading, including non-referral amazon links below.

• The Phoneix Project

• The DevOps Handbook

THIS! Here's the link on Amazon

I haven't read the book behind it, but the following quote been around for a while:

What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison? God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison

Hi u/ryanblumenow, No. The project simulates building a data pipeline given an already existing data model.

Enterprise data arch involves a lot of data modeling, consolidating with multiple teams, planning, etc. The book <strong>https://www.amazon.com/Data-Warehouse-Toolkit-Complete-Dimensional/dp/0471200247</strong> goes over this in detail. Hope this helps.

I agree with the overall point of learning and continuous improvement, but I think a lot of common sense and research indicates that Mean Time to Restore is a very important metric to measure and improve. And if I had to choose, I would definitely pick Mean Time to Restore over Mean Time to Retrospective. If you can measure both, great.

As an example, Time to Restore is one of four metrics included in Software Delivery and Operational Performance which predicts organizational performance, as shown in the State of DevOps reports and the related Accelerate book.

As a BA I'd expect them to be responsible for requirements gathering. To that end, I'd recommend this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0956817203/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_31q3Fb1TT3YQZ

I'd second the idea of reading Kimball too. Maybe not the whole thing from a technique perspective, but certainly the first 2 chapters which are more high level.

Honestly though, I sometimes feel that data nerds are wired differently and you either get it, or you don't. I've worked with IT professionals and programmers who I'd consider far more gifted and qualified than I am, but data concepts really confuse them, whereas I've always picked it up without much effort.

If the team is willing to pair program, they need to start. That makes code reviews much faster, easier, and higher quality.

You'll need to get your WIP down so one way to do this is to freeze all coding and focus the entire team on getting the current PRs merged. If that sounds crazy go read The Phoenix Project.

If you have all devs stop coding in the middle of their feature, you risk them losing all the context they built up over the past X days and will need to recover that once the freeze is over. Two solutions come to mind. First, have each dev spend as much time as they need to document their current state so that they can jump right back in once the freeze is over. Or second, everyone keeps coding until finished with their current thing and then they don't do any further coding until all PRs are merged.

My god... you need to write a book like the The Phoenix Project but like... you know. Your life haha.

Wow ok thats what I was looking for. The Kobayashi Maru style of everything in my life. But here we are now a fantastic community of people that self-regulate and have I think a genuine interest in learning and tech possibly.

My final question my good sir is what was the time frame with which you started and ended where you are now? This is only for reference.

Not OP, but interested to read.

Doing a quick search, found this on amazon: The DevOps Handbook (October 2016)
Is that the correct book?

The Pheonix Project for some reading related to what its like working in a software org and the good and bad practices in it.

Well for DevOps you have to know programming languages but not necessarily everything related to front-end.

Kubernetes and Docker are a must you can't escape it ;D then add cloud what you like. I'm focusing on AWS as my whole organization is on it but google and Microsoft are popular as well.

I'm reading a decent book right now The DevOps Handbook by Gene Kim

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Devops-Handbook-World-Class-Reliability-Organizations/dp/1942788002

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highly recommended, if you can grab it for cheap its a good book before bed :D

I think it's: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062390856/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_aYggFbAZQ7X9B

Everybody Lies

but I'm not sure.

I've heard other people really about this book in that context, and I should probably check it out.

Absolutely read The Phoenix Project. It will describe half the projects you inherit over your career and tell you exactly how they need to be put back on the rails. Also it's just a great read.

You need to step back and talk to the developers, each and every one of them take note of their comments, let them speak their mind reassuring them that the comments will get to management filtered and anonymized . Questions to ask are things like, what do you spend too much time that you think is wasted (ie are there pain points with the development workflow). Do you like your tools ? Do you need resources to get more proficient with your tools ? When talking about tools I group all the software that a developer comes in contact with from the ticketing/traking solution to the IDE the build tools etc. In my case the big pain points can be solved with verry little monetary investment. Every system was tech debt you need to reduce it to the minimum. Devops is all about the developer experience, you need to be accessible and let all the team tell you in confidence all of their pains on the job, if someone does not like something usually he has a poor understanding of it. Also read this book https://www.amazon.com/DevOps-Handbook-World-Class-Reliability-Organizations/dp/1942788002 it does not mention tech at all and goes on to describe the management structure of various high performance orgs like an auto factory, how people look at a flow chart of how work is done and then finetune the processes and the tooling to get the job done with minimum labor, cost and interpersonal friction with the ultimate goal of making a good and reliable org that can withstand high output with great results.

As others have said... DevOps really isn't "Developer and Operations". It denotes a philisophy. I highly recommend you read The Phoenix Project if you haven't yet to get an better understanding of just what DevOps means and can offer.

Also, having been an DevOps for the last 22 years (yes, since before it had the name) I can tell you I have done my fair share of programming... however, the last 5-6 years or so I do a lot less, and this is the way this industry is going. There are amazing tools and frameworks that do most of our job now (eg: Kubernetes, Terraform, Cloud Providers Managed Services, etc). With these tools, good DevOps practitioners don't need to code, we just configure various json/yaml files and let frameworks and tools do all the magic. The most programming I do these days is random open-source projects and the occasional script for whatever CI/CD framework I'm currently using.

I recommend reading the book Accelerate (Amazon Link). It will teach you the kinds of thinking to head for. It's not a specific sets of technology book, rather it's about DevOps ideas and the problems and solutions that have been distilled. Reading it will give you lots of understanding as to where each piece of technology you encounter fits in, and how it solves people's problems. This should pardon the pun, accelerate your career, as you'll be able to partake in many more design level discussions.

I was going to suggest a copy of this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592 as it's a fun book but also educational getting into a programming career... Jeez though... Not worth £35!! There must be some cheaper places for it

You’d benefit by understanding relational models a little more. You can have an authors dataset, as well as a books dataset, and have an authors/books relationship dataset where it is one record per author per book. This would allow 1 book to have more than 1 author.

https://www.amazon.com/Data-Warehouse-Toolkit-Complete-Dimensional/dp/0471200247

If you really want to shine in interviews I'd recommend reading the books "Accelerate" and "The Nature of Software Development". Those books really sum up how to build software in a modern web world.