The Microserfs

I read the book a long time ago, perhaps somewhere around 2000. (Oh that magic turn-of-the-millennium IT hype!)

Just recently a black plastic bag arrived in my mail — with the Amazon’ish “address and content” label printed on it. My hands were almost trembling. The excitement of getting a new look at this legendary book!

I frankly don’t remember anything from the first round of reading “Microserfs”. So it’s a refreshing thing to read the book again. As you may know, I’m a software developer, lifelong geek (from age 6 onwards) and a devout lover of good books. But books can be ‘good’ in so many ways, and it’s really personal. I haven’t been a big review enthusiasta up until now. In fact this is one of my first reviews, I guess, apart from those obligatory school things everyone does in the their teens.

Microserfs is a collection of stories. In fact, starting to read the book for the second time, it’s no wonder that I didn’t have an exact memory of the “plot” exactly due to the fact that it may not have one. The storyline is told by the fictious people whole live in Microsoft campus. They’re all “geeks” of some kind, ie. professionals involved with software creation. Some display a disliking to lot of the ethos around the Campus. ‘Bill‘ is referred to in the book in many places.

There’s doesn’t seem to be “one plot” that would advance, instead there’s diary-like snippets of people describing their thoughts, situations, observations and various assumptions about the underlying logic, hierarchy and somewhat superficial world view of the geeks, or “serfs”.

Really enjoying reading Microserfs. Another thing that I truly recommend is watching Douglas Coupland’s interview in Youtube “The Fight for Generation Next”. He is a very interesting persona in his own right. Coupland worked for a telecomms company early in his career, before switching to full time writing.