[jessamyn]

Right?! Hi I'm Tom West's daughter, librarian, owner of MetaFilter and someone who spends a LOT of time talking to people (mainly men) who take only some of the messages away from that book. The book was great. I'm in it in a single sentence. My sister isn't in it at all. My parents divorced shortly after the book came out. My father had never "let" my mother have a job (it was a different time) and so she was ill-prepared for the single life, but made it work.

I hammered out a decent relationship with my dad despite the fact that he was basically married to his work, was probably somewhere on the autism spectrum, and had a problematic relationship with alcohol. He was a good guy but he learned interpersonal interactions somewhat by rote and in a business role where the goal was "results" he just did what he had to do. It's weird growing up when your dad's nickname is The Price of Darkness.

He wound up having a decent retirement after being a company man most of his life, got to sail a lot more, had a second messy divorce, and died in 2011. At his memorial service Tracy Kidder spoke eloquently about working with my dad through the writing of that book (he basically lived with us on weekends for a while) and how he knew the book had been good for him--he won a Pulitzer, was catapulted to some level of renown, got to write more books--but he was never quite sure it had been good for my dad. I also wonder sometimes.

So, yeah, when I talk to people who are reading it again or for the first time, I often ask them to reflect on what the book says about work/life balance, about gender norms (there's one woman in the entire coding team), about how project management should run, and about the weird cult of personality that can grow up around people who don't quite get along with people, and how things could be different.

[ghaff]

>(there's one woman in the entire coding team)

Certainly true. Though I will say that a female engineering friend of mine--upon seeing A Year in Development (linked elsewhere on thread) created a few years later about, well, a year in development at DG--had the immediate reaction "Look at all the women!" But maybe that's more a statement about how things haven't gotten a lot better. (And many of the women, in my experience, were in project management and engineering-adjacent roles.)

[rbanffy]

When I graduated (EE, 1992), in my class there were about five women. Industrial engineering had a higher proportion, about 10%.

In the last few years, according to LinkedIn at least - and my admittedly unscientific counting, it seems 50/50.

This makes me much happier.

[larrywright]

Hi Jessamyn! I read Soul of a New Machine for the first time just 3 years ago, even though I’m old enough to remember seeing it in the computer section of my local library as a relatively new release. Before I read it, I saw a comment you made (on Bryan Cantrill’s blog perhaps?) similar to this one. I wanted to thank you for that, as it undoubtedly changed how I interpreted the book as I read it. It can be easy to romanticize the hard work and sacrifice portrayed in a book like that, without understanding the toll that sacrifice took on those around them.

So thank you for continuing to offer your perspective on your father and his work.

[joezydeco]

Thank you, Jessamyn, for providing your perspective. You did the same to me, privately, many years ago on MeFi and I haven't forgotten it.

I cast the same eye now on anything that romanticizes similar work, and I've even seen it in places that are somewhat unexpected. The movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a perfect example of this.

[archagon]

I wish there was a Best of HN for comments like these!

(As a MeFite, it blew my mind when I read SoaNM a few years ago and realized that Tom was your father. Small world!)

[gorjusborg]

Thank you so much for sharing something so personal. I have a family myself, and as much as I love playing at being the hero at work, I always have to look around me and assess how my decisions affect those around me.

My wife "doesn't work" but does more work than I do. What I do professionally isn't possible without her.

Your comment just reaffirmed my priorities. Thank you.

[markus_zhang]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I admit I was more into the technical details and had little thoughts towards WLB and other things. I'm probably bored about my life so these "grand things" do pull towards me. On the other side I have a family so I tend to put that over everything else (Maybe that's the source of boredom?) so these books provide the drug of "grand scheme + technology" which is really my thing :)

I'm glad that you maintained an OK relationship with Tom. It could be tough relationship.

[cloudy_future]

I read it in college and it had a profound impact. I swore I'd avoid that kind of pressure cooker environment. For the most part of the 30+ years of my career, I have. I've maintained a good work/life balance. Made a good living, have great family. Thanks for posting - I would never have imagined having this dialog 30 years later.