I do  not remember how I happened upon the book, but it is one of those books that you need to read if you are interested in the technology competition during the Cold War. It is also a far more interesting book than that because by following the lives of Joel Barr (and his alter ego Al Sarant) you learn a lot of stuff about OPSEC failures, how naive and ill equipped  was the FBI during WWII in its counterintelligence efforts,  the Communist Party USA at its prime, the Rosenberg Spy Ring and the technology transfer that resulted because of its operations.

You do learn of the life that two foreigners led during the Cold War “on the other side” and the passion for recognition of one of them “who was not Caltech material” according to R. Feynman which resulted in singlehandedly him kickstarting Soviet electronics. Sarant was definitely driven to prove him wrong, and when placed in an environment where he could operate, in a way he did: The UM-1, the Uzel and Zelenograd are his and created within an environment that did not favor his modus operandi.

You also learn a lot about management, how risk aversive management ultimately leads to failure and how choosing to copy instead of competing (and embracing failure) widens the gap and leaves you behind:

And then one of them, the highest one, a department head at the ministry, asked me, “Do the Americans do that?” When I said I didn’t know, he said, “Son, remember, if they don’t do something, it isn’t worth doing.”

There are also patterns of behaviour that we still find peculiar and contradicting today, but are explainable by those who commit them really easy:

the prospect of committing a crime to further a cause in which you deeply believe is a very exciting one. Here is a test not only of what you believe, but also of what you are.

Think about that the next time a suicide bomber explodes.  This is what rationalises everything in their head. And while you are at it, here is how contradictions between actions and ideology get rationalised too:

These little people in the party accept the discipline of the party, do what they are told, think what they are told; and if these things seem contrary to reason, patriotic duty or common sense, they do them because the party says that is the correct thing to do “at the time”.

There you have it. That explains the party herd. And the following explains the rest:

He was particularly impressed by their ability to tune out the intellectual garbage that was thrown at them from every form of communications media, even in the ubiquitous slogans that adorned rooftops and bulletin boards.

Orwell was a genius! As a rule I try not to buy books that cost more than $20 (thanks to tsundoku) but I am really glad that I broke the rule this time. I find the stories of Berg (Barr) and Staros (Sarant) valuable, both in their political mistakes and in their engineering perseverance.

I suppose that I am one of a few people who had an interest in Loudcloud even though they had no vested interest in it. Maybe because it was Andreessen’s second company and I thought it would it would go south, I am not sure though.

However, because of its CEO, who also has three children and one of them autistic, the book was even more interesting to me. Horowitz is only a few years older than me.  The first part of the book describes the origins of Loudcloud, the efforts to keep it afloat after its clients went under, its transformation to Opsware and finally the sale. You can read the first part really fast; in fact you can feel the adrenaline.

Then comes the second part, equally interesting but a slightly slower read, where Horowitz explains his strategy and tactics and how he came to learn the job on the job, how mentoring helped him and how he built and transformed his management team. Without doubt the hardest things discussed are how to “properly” fire people and how to develop a HR process that can handle growth and personnel management.

However, due to two incidents briefly discussed in the book, I strongly believe that the author does not even come close to the hardest decisions that were made during this 8 year journey:

My father turned to me and said, “Son, do you know what’s cheap?”

Since I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, I replied, “No, what?”

“Flowers. Flowers are really cheap. But do you know what’s expensive?” he asked.

Again, I replied, “No, what?”

He said, “Divorce”.

 

Because you see, the hardest choices were made by his wife and she has not written a single page.

There is also another thing I take issue with the book. Horowitz describes himself as a wartime CEO and he complains that there is no wartime management literature and that most likely there cannot be a CEO who can run things both at peace and during war. First, this is not a war. Let’s get rid of the analogy, no matter how much Sun Tzu has helped you manage things. You did not kill any people. And second of all, if you ever need advice on how to run an organisation at peace and during turbulent times just ask a ship’s captain or figure out their curriculum if you’re so much in need of a citation.

While several German religious leaders, writers and artists, industrialists and politicians mounted strong opposition to Nazi rule at great personal cost, sometimes of their lives, there was nothing comparable to be found in German science.

I stumbled upon the book thanks to this article that mostly dealt with the effort of constructing an Aryan version of Physics. What an interesting book. By using the stories of giants like Max Planck, Peter Debye and Werner Heisenberg during the Nazi rule the author explores the apolitical stance many scientists used to have (and depending the field continue to adopt) on the results of their work and the repercussions of them being used. Planck remained glued to the Fatherland regardless of who was ruling it (and whether being true to the Fatherland), Debye tried to walk though the rain without getting wet and Heisenberg with the arrogance that came with his ability tried to rebuild German Physics by assuming the role of its curator.

Together with these we learn of the noble stance by Max von Laue and Fritz Strassman  (“I value my personal freedom so highly, that to preserve it I would brake stones”) and the grey stance of the rest who stayed and did science within the regime. Even Lise Meitner and Debye left at the very last moment they could. Correspondence between many prominent scientists from the beginning of the Nazi rule till after WWII is also included. Very interesting points of view and commentary of the situation these people were in.

While you cannot completely enjoy the book without remembering your Physics, you will highly enjoy the questions of ethics and moral compass that it poses. I know it troubled me and it makes me answer questions about the work I am doing and the sector it applies too daily. And DevOps is not exactly science yet.

While the stories we read about for 11 or so chapters serve largely as a preamble to the fantastic epilogue on Science and Ethics, they do describe the situation we are in today and questions we need to answer. Prior to reading the book I used the get a bit sad when a scientist or an engineer I admired failed me on other standards that I supposed they were concurrently holding. I do not get sad any more. Within the realm of politics they are equally fallible like the rest of us.