_The Soul of a New Machine_ was one of the first (among many!) tech history books I read as a precocious teen, when I hadn't even seen a VAX (or a miniframe), let alone programmed one. But the book brought alive the machine right in front of my eyes. This was years ago, when the only thing I programmed was a piddly DOS system with BASIC.

His one quote [1] remained in my imagination, and inspired me to learn management. Context: Tom West and his team have acquired a VAX system from DEC, and are reverse-engineering it to see how it is setup.

"...Looking into the VAX, [Tom] West felt he saw the diagram of DEC's corporate organization. He found the VAX too complicated. He did not like, for instance, the system by which various parts of the machine communicated with each other; for his taste, there was too much protocol involved. The machine expressed DEC's cautious, bureaucratic style. [West was pleased with this idea.]..."

It inspired me to become a better manager precisely because I was tearing down bureaucracies in my own work.

Every now and then when I mull over product failures (or successes), I see the product architectures reflect the organizational messes they are born in.

RIP Tracy Kidder.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/882178766/Tracy-Kidder-Flyin...