Author Matthew B. Crawford is a physicist, has a Ph.D. in political philosophy, and is a motorcycle mechanic. What's not to like? Recommended for practitioners, managers, executives.

Shop Class as Soulcraft Cover

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
– Matthew B. Crawford

Crawford speaks eloquently about the value people feel in work that is tangible. He is primarily extolling the joy we feel in applying the manual arts well, and suggests that we should value those skills more highly.

He points out that a craft like plumbing is not subject to off-shoring, because it must be done on site. The Agile software community, of course, understands that working on site is far more effective for us, though it is not logically necessary in quite the way that plumbing is.

But there’s more for us in this book besides a good read. People do get joy and work harder, when their work is tangible. This has implications for how a developer can work toward greater joy, by focusing on delivering real features that people want.

There are implications for management as well. Because people are motivated to see their work come to fruition, we’re likely to get better results with feature-focused teams rather than teams divided along other lines, such as infrastructure levels.

This book is a quick and enjoyable read and it will give you valuable ideas.Give it a look!