The best
Workplace Culture books:
Reddit reviews
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
The best of Workplace Culture books by number of unique Reddit comments:
Top Reddit reviews mentioning Workplace Culture books:
https://www.amazon.com/Managers-Path-Leaders-Navigating-Growth/dp/1491973897
Haven't read it myself yet, but heard it recommended a lot.
You could say the same for any subdivision of a company, and it seems this is often borne out in practice.
The author of Bullshit Jobs interviewed someone who would audit the operations of companies in such a way that he would end up the only person, including the companies' management, who had an actual thorough understanding of how the departments were operating and what they were doing, and he would find cases where substantial majorities of jobs in the companies provided no benefit to its operations. And many people throughout many industries, given their best understanding of what they're doing for the company and why they're being asked to do it, don't think that their own jobs are useful for the company or anyone else. The idea that executives, boards of directors, etc. would ruthlessly optimize to shed unnecessary functions or avoid ineffective methods seems to be theory not borne out by reality.
According to this book, Subliminal, How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, this is accurate. Your subconscious mind often controls things most often described as a "gut feeling" because it pulls in a sifts through information before letting your conscious mind take over that information. Super crazy and interesting stuff.
I have a copy of this if you wanna read it and REALLY blow your mind, or if you're an Audible member I've got a ton of credits and will gladly gift you a copy, heh.
That's a general rule of all work, including paid work. If you're paying someone by the hour then you're bloody well going to get your hour's worth, even if the value of that work is zero or negative. That's what leads to the phenomenon of upwards of 40% of all jobs, public and private, being bullshit jobs.
Housecleaning isn't a bullshit job, but once you're in the zone you tend to want to keep going. It's the same as women from 'traditional' backgrounds and cooking: they end up with orders of magnitude more cooking experience than any professional chef, because their entire working day is centred around the kitchen.
The best book to read as a developer is The Design of Everyday Things. If every developer read it, the software world would be a better place.
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows is good https://www.amazon.se/Thinking-Systems-International-Donella-Meadows/dp/1603580557
What's interesting is that he likely couldn't make this kind of splash without having accumulated the following he did via quality content.
This kind of in-and-out joke content (which is funny... but absolutely incompatible with thoughtful content like dunkviews or the TLOU2 vid) would burn out a huge chunk of his audience eventually. Still, you're right: his point would stand. He make more money getting *half* the views of the quality stuff if he chugged out stuff like this everyday.
For anyone interested, <em>Creativity Inc</em> is a solid book that spends a fair amount of time ruminating on this trade-off (from Pixar's former lead, who talks about the logistical balance they had to create between $$$$ sequel movies and the artistic and less financially rewarding films)
Commonality of design.
Both are objects meant for throwing by hand. It would follow there is an ideal size for handheld thrown objects, and therefore handheld thrown objects would be the same size.
Same reason doors you push and doors you pull have different handles and it feels wrong when the wrong handle is used for the wrong side.
Read The Design of Everyday Things to learn more.
Actually, thank you sir, this is that exact type of feedback I was looking for! Thanks for really reading carefully and walking through the book.
As for to the critic, it's quite straightforward, but I don't see any rudeness.
Clearly the book is more like a pure idea now, there is a long way to go (and I'm clearly settled to walk the walk). I always keep in mind the Pixar movies that are absolute crap at the beginning (according to https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012) and have to walk through multiple sometimes painful transformations until they finally become the masterpieces they are.
I also have to say, that I need to keep my audience in mind. If I wanted to be pedantic I could just as well print out the :help manual. What I want instead is to create something pragmatic and practical, lite and simple, something people outside of the Vim community could grasp and be productive.
The idea is get more people familiar with Vim, so that they can then go deeper after that, maybe join the /r/vim/ and learn from people like you ;)
Anyway, thanks again for the fantastic feedback!
In all fairness, memory is VERY unstable. I’m reading a fantastic book right now that shows that even if you were to write down something that literally just happened, then five years later try to recall it, you can make up things that didn’t happen and even refute what you initially wrote!
Hey, you should read the book "Bullshit Jobs", which is about the exact phenomenon of people being paid for (and required to stick around for) non-work or fake work.
That’s just ignorant.
No we can’t function as a society without childcare, without nurses...
We can totally function without diamond miners... without marketing... without creative financial instruments...without gasp mid-level assistant managers...
Social workers do a helluva lot more for society than corporate HR or Assistant management does...
There’s far more male bullshit jobs than female and they are far more taxing on society as a whole
Yes. How about the infamous "Bullshit Jobs" episode of Hidden Brain podcast: https://www.npr.org/2018/08/28/642706138/ And the book that the cast is about: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X The cast is free I would start with that if interested.
I thought this was one of the most popular episodes but I'm wrong, it's not in the top ten.
Heck, if you've ever seen a movie by a company called Pixar, like Toy Story, you've seen seen Ed Catmull's work. ;)
His book is a good read too: https://smile.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Inspiration/dp/0812993012?sa-no-redirect=1
The Jim Clark credited here also co-founded Netscape, which popularized the World Wide Web we know today.
So many pioneering advances, one after another.
I suppose Gumby was a natural choice for this matter, since the original clay stop-motion slides around. And years later, they could convincingly simulate the impections of organic media in the digital domain. How far we've come.
Leonard Mlodinow's Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior is a very interesting take on perception from the perspective of all that we *don't* perceive consciously, yet are acting on for any action or thought. He also writes in a very easy-to-comprehend way and has a good sense of humor with it.
I literally don't feel like I'm human. Not in a cool way where I'm special or unique. More like maybe my original destiny was to be a nonphysical systems planner for a planetary organism but something went wrong and now I have to live in a body.
I also find it much easier to understand myself and other people if I back off until I can see what's happening as a whole system. When I'm zoomed in, I see things as "behavior" or "personality traits" and they're confusing. When I stand back far enough that the system is holistically viewable, I can see that these "traits" or "behaviors" are simply emergent properties of the system as it currently functions.
INFJs, you would all love the work of Donella Meadows: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557
God do I despise the mods of this subreddit. The reproduced below apparently is a duplicate post that is not permitted, presumably because it could be placed here instead:
​
BioWare what's your mailing address? I'd like to donate ten copies of Creativity Inc.
Link here to the amazon page for this book. Written by Ed Catmull, the head of Pixar from before it was even Pixar, Creativity Inc. is essentially a story about Pixar's history and how Ed and the other leaders of Pixar tried to first make a successful animated movie, and then maintain that success. It talks about how one movie they made required a lot of crunch and burned people out, and they resolved to never do it again, and haven't. It talks about growing a company where two different projects are worked on by different teams, and ensuring nobody feels like there is an A team or B team. It talks about making sure the driving force of a movie is the experience, not the technology or pleasing some shitty executive. It talks about giving responsibility and accountability to a single person who owns the project and makes decisions.
It basically talks about how Pixar tried to navigate every god damn pothole BioWare tripped on, and maybe if you read it when it came out in 2014 we wouldn't have this dumpster fire of a game.
Most programmer jobs are bullshit jobs even when they don't look like it. This is a very good example of how to look at your company structure and its market to understand if you're actually working a bullshit job.
https://www.amazon.it/Bullshit-Jobs-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X
The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman is a really good general design resource.
In fact, doors that are ambiguous in the direction in which they open are named "Norman Doors" after him.
Yep. A lack of basic systems thinking is why we are all fucked. The term "feedback loop" came from this discipline. The more I learn about systems thinking and complexity theory the more I understand about the world and how deeply hopeless our plight is.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1603580557/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_N.a9FbRM79XRR
It’s on the sub’s booklist, but let me +1 The Goal. There’s a danger/tendency for folks starting out in CI to fall in love with tools. Process maps, SIPOCs, whatever, early career practitioners conflate the tools with the work. The Goal focuses on the concepts, not the tools, and helps you develop a CI perspective that carries regardless of which tool is getting used. This is important, because you need to fit the tools to the problem, not approach every problem the same way.
This book really helped me make the jump from IC to manager: The Manager’s Path. There’s also a lot of great content on YouTube, my favorite is from the Lead Developer conference. Some of the talks by Pat Kya, Lara Hogan and Poornima Vijayshanker speak directly to your journey.
Yeah. There is something hilarious about an extremely highly up-voted post calling 85% of all people idiots. Presumably a decent chunk of them up-voted this post.
Also presumably the OP considers them self in at least the top 15% intelligence of all people - and they work in retail...sure guy.
A customer walking into a store they've never been to before will face some level of confusion/disorientation compared to a retail worker where that store is their entire world - they know every corner of it. Doesn't make either of them "dumb as rocks".
I worked with mechanics who struggled with pretty basic math but could take an engine apart with their eyes closed. Which of is more "intelligent"? People are people. We are good at different things.
There's an interesting book, The Design of Everyday Things, which really describes in detail how people interact with objects/environments. A big theme is that if someone is struggling to interact with your object/environment/system they aren't stupid - your thing sucks.
Hi there! I'm a UX/UI Designer and from what I've read you could have what it takes to be a UX Researcher or a UX Designer. One of the foundations of UX is Cognitive Science, the first guy to use the term "user experience" is Donald Norman who has studied (and currently teaches) Cognitive Science for years. You could try reading one of his books (one of the most well-known books in the Design field): The Design of Everyday Things to see if you're interested in the subject.
I'd also suggest maybe doing the Google UX Certification available through Coursera, it's a good introductory certification that'd get you in the right path to apply for a trainee or even an entry level job.
If you have any questions let me know, I'm 30 and I've worked in tech for the last 4 years :)
Make a little note of things to make sure you check. There's no shame - tell them you got the idea from Checklist Manifesto.
You can do electric or paper. If you're new, I'd go with clipboard and paper so you can jot notes wherever.
Biggest tip: Before you leave the property, check that your dimensions close the floorplan. I mean check that one side is 24' and the other sides total to that as well. It's really stressful getting back to the office and seeing a 5' gap between sides.
One thing I do is print the Assessor sketch and use that as a guide or check while I'm out on property visits.
Lastly, you mention you don't have a lot of experience. I'm not sure if that's for measuring or property visits in general. Be kind and professional, but don't get pushed around. If the agent or owner starts prodding for values, just say you haven't worked through that yet. Also, if this is like your first property visit, it seems odd to me that the supervisor wouldn't go on a few with you to get you oriented.
I see. You might like the book Subliminal, by theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow. He integrates and synthesizes the past half-century of research from psychology and neuroscience in a manner accessible to a general audience: https://www.amazon.com/Subliminal-Your-Unconscious-Rules-Behavior/dp/0307472256
Seeing what other people have done, as others have suggested, is an absolutely great start. Also really getting to know the ins and outs of the Material Design system helps a lot, too.
However, if you really want to understand UI and UX, you have to understand the why as well.
For UX, The Design of Every Day Things is an absolutely indispensable resource. It explains why things in the world work the way we do, and how that relates to digital interfaces. For example
For UI, learn and understand basic design principles like emphasis and balance, and how to leverage the grid system & colors in Material Design to achieve those things.
One of the biggest things that I can recommend, that a lot of people sleep on, is motion provides meaning is a key principle of Material Design:
​
>Motion focuses attention and maintains continuity through subtle feedback and coherent transitions. As elements appear on screen, they transform and reorganize the environment with interactions generating new transformations.
Tools like Lottie and basic knowledge of animation principles can not only enhance the "polish" of your application but really help reinforce how the application works.
For an example of what all of this looks like when it works together:
Imagine a fragment that slides onto the screen from the right side of the viewport. The Fragment itself has an elevation, which provides a drop shadow in Material Design. This creates a visual connection to the idea of a "material" like swiping one piece of paper onto another. The motion and visual accents also suggest the affordance of being able to also swipe the fragment off in the opposite direction as you would a piece of paper. No training is necessary, the user understands what to expect because of their real-life experience with tangible materials.
There’s a novel about this in the real world, too. Whether you’re a business type or not, if you like Factorio you’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s an easy read
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement - 30th Anniversary Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0884271951/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_6WCS78TZK0YPGPHR8G67
I'm actually pretty much a designer turned developer, so I may have some interesting tidbits of information for you.
Designing something is more about getting a 'feel' for something, rather than quantifying things (unless you're dealing with UX directly). Making sure that the client has a good feel on the representation and symbolism on something will be what you're doing most rather than simply churning algorithms.
Learn the Laws of UX. They come with neat little posters as well that you can print out and hang around your office. Some of these 'laws' are things that you will see daily.
Get into the habit of Wireframing/Prototyping first before moving onto a solid design. Unlike programming, most of the time if you dive head first into making a detailed design, some — if not all — of your time after will be spent ripping things out, re-arranging stuff, changing sizes, layouts, etc. which could've been avoided by just prototyping first.
I recommend this book to everyone who is looking to enter design The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, it will teach you to re-evaluate the world around and understand why things are designed the way the are. It gets the creative side of your brain moving and I highly recommend it.