Reviews

Here are some reactions from Twitter on The New Kingmakers:

https://twitter.com/piewords/status/314041792871944192

https://twitter.com/abbottjam/status/315473944205475840

https://twitter.com/ImAmyO/status/324225532520701953

Meanwhile, some of the first readers of The New Kingmakers have been kind enough to share their thoughts and impressions of the book. A few representative selections from these are included below (in alphabetical order by last name).

On a personal note, I sincerely appreciate the willingness of the following individuals to take the time to not only read and digest the book, but to review it for others.

“Coming from a developer background myself and now standing at the helm of appendTo as the CEO, I can verify that the case that Stephen lays out in this book is solid, well considered and actionable. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve built a business around it. I know it works.

Ignore this book at your peril. I’m writing this review because I feel like the ideas in this book are worth sharing and worth your time to read.”
– Mike Hostetler, “REVIEW: The New Kingmakers – How Developers Conquered the World?”

“The New Kingmakers takes those ideas and makes them accessible to everyone. Steve presents ideas, statistics and anecdotes and connects those dots clearly to draw an easy-to-understand picture of the tech landscape. The book is well-written, concise and full of meat.

If you work in technology, are interested in the future of business or just want to better understand what is going on with the tech companies you hear about in the news everyday you need to read The New Kingmakers.”
– Alex King, “The New Kingmakers“

“The entire book revolves around the idea that developers – and not managers and executives – are the power brokers in the IT industry, and to a lesser extent that all things are IT. For those of us on the inside of this transformation, this seems a somewhat obvious observation in retrospect, but when Stephen first offered this idea in 2010 – akin to Tim O’Reilly’s early observation of the power of the alpha geeks in 2002 – this wasn’t as clear as it is now. The near-alchemic combination of open source, the Internet, and its bastard love-child cloud computing, have rewritten the rules for everyone, whether they know it or not.

Do yourself a favor, take an hour out of your life to read Stephen’s mini-book, and then spend many more hours thinking about what it all means to your world.”
– Christopher Petrilli, “Review: The New Kingmakers“

“If you have a leadership role in ANY type of organization, you should read this book. It’s a fantastic look at the current state of technology and how developers can make or break a company. O’Grady also does a wonderful job proving that there’s never been a better time to be developing software. Hopefully he and the other smart fellows at Redmonk will continue to develop this thesis further and highlight both the successes and failures of developers in this new reality.”
– Richard Seroter, Book Review: The New Kingmakers

“I warmly recommend a new book by RedMonk co-founder Stephen O’Grady called The New Kingmakers, “about how developers took over the world”. If you’re a non-tech person who wants to understand what I do in my professional life, this will help. I’m not a software developer (nor even play one on television), but a lot of my job is about helping devs communicate about their work, and helping them work as a community to reach shared goals. If you work in tech, O’Grady’s view has profound implications for how you organize and manage your company, treat your tech employees, and market your products to technical people.”
– Deirdré Straughan, “Developers Rule, Ok?”