Books I read last year: August 2019

Just like last year, and 6 months before, summarizing most memorable books I read.

#1: Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries by Safi Bahcall

I finished this book and immediately started again liking it even more. I love how it takes you through history, zooming on personalities that shaped science and industry, offering insight, zooming out into larger context and drawing conclusions from historical events. The history of Vannevar Bush, Edwin Land, Juan Terry Trippe, Robert Crandall, Charles Lindbergh, and how they handled loonshot ideas provides the foundation. Theory and conclusions connect the examples, and the author is not dogmatic about asserting his ideas to match the facts, he lets the reader judge for themselves and often adds another layer of subtlety to make the thought process more provoking. This is unlike a professor who really cares more about you learn how to think, than that you pass the test. Historical examples in support of business theories is a popular genre these days, but it all comes down to how well the author manages to articulate overarching idea; so the the book is not merely a collection of historical anecdotes. I think Safi Bahcall does an amazing job of it and he goes much deeper into the technical implications of each loonshot, for example, radio transmitters and film developing inside Polaroid camera - something a geeky reader would really appreciate.

The idea of “artists” and “soldiers” is not new, best known example is Steve Jobs calling Mac engineers “pirates” and calling everyone else “bosos”. This is neglecting soldiers and glorifying the artists, what is described as “Moses trap” in the book. The idea of separating artists and soldiers is key to most of the book. This is how Safi Bahcall answers the question.

The real protagonists of the book are leaders who can bridge both: “artists” and “soldiers” - these are project champions, like Vannevar Bush.

On the creative side, inventors (artists) often believe that their work should speak for itself. Most find any kind of promotion distasteful. On the business side, line managers (soldiers) don’t see the need for someone who doesn’t make or sell stuff—for someone whose job is simply to promote an idea internally. But great project champions are much more than promoters. They are bilingual specialists, fluent in both artist-speak and soldier-speak, who can bring the two sides together.

Last section of the book offers insights on why as companies grow larger, the same people who would encourage and nurture loonshot ideas in a startup, start rejecting them. The stakes in outcome decrease while the perks of rank increase and incentives shift toward more conservative behavior. The book provides a lot of backing on where the famous Dunbar’s number (150) come from: size of the company at which the balance of forces changes and and “the system suddenly snaps from favoring a focus on loonshots to a focus on careers”.

#2: The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

Robert Greene, author of "The 48 Laws of Power" and "Mastery" didn't disappoint this time. I thought that no review I could come up with other than summary of the laws will do this book justice. As usual, there's ton of depth and wisdom in every chapter and historical references is draws upon; the book can be read and re-read continuously.

• Law of irrationality: People are driven by emotional and not logical .
• Law of narcissism: People are prone to self-admiration, and the way to combat it is to channel it outwardly by appreciating others;
• Law of role playing: People are wearing masks, but you can spot true intentions by observing non verbal cues;
• Law of compulsive behavior: People never change and continue to do what they always have done;
• Law of covetousness: People always fall for the mysterious and unknown;
• Law of shortsightedness: People are lured by recent trends, opinions and backlashes, associate with those who have long term vision;
• Law of defensiveness: People are are defensive by nature and only through creativity and making them feel in control you can get them to alter their viewpoints;
• Law of self-sabotage: People undermine their efforts through negativity, fear and skepticism that they radiate;
• Law of repressions: People conceal their darker side but it will come out sooner or later;
• Law of envy: People are prone to selective admiration of certain traits of other people without considering the context and price;
• Law of grandiosity: People tend to lose touch with reality in their pursuit of superiority;
• Law of gender rigidity: People stereotype gender roles and don't explore all part of their character. This benefits those who go beyond stereotypes and explore their authentic self and don't feel oblige to follow the assigned roles ;
• Law of aimlessness: People lack direction and purpose;
• Law of conformity: People want to create impression of confidence and self sufficiency, while following the mob rule in most cases;
• Law of fickleness: People attack those with entitlement, authority and power ;
• Law of aggression: People grew sophisticated in hiding their aggression behind a friendly facade;
• Law of generational myopia: People blindly follow the trends of their generation which restricts their creativity;
• Law of death denial: People ignore inevitable death while a lot can be achieved if only we embraced it.

#3: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

Starting with a quote: “Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they’ll find a way to screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a good team, and they’ll find a way to make it better. ” - coming from environment were great ideas are in abundance and focus and execution wins, this resonates really well.

The book goes in depth on how to build successful groups by (1) making the environment safe, (2) not being afraid to demonstrate vulnerability and (3) creating a sense of purpose.

Safety is clear, but what about vulnerability? The book explains why vulnerability should come out first, before trust finds its way. This is the Trust fall team-building exercise taken to the level that leaves a lasting impact. “Leaping into the unknown, when done alongside others, causes the solid ground of trust to materialize beneath our feet.”

Book dwells into mechanics of cultivating and nurturing Purpose, using Johnson & Johnson's response to 1982 Tylenol Poisonings as a text-book example. Taking the mission statement and then telling, retelling, discussing and challenging it again again is a key part of it.

“Purpose isn’t about tapping into some mystical internal drive but rather about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal. Successful cultures do this by relentlessly seeking ways to tell and retell their story.”

After reading this book I started looking at what seemed like obvious and cliche posters I saw when working at Facebook in a different light. Some examples from the book: ““No shortcuts,” “Work hard, be nice,” “Don’t eat the marshmallow,” “Team and family,” “If there’s a problem, we look for the solution,” “Read, baby, read,” “All of us will learn,” “KIPPsters do the right thing when no one is watching,” “Everything is earned,” “Be the constant, not the variable,” “If a teammate needs help, we give; if we need help, we ask,” “No robots,” and “Prove the doubters wrong.” - all these may seem trivial but they all serve the goal of filling the environment with “small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal.”

Most examples will likely be familiar from other books if you are into this genre, but there are a few good ones, such as from a successful basketball team under coach Gregg Popovich and the study on trying to inject a “bad apple” into a group was quite engaging and outcomes not always obvious.

#4: The Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena

Algorithm books are usually not meant to be read fully as a novel, but used as a reference. Skiena's book is both. It focuses on real life practical examples. It even has some measure of good humor and memorable quotes.

It is amazing how often the reason you can't find a convincing explanation for something is because your conclusion is wrong.

This book makes you feel actually thrilled about using algorithms to solve practical scale problems and feel invigorated, not all bored, about software engineering in general. This book is about business problems and it does not attempt to impress you with the formal proofs backing the algorithms; and in fact, in most cases, solid high school math and basics of probability is sufficient to apply them.

With its heavy practical focus, the books reminds why performance is like money in software feature sense, having it allows you to build all the great functionality.

The issue of finding the best possible answer or achieving maximum efficiency usually arises in industry only after serious performance or legal troubles.

Memorizing the index and high high level details of the reference section gives you the language to talk about and confidence that you will know where to start your design research in eighty percent of problems you face day to day.

#5: The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael D. Watkins

Back 3 years ago when I was about to start a job at my previous company, one of my former managers recommended this book. I listened to it as I do for with all books, on Audible while running barely had patience to get to the middle, it appeared boring, old-fashioned and seemed only intended for some old style large corporate executives. So I gave it a two star review on Goodreads and forgot about it.

Fast-forward to this year, I was about to start my current job and this time I got the same recommendation, read this book, this time from my new manager. Hmm, I thought I should give it a chance but this time I decided to actually read it, not just listen while running. And what I found is that somehow even though I thought I "read" the book, I managed to fall into every trap it lists right in the intro (for example, falling prey to "action imperative", ignoring cultural/political on-boarding, neglecting horizontal relationships) .

Effective leaders strike the right balance between doing (making things happen) and being (observing and reflecting).

So I spent time this time around to actually read, write notes and think about what I'm reading. And as I did this, the first thing the book does is makes you realize that truly succeeding a new organization is a major undertaking: “Joining a new company is akin to an organ transplant—and you’re the new organ". It reminds you, for example that you biggest mistake you can do is assume that expectations and styles with your boss magically much, this never happens. It teaches to negotiate success: "Negotiate success. Because no other single relationship is more important, you need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with your new boss (or bosses) and manage her expectations".

The book gives the language, terminology and foundation to talk about strategy, mission and vision.

"Strategic direction encompasses mission, vision, and strategy. Mission is about what will be achieved, vision is about why people should feel motivated to perform at a high level, and strategy is about how resources should be allocated and decisions made to accomplish the mission."

The book is condensed and every chapter takes a while to process, this was my original mistake when reading it. These are just some of the memorable things: STARS model, Planning “waves of change” for early wins, Preparing and Classifying arguments for influencing.

My recommendation: take at least 90 days reading it, ideally spanning from 2 months before to 1 month after the start, take notes and discuss.

#6: Designing Data Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann

“In distributed systems, suspicion, pessimism, and paranoia pay off.”

This book is helping me to build connections between various patches of knowledge I had about distributed applications, approaches and latest trends in the way I never thought was possible. It's almost like, without this book I had the pieces scattered all over the place, most of them missing, now I have an index I can re-read and reference. For algorithms I already had "The Algorithm Design Manual" by Steven S. Skiena, and now this book is my manual for system design.

"Designing Data Intensive Applications" gives concise vocabulary to talk about storage and retrieval models, encoding formats, replication and sharding. It connects the world of traditional relational databases, ACID and leader-follower replication to the modern approaches of non-relational and leaderless, provides a language to reason about tradeoffs way beyond "the unhelpful CAP theorem", as it calls it.

Overall I know that if I manage to remember the key concepts covering at least a third of the material in this book, I'll save myself and others countless hours at design discussions.

#7: Foundations Of Western Civilization II: A History Of The Modern Western World (The Great Courses) by Robert O. Bucholz

Having always been interested in European history throughout my teenage years, this set of lectures felt both nostalgic and insightful in the way familiar events and personalities now appeared from the adult viewpoint. Five centuries of formation of national identities and cultures; redivision are influence, power and territories is played out and make you think and appreciate how much knowing this help you explain the realities of modern world;

• why the English has a special attitude and relationships with their monarchs;
• why French prefer strong executive powers;
• why Spain being the first to the colonization ended up lagging behind economically. 

And above all, who much is of critical historical crossroads ended up this way due simply to chance or random decisions people just like you and me. 

#8: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

The book is powerful in that it, in a typical WSJ style, mostly sticks to the facts, some of them astonishing and bizarre. I only wish it included more technical details on how it was possible for the company to get seed funding, scientific merit of Holmes' early research work or more substantial explanations on what was happening in the company's labs, what tests they were planning to do and how they adopted other companies’ devices.

Instead Carreyrou chose to dwell into the genre of business thriller, large sections devoted to supposed motivations and psychology of the characters which made it a very easy and engaging read, but at the expense of lack of depth. The main message is "Hyping your product to get funding while concealing your true progress and hoping that reality will eventually catch up to the hype continues to be tolerated in the tech industry." but that is of course old news, the real question, is what exactly made Theranos so successful at it while numerous others keep trying.

#9: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

There are great ideas in this book which most of people have probably already heard elsewhere, but given with a lot of examples, backing research and linked together in a habit forming theory.

"All humans are motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain, to seek hope and avoid fear, and finally, to seek social acceptance and avoid rejection."

Not much has changed in fundamentals of behavioral psychology since Pavlov’s dogs. However, the sheer multitude of day-to-day habits that we can classify, measure and attempt to change has brought the same ideas to the level of must-know. And not just for anyone trying to build a product (remember, it cannot be just better, not just better, must be 9 times better!), but for anyone trying to use their own habits to get the best out of the day. Examples include rewarding yourself for unpleasant but necessary chore or making a habit change easier by replacing the action, rather than attempting to fight the trigger.

#10: The Leader's Guide by Eric Ries 

The author couldn’t break away from the perils of Lean Startup's success. This book might have the ideas even better formed and organized but it lacked the passion and personal touch of the first book.

Nothing beats that feeling you get with Lean Startup like the author is actually living the experience where right or wrong turn may mean resetting and going back to the entry level job with nothing to show for the years of trying except “learning”. With this book, there is no sense of that - the author is merely going from one conference to another and speaking on stage. So that academical aspect might be even better, but no spark, no passion, it is not a page turner, it is a manual. And that makes all the difference. If you are looking for inspiration, read the first book.

#11: 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management by Kevin E. Kruse

This is short book that has sound ideas that are mentioned in numerous other books, blogs and articles. Unfortunately it is full of semi-promotional materials, but if you were to strip it down to the core you get:

Time is scarce, work on Most Important Task first 2 hours, use a calendar instead of todo list, don't trust your future procrastinating self, there will always be more to do, always carry a notebook, don't let other people control you through emails they sent, only use meetings as last resort, say no to everything but immediate goals, 80% of outcomes come from 20% of activities, use daily recurring batches to organize work, touch tasks once and complete < 5 min tasks immediately, first 60 minutes in a day to strengthen mind, body and spirit, productivity is about energy and focus.

“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” –Goethe” 

All this is reasonable, but would have been much more memorable if connected to powerful life stories with fewer mentions of famous names.