Reflecting on the Soul of a New Machine

I — like so many before and after me — found the book to be life changing: by telling the stories of the people behind the machine, the book showed the creative passion among engineers that might otherwise appear anodyne, inspiring me to chart a course that might one day allow me to make a similar mark. As a particularly visceral example: early in the book, a feud between two rival projects boils over in an argument at a Howard Johnson’s that becomes known among the Data General engineers as “the big shoot-out at HoJo’s.” Another example of a passage with new relevance pertains to Tom West developing his leadership style on Eagle:

I can’t imagine that this paragraph really affected me much as an undergraduate, but reading it now I view it as a one-paragraph crash-course in engineering leadership; those who deeply internalize it will find themselves blessed with high-functioning, innovative engineering teams.

Source: dtrace.org