Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others

As a software engineer, youre great with computer languages, compilers, debuggers, and algorithms. And in a perfect world, those who produce the best code are the most successful. But in our perfectly messy world, success also depends on how you work with people to get your job done.

In this highly entertaining book, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman cover basic patterns and anti-patterns for working with other people, teams, and users while trying to develop software. Its valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular video series, "Working with Poisonous People", has attracted hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Youll learn how to deal with imperfect people—those irrational and unpredictable beings—in the course of your work. And youll discover why playing well with others is at least as important as having great technical skills. By internalizing the techniques in this book, youll get more software written, be more influential, be happier in your career.

In a perfect world, software engineers who produce the best code are the most successful. But in our perfectly messy world, success also depends on how you work with people to get your job done.

In this highly entertaining book, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman cover basic patterns and anti-patterns for working with other people, teams, and users while trying to develop software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.

Writing software is a team sport, and human factors have as much influence on the outcome as technical factors. Even if youve spent decades learning the technical side of programming, this book teaches you about the often-overlooked human component. By learning to collaborate and investing in the "soft skills" of software engineering, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort.

Brian Fitzpatrick co-founded Google's Chicago engineering office in 2005