Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team — Marcus Blankenship
My short review of “Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team”, written by Marcus Blankenship.
Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team — Marcus Blankenship
In this book, Marcus Blankenship goes over seven habits often seen in technical teams – habits that cause technical managers to harm their teams. The consequences? Frustrated colleagues or employees, poor software quality, and people leaving.
I’ve recognized all seven habits this book talks about and I’ve actually lived some – either while being an individual contributor or being on the other side myself, depending on the situation – and I agree they hurt and we can and should do better.
Each of these seven habits has a corresponding chapter in the book, where the author discusses why they are problems, how they can ruin our team, and what you can do to correct them.
Here are those habits:
- Withholding feedback until the time is right
- Forgetting how difficult good programming is
- Fixing other people’s mistakes
- Not expressing gratitude
- Constantly pushing the team to deliver faster
- Breaking promises, no matter how small
- Taking special privileges
→ 4⁄5 This book is short, easy to read and goes straight to the point. If you are managing a technical team, especially if you are new to the job, reading this book will help you and your team. On the other hand, if you’ve already read some other books about management of a technical team and/or have some experience doing it, you’ll probably not learn much here.
