Praise and Reviews of Human Software
“A proper page turner that is part thriller, part whodunnit and a fine dystopian parable. Slightly reminiscent of Robert Harris’ “The Fear Factor,” Richard Bown’s “Human Software” makes some serious points about generative AI, globalisation and dehumanisation at work whilst also being something you could happily read on a beach. Along the way there are some excellent observations of growing up and family life, and enjoyable flashes of familiarity. As well as savouring the book, I suspect many readers will wince with recognition. It could scarcely be more of the moment, taking aim at a deeply corrupted system and successfully mining the deep unease many of us feel about where AI might lead us.”
CHARLES HUMBLE – Tech Consultant & Journalist at Conissaunce
A genuine heartfelt novel that lets us see what it might be like for technical teams when AI tools are introduced, and one I won’t forget anytime soon.
JEREMY MARKEY – LinkedIn Post and Rands Slack Book Reviewer
“Even if you’re not in tech, this story pulls you in with its vivid world-building and well-rounded characters. I found myself completely hooked.”
RUSSELL MCLEAN – Emmy and BAFTA award-winning Producer
“Absolutely gripping! In one way or another I can identify with all of the characters in the story. There are valuable lessons here about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts as well as the paths we all choose every day in shaping our own environment and our industry. Creating siloed organisations on the belief that they will result in greater efficiency is self-defeating just as no person is an island. Human Software is a must-read for managers, leaders and developers and helps to remind us that we’re just humans making tools. How we want to do that and how we want to treat each other while we do it is our own choice.”
LOVDEEP PANNU – CTO at Epicenter
“Richard Bown’s Human Software is a sharp, compelling novel about what happens when human values collide with profit-driven corporate change fuelled by AI. It is a glimpse into the everyday struggles and realities of people trying to survive and stay human inside large tech organizations that prioritize ruthless profit maximization over their employees. David versus Goliath in the age of AI. A real page-turner.”
SUSANNE KAISER – Tech Consultant
“Love the key premise of the book: when AI meets humans – humans and trust wins.”
JOEP PISCAER – Tech Consultant
LONGER REVIEWS
From Jeremy Markey on LinkedIn and also posted on Rands Slack:
Human Software by Richard Bown
Premise: This novel is about technical developers and how AI has negatively impacted their lives.
My thoughts: When I agreed to read and review this book, I failed to ask if it was non-fiction, as a rule I don’t review fiction. I don’t think I know enough about writing or story telling for my opinion to be valuable. I definitely didn’t ask if it was a horror story, while this novel wouldn’t be found in the horror section, it freaked me out more than any Steven King novel has.
The anxiety around AI and its negative implications are front and center. Earlier this year I read Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant, a book that covers one of the first efficiency revolutions in recorded history (it’s where the term luddite came from), and Human Software parallels the reality of it enough to make comparisons hard to miss. These books take us through progress, the impact on people, and in both cases they feel like a car wreck in slow motion but we’re in the passenger’s seat.
The characters, the events, the tension, the scenarios, the technical jargon, and even the small conversations all feel authentic. While normally that’s good news as anything that breaks the illusion makes it hard to stay connected to a novel, Human Software felt a little too real. I’ve been on both sides, I’ve introduced efficiency gains that have impacted staff sizes and had myself and others let go due to these changes like this, maybe that’s why the book hit closer than I expected.
Human Software is a genuine heartfelt novel that lets us see what it might be like for technical teams when AI tools are introduced, and one I won’t forget anytime soon.
Note: This book was received for free for review purposes.
Memorable Lines:
AI is a useful tool, but it’s no panacea, and it’s certainly no replacement for a good person in a good team.
You may think, what about us? What about us who are already here?
The amount of noise around AI has been, quite frankly, ridiculous. However, no single technological step-change comes without noise.
Systems have grown and sprawled… [but] the fundamental work we do hasn’t changed that much.
What we are building here is a future for everyone, a future for people who live here and for people who come from far away.
Great people make the engineering experience worthwhile.
The Peter Principle and Dunning-Kruger effects are real.
#AI #Automation #FutureOfWork #DigitalTransformation #WorkforceExperience #HumanCenteredLeadership #TechCulture #LeadershipInTech #SystemsThinking #HumanSoftware
From Jan Hartman on LinkedIn:
I just read Richard Bown’s recently published book ‘Human Software’. See the books in the picture below. If you like one of them you will probably like them all. Unlike the IT novels by Gene Kim and Clarke Ching, the novel ‘Human Software’ is low on theory. DevOps is but a backdrop. It is the sentiment that counts in this novel, not the frameworks.
For somewhat of a conceptual novel it has nice imagery at times, such as calling the hyperboloid Van Iterson-style cooling towers cloud factories.
The feelings throughout this story line are nostalgic, reminiscing pre-COVID, pre-Brexit Britain, when the pubs were plenty, the beer was cheap, and the evenings started in the afternoon. But now Britannia is no longer great, and in some areas humiliatingly poor without honor.
On a world scale the novel shows how multinational global indifference can cause local pain and nowadays may even colonize a former empire. On a national scale the author depicts families struggling to get by, facing divorce and poverty, balancing office hours with life outside of the workplace, raising kids. Living in areas with high divorce rates and low employment rates.
The protagonists seem to be juggling five perspectives. Firstly, the expat who pursues corporate IT as a prestigious career (tenacity). Secondly, the individual for whom coding is a passion (flow). Thirdly, ‘keeping the lights on’ as a way to keep on keeping on. Work as ‘just a job’, mere survival, a way to make a living and support the family (routine). Fourthly, corporate politics and boardroom shenanigans (charade). Fifthly, corporations as communities and the private side of work-life (family). Balancing those five outlooks on IT work without mistaking one for the other at the risk of burning out is a puzzle some of the characters face or have faced.
The character Kyle is like Brent in ‘The Phoenix Project’, a rockstar hero of ego-based engineering. Such characters are befitting of the old way of treating customer software as collateral damage when fire-fighting to keep internal IT afloat amidst smoldering piles of technical debt. True implementations of DevOps, platform engineering and Team Topologies have brought an end to that.
The dehumanization of work and the revolving door of modern IT-personnel is also a major theme. Alongside with the professionalization of coding, over the past decades once free range programmers have ended up being cooped up or even battery caged. And they are nearing the pre-stage of full-automation, like the cashier in the supermarket who is but a bleeping machine soon to be replaced by a real machine rather than another human being to talk to.
The author’s message is clear. Stop treating developers, ops engineers and support teams as “inefficiencies”. It can be really simple. Treat resources as people. And promote team play. Programmers, have…
Been stuck in office gardens, terrorized/
Sent to meetings, standardized/
Overmanaged, corporatized/
Handle them with care
Amazon Review: “A pacey thriller that hurls us into the maelstrom of our modern world“
This book is very much of our time. It’s a pacey thriller that throws us right into the maelstrom of the big issues we all face in the world today, and cleverly brings them to life in a very relatable way.
From the impact of technology and AI on, well, everything, to dubious corporate decision-making, to the impact of climate change happening right on our doorstep. This novel also examines how our working lives have evolved so rapidly, and sometimes to our detriment, that we can often end up with less human connection and sub-optimal output as a result.
Set in an industrial seaside town in the UK, the story follows an overstretched tech team within an ambitious global conglomerate. Global pressures push corporate leaders toward increasingly precarious decision making with disastrous consequences. That is, until some employees are pushed to the limit and are forced to take action.
This book builds tension through to a powerful crescendo finale. I found it to be a real page-turner, with a lot of sharp observational phrasing that pops off the page and with imagery that sticks in the mind. It is an accomplished debut, and a refreshing read – I loved it!