Finished "The Soul of a New Machine". It's fantastic. It mostly takes place in 1978-1979, although the machine debuted in the first half of 1980.
The Skunkworks book was OK. Lots of memorable anecdotes, but not nearly as well-written as Kidder's book.
Re:Political Chips
by Throwawayaerlei on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @06:58PM
(#32337471)
"It was originally created by Kelly but he managed to transmit the spirit to a successor, who wrote an interesting book about his time (80's and 90's) called 'stealth'."
The time period doesn't quite match up, but I found Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed by Ben R. Rich https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316743003/ to be quite interested if not quite as interesting as I'd hoped when I bought it.
It was originally created by Kelly but he managed to transmit the spirit to a successor, who wrote an interesting book about his time (80's and 90's) called 'stealth'. If you look on Google you can find the PDF.
Another book about organisations having to deal with ossification is 'the soul of a new machine'. It's written by a journalist that was embedded in a R&D department of a computer manufacturer in the 70's and 80's. The place is run by someone a lot like Kelly Johnson, and the author managed very well to get into his mind. Again, I believe you can find a PDF on Google.