The Unicorn Project: A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data

by Gene Kim

If the Phoenix development setup were a product, it would be the worst product ever.

How can you create anything of value if you don’t have feedback on how it’s used?

The First Ideal—Locality and Simplicity The Second Ideal—Focus, Flow, and Joy The Third Ideal—Improvement of Daily Work The Fourth Ideal—Psychological Safety The Fifth Ideal—Customer Focus

“One of the many benefits of my winning personality—no manager passes on the opportunity to give me to a different team. It allows me to go wherever I want.”

know, this is the first Dev team I’ve managed. I believe my job my job is very simple: listen, do whatever you need me to do to help make you successful, and remove any obstacles in your way.”

Psychological safety slips away so easily, like when the leader micromanages, can’t say ‘I don’t know,’ or acts like a know-it-all, pompous jackass.

what’s the plural of ‘developer’?” says Maxine. “A ‘merge conflict.’”

the Hoare principle: “There are two ways to write code: write code so simple there are obviously no bugs in it, or write code so complex that there are no obvious bugs in it.”