The Soul of a New Machine

The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book, authored by Tracy Kidder. It was published in 1981 and won a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award.

It chronicles the true story of a computer design team to complete a next generation computer design under a blistering schedule and tremendous pressure. It is one of the few books which gives a realistic portrayal of work within the high tech industry.

Plot

The book opens with a turf war between two computer design groups within Data General Corporation, a very successful minicomputer vendor in the 1970s. Most of the senior designers are assigned the sexy job of designing the next generation machine, which will be done in North Carolina. The goal of this project (codenamed Fountainhead) is to give DG a machine to compete with Digital Equipment Corporations' new VAX computer, which is starting to take over the new 32-bit minicomputer market. The few senior designers who are left in corporate headquarters at Westborough, MA are given the much more humble job to design enhancements of the existing product lines. Tom West, the leader of Westboro designers, starts a skunk works project which becomes a backup plan in case Fountainhead fails. Eventually, the skunk-works project (code-named Eagle) becomes the company's only hope in catching up with DEC. In order to complete the project on-time, West takes risk in not only new technology but also relying on new college graduates (who have never designed anything so complex) to make up the bulk of his design team. The book follows many of the designers as they give up every waking moment of their lives in order to design and debug the new machine on schedule.

Themes

The work environment described in the book is in many ways opposite of what is taught in business schools. Instead of top-down management, many of the innovations are started at the grass-roots 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 book's portrayal of engineers avoids the stereotypes of either mindless drones or of propeller-heads working on James-Bondian gadgets. Instead, the engineers are shown as inventors, problem solvers and occassionally artists.

Tom West practices the Mushroom Theory of Management - keeping them in the dark and feeding them sh*t. 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.

Trivia

Several of the designers on the project went on to become luminaries within the computer industry. The architect of the Eagle project, Steve Wallach, would later found Convex Computer, one of the most successful minisupercomputer companies. Dave Epstein, would become one of the leaders of Nexgen, a company that helped AMD regain competitive footing against Intel.

The Eagle project becomes the Eclipse MV/8000 product line. While successful, it never approaches the market dominance of the DECs' VAX product line.

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