Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffreyrogers | Hacker News Reader

There is a great book about the development of the Sidewinder[0]. Even if you're not that interested in military technology it's interesting from an engineering management perspective.

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Sidewinder-Creative-Missile-Developme...

View on HN

Read it on the basis of recommendation here (along with Skunk Works), would highly second.

The fascinating thing about successful, lean, scrappy defense projects is there are almost no incentives for them to be such. Consequently, if they are, it's because wilful and powerful decisions were made by engineering / management team.

Decisions we could probably all stand to learn from (and do our best to repeat!).

Nah how about we just drown the whole defense sector in unaccountable hundreds of billions annually, I’m sure they will produce something useful right?

Skunk Works is a fascinating book. They overcame some difficult challenges building the SR-71. There are some interesting parallels to software development in the way they ran skunkworks. Insisting that the engineers that designed things had to be physically close to the people building them.

One question I always ask of my interviewers is "How often do your developers sit with end users?"

If they look flummoxed and confused as to why that should ever happen, I politely start looking for the exit.

skunk works was an excellent book; for those who are in to audible, it is a great audio book as well (and I think these kinds of stories are particularly conducive to audio book format)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com