geochronology

This. When I structured the standups for our own team, I budgeted 15 minutes for updates and 15 minutes for open conversation.

The result has worked almost exactly as intended: there's breathing room to discuss issues or ideas that come up in the course of conversation, but discipline around keeping those conversations brief enough to stay on the rails.

IMO at previous companies getting told "this isn't the time for that discussion" really frustrated me. As the OP stated, these conversations never happened, and it's healthier to allow some time and space for people to talk off-script when they're all meeting together.

I'm curious enough about some of the content in this book that I'd consider reading it if the price was cheaper (maybe $10-15 or so).

Unfortunately this book seems too all-over-the-map to be particularly useful to where I'm at in my own coding career: about 18 months into it.

There are two pieces to this book if I read the marketing pages correctly: * First, the overplayed trope of "How to get hired as a Pr0gRaMmar!!!1" -- a cottage industry nearly as large as the field of engineering itself * Second, the less-played trope of, "Here are some actionable ways to develop your career path under the severe time constraints that an engineering career will present you with"

If this text were more exclusively drilled down into the second topic rather than the first, I'd probably make the purchase.

However, I don't feel like spending time reading through a lot of things that I either already know, or that don't apply to me.