The Unicorn Project
by Gene Kim · first published 2019
53% recommend38% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
A novel told from a senior developer's side of the Phoenix Project story, showing how dysfunctional organizations block engineers and how DevOps ideas fit the software supply chain. For developers and managers.
Common criticism: Some find the characters and storytelling grating or weaker than The Phoenix Project
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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…special relationship with programming languages. Now that I finished my studies at 42 school in Paris and that I have more free times, I can concentrate on what I dreamed to do. One day, I read the Unicorn Project by Gene Kim and discovered Clojure, which is a dialect of Lisp. I read a lot on the subject, the history of this dialect, the idioms, the functional thinking behind it. It was mind blowing, the idea…
on “Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment” ↗You’d love _The Unicorn Project_ if you haven’t read it. I highly recommend it, and it’s a story around roughly the same journey. https://www.amazon.com/Unicorn-Project-Developers-Disruption...
on “Ask HN: What were the things you did that made the biggest impact at your work?” ↗The Unicorn Project, The 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey, Permanent Record, Turn the ship around, The Checklist Manifesto, These are good ones!
on “Ask HN: Do you know any good audio books for developers?” ↗'The Deadline: A novel about project management' by Tom DeMarco Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt The Unicorn Project by Gene Kim (sequel to the Phoenix Project) Makers by Cory Doctorow Daemon & Freedom™ by Daniel Suarez The Affinities by Robert Charles Wilson Zodiac by Neal Stephenson The Blue Ant trilogy (Pattern…
on “Ask HN: What's some great fiction for founders and entrepreneurs?” ↗Lately I was introduced to Gene Kim's Phoenix Project, Unicorn Project, and DevOps Handbook. They changed the way I've looked at a my role as a leader of technical people in the organization as well as challenging some pre-concieved notions about techs role in business.…
on “Ask HN: What does it take to be a CTO?” ↗When managing people in tech, I think it is equally as important to know how to organize as it is to know how to lead. I would recommend "The Phoenix Project" and "The Unicorn Project" and "The Goal" to all tech managers. No matter how good your communication/leadership skills are, your team will be severely handicapped if they are working in an inefficient/limiting environment. Coming…
on “Ask HN: Best book / resources on leadership, especially for tech teams?” ↗The Phoenix Project was great, I’d recommend its sibling book The Dev Ops Handbook, and the more recent The Unicorn Project (the same narrative story focused on the dev side).
on “Three Ways of DevOps” ↗…ones I've read this last year (not all of them are published in 2020 though). We are legion - D. Taylor. A four book series, haven't read the rest of the books. Children of time - A. Tchaikovsky The Unicorn Project - G. Kim. This would be especially interesting for the HN crowd. It's not sf per se, rather more than contemporary fiction, but the main theme is about programming and politics in a big corporation. Quite…
on “My Favorite Books 2020” ↗…understanding better the "business" of coding, that is, how does software engineering work fits in the "supply chain" of a company, from idea to the sales guy making cold-calls. Two books come to mind, "The Unicorn Project" and "The Phoenix Project". At any rate, the desire to keep improving yourself, growing and learning it laudable!
on “Ask HN: How to become a ridiculously good back end staff eng?” ↗- The Unicorn Project - The Phoenix Project - Clean Code - The Linux Programming Interface - Digital Design and Computer Architecture: ARM Edition - The Art of Electronics 3rd Edition
on “Ask HN: What are your top 5 favorite computer books?” ↗It’s an amazingly good read. The follow up - The Unicorn Project - wasn’t as good, but definitely worth reading.
on “The Big DevOps Misunderstanding” ↗Read: Google SRE Book The Phoenix Project The Unicorn Project The DevOps Handbook Also, take a Udemy course on Kubernetes.
on “Ask HN: Recommendations for Learning Distributed Microservices?” ↗Read: The Phoenix Project, The Unicorn Project, the DevOps Handbook, and the Google SRE book.
on “Ask HN: What are some good resources for learning system architecture at scale?” ↗The author of Phoenix Project released a companion/sequel piece titled 'The Unicorn Project'. Same series of events, but from the PoV of a sr swe / tech lead. I'd recommended reading through all or half of Pheonix and then moving to Unicorn. I found lots of value in both
on “Ask HN: What is your learning plan for 2020?” ↗Read the book, the power of habit. Here's a few other books I recommend: 1. The Unicorn Project 2. Measure What Matters 3. Start With Why 4. Project to Product 5. Accelerate
on “Ask HN: Early 30s SWE feeling stuck” ↗