The work environment described in the book is in many ways opposite of traditional management. Instead of top-down management, many of the innovations are started at the grassroots level. Instead of management having to coerce labor to work harder, labor volunteers to complete the project on-time. The reason for this is that people will give their best when the work itself is challenging and rewarding. Many of the engineers state that, " They don't work for the money ", meaning they work for the challenge of inventing and creating. The motivational system is akin to the game of pinball, the analogy being that if you win this round, you get to play the game again; that is, build the next generation of computers.
A running theme in the book is the tension between engineering quality and time to market: the engineers, challenged to bring a minicomputer to market on a very short time-frame, are encouraged to cut corners on design. Tom West describes his motto as "Not everything worth doing is worth doing well," or "If you can do a quick-and-dirty job and it works, do it." The engineers, in turn, complain that the team's goal is to "put a bag on the side of the Eclipse"— in other words, to turn out an inferior product in order to have it completed more quickly.
Tom West practices the "Mushroom Theory of Management"— "keeping them in the dark, feeding them shit, and watch them grow." That is, isolating the design team from outside influences and, instead, using the fear of the unknown to motivate the team.
The "Soul" of the new machine comes from the dedicated engineers who bring it to life with their endless hours of attention and toil. The soul is theirs, stored in silicon and microcode.
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