Team Geek: A Software Developer's Guide to Working Well with Others

In a perfect world, software engineers who produce the best code are the most successful. But in our perfectly messy world, success also depends on how you work with people to get your job done.

In this highly entertaining book, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman cover basic patterns and anti-patterns for working with other people, teams, and users while trying to develop software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks―including "Working with Poisonous People"―has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.

Writing software is a team sport, and human factors have as much influence on the outcome as technical factors. Even if you’ve spent decades learning the technical side of programming, this book teaches you about the often-overlooked human component. By learning to collaborate and investing in the "soft skills" of software engineering, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort.

Team Geek was named as a Finalist in the 2013 Jolt Awards from Dr. Dobb's Journal. The publication's panel of judges chose five notable books, published during a 12-month period ending June 30, that every serious programmer should read.

Brian Fitzpatrick leads Google's Data Liberation Front and Transparency Engineering teams and has previously led Google's Project Hosting and Google Affiliate Network teams. He cofounded Google's Chicago engineering office and serves as both thought leader and internal advisor for Google's open data efforts.

Ben Collins-Sussman, one of the founding developers of the Subversion version control system, led Google's Project Hosting team, and now manages the engineering team for the Google Affiliate Network. He cofounded Google's engineering office in Chicago and ported Subversion to Google's Bigtable platform.