It's an excellent, nearly perfect instruction manual on how to run a tech business -- in the situation and time that tech business was in.
For context, DG was about to go obsolete, but Tom (and others) recognized this where almost nobody else would've, and managed to transform the company from a mainframe company to a minicomputer company, with a small, ragtag team of dedicated engineers, without a map or prior art, and with desultory support from the checked-out, incompetent C-suite.
Tom's idiosyncratic, no-nonsense style wasn't for everyone, but I can think of very few tech leaders who could have succeeded as a manager in that situation.
Source: worked directly for Tom at Data General for several years.
For another view of DG & Tom: I interviewed Dick Sonderegger [1] who also worked there and knew most of the people. He said they generally had a low opinion of Kidder and thought he'd believe anything you told him.
That said, it IS still a great book, and given that Kidder's not an engineer, he did an amazing job.
The "he didn't know anything, we coulda told him anything and he woulda bought it" line, which Sonderegger relayed from the DG guys, speaks more poorly of the DG guys than anyone else. I mean, if what a dummy he was for believing us is their critique of the work... that's gross, right?
Maybe I'm missing some crucial context or something.
"what a dummy he was for believing us" -- I don't know if that's really what they thought. Maybe it was more like "he didn't try to verify anything, ask any hard questions, or get any context on it." It's been too long since I've read the book.
Did you like the bit about him telling the Marines, "I want to be a close air support pilot in 'Nam!"
And they said, "No, you're going to be a computer programmer!"
It goes counter to the folklore that they ignore your background and just hand you a rifle.
I've heard the story of new recruits and their assignments told a few different ways over the years. My grandfather credited his ability to touch type with keeping him out of combat, and it's certainly possible that whoever made that decision also noticed a few other qualities that made him suitable for working in an office. On the other hand, I know a guy who was drafted in the Vietnam era after getting a BS in Physics and Astronomy and the Army's best use for him was... combat.
I don't even know the name of the position of the guy who decides where draftees are sent after basic training, but I expect that as with so many other things, some of them are a lot better at their jobs than others. And perhaps the Marines do a better job of it than the Army.
DG was never a mainframe company. west was trying to transform a small 16-bit mini into a 32-bit mini. De Castro, the CEO of DG at the time said he wanted that, but "no mode-bit", which shows him as being not being disconnected from his engineers. All in the book.
I'm curious about what various people think defines a mainframe. IBM people clearly have something in mind, and DEC people something else. Maybe DG had yet another definition.
A mainframe is a high-RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability), high-performance, high-cost, modular multiprocessor machine with specialized coprocessors; running a hypervisor-style operating system that is largely concerned with allocating resources and managing security partitions. Interconnections among modules happen at system bus latencies and bandwidths.
zabzonk is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct. I was using 'mainframe' colloquially and lazily. DG's mini line was used for the same kinds of things as mainframes, but they were formally minis at the time.
Thanks for sharing. I'm really fascinated by everything in DG. Actually I didn't know DG until now.
Is it possible for you to share a bit more? I'm sorry for being vague but I assume anything would be of interest of the HN public right now. If there is really a need for a topic, I couldn't help but Googled your name, looks like you are involved in a project called "Poppet", maybe it is possible to speak a bit about that one?
I also dotted-lined into Tom in the 90s when the big DG NUMA Unix servers were being developed. I was the product manager for the line--along with a bunch of other systems going back to the mid-80s a few years after the "Eagle" in the book was released.
I've shared this before but a really interesting internal publication from the mid-80s was A Year in Development with lots of interviews and photographs. https://archive.org/details/year-in-dev/mode/2up
Here is an advertising brochure for DG's first product, the Nova minicomputer, when it appeared in 1968. A weird mix of technical information and full-page close up photos of DG executives trying to look tough:
Interesting. I got the exact feeling -- From some pages I read hardcore assembler instructions, but from others I saw someone that looks like a mafia boss.
Must be interesting time though. I love those "Byte" and "Dr.Dobb" magazine ads in general. They are all very creative and sometimes do not shy away from "exotic" stuffs such as beautiful ladies and such. I wonder what sub-industry still has that kind of culture :)
Thanks for responding, and for 'disagreeing' so respectfully.
I feel honored to interact with one who was present.
I didn't mean to attack an individual, and my management comment was more general than just Tom. I saw Tom's actions as reactions to a bad situation.
My comment is more directed at the people I worked with who took the wrong message away from the SOTNM folklore. Being against the ropes and fighting for your survival at all costs isn't something to look forward to, and definitely not something to expect from employees.
You are right that just copy-and-pasting that pace and expectations onto other development teams is (a) commonplace and (b) not a great recipe for success. I don't think SOTNM valorizes that behavior itself, but it's definitely possible to read it the wrong way and think the grind and the deathmarch are necessary or useful parts of normal development activity. Your caution is valid.
For context, DG was about to go obsolete, but Tom (and others) recognized this where almost nobody else would've, and managed to transform the company from a mainframe company to a minicomputer company, with a small, ragtag team of dedicated engineers, without a map or prior art, and with desultory support from the checked-out, incompetent C-suite.
Tom's idiosyncratic, no-nonsense style wasn't for everyone, but I can think of very few tech leaders who could have succeeded as a manager in that situation.
Source: worked directly for Tom at Data General for several years.