Rework - Book Review
If you know me at all you know that I am not a book reader. I would much rather sit down with a nice thick programming language manual then a novel. That being said when I actually spend the time to read a book I expect it to be good. Upon getting the recommendation for Rework I was a bit turned off at first. Really, a business book? But those notions all fell away when I saw who it was written by, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Jason & David are the main guys at 37Signals which you should know as the company the created and open sourced Ruby on Rails.
While the book is a decent size, 270+ pages, it is one of the quickest read’s I have ever had. This is mostly due to the generous line spacing and the fact that each chapter is started with a full page picture. Did I also mention that the longest chapter is 3 pages. At first this seems like a waste of time but it was done on purpose. What they have to say doesn’t need a huge explanation. A situation or concept is laid out, detailed, and sometimes backed up with a real world story and then its on to the next topic. You would think it’s a book written by someone with ADD but it really works and just makes sense.
If anyone is thinking about starting a new company, even if it’s not a software company, should read this. It sounds unorthodox and totally crazy but in that crazy way it also makes a ton of sense.