For Your Engineering Book Club
Use Human Software to start conversations about software engineering, AI, leadership and the human impact of technical decisions.
Software is built by people. What happens when we forget that?
Most software engineers know the feeling: the late-night incident call, the inherited system nobody wants to touch, the sprint goal that changes halfway through the sprint, or the meeting that could have been an email.
Human Software is a novel about those moments. It follows engineers, managers and the choices people make while building and maintaining the systems that run our world.
Technology is never just technology. Every system reflects the people, incentives, compromises and cultures that created it. The book asks:
What happens when we stop taking responsibility for the decisions we make?
Why read fiction about software engineering?
Human Software is a story, not a software engineering textbook or management framework. Fiction offers a way to explore questions that can be difficult to discuss directly:
- What happens when organisations treat people as resources rather than humans?
- Can engineers remain principled when the systems around them are failing?
- How much responsibility do we carry for decisions made above us?
- What happens when we place too much faith in technology to solve human problems?
- How should we think about AI while remembering the people affected by it?
Who is the book for?
- Software engineers who have supported fragile systems, worked on legacy code or joined an on-call rotation.
- Engineering leaders thinking about culture, transformation, AI adoption and the human impact of technical decisions.
- Anyone working alongside technology who is interested in how always-on software affects people and communities.
The novel works well for engineering team book clubs, leadership discussions, AI ethics conversations, developer communities and university reading groups.