Name: Secrets of Consulting
ISBN: 9780932633019

Secrets of Consulting

The author reveals his secrets for gathering, organizing, and discarding writing ideas. Drawing an analogy to the stone-by-stone method of building fieldstone walls, Weinberg shows writers how to construct fiction and nonfiction manuscripts from key insights, stories, and quotes. The elements, or stones, are collected nonsequentially, over time, and eventually find logical places in larger pieces. The method renders writer's block irrelevant and has proved effective for scores of Weinberg's writing class students, who have collectively published more than 100 books. If you've ever wanted to write a book or article--or need a fresh approach to your writing career--try what works for Weinberg and gather your best ideas into beautiful stone walls.

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pjmorrisJul 2026

And if that book doesn't appeal, Dr.Weinberg (he'd prefer 'Jerry' though) has an entire sub-genre of really useful books on humans doing software development. Three other favorites: 'How to Become a Technical Leader', the four-volume 'Quality Software Management', and the click-bait-titled but terrific 'The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving & Getting Advice Successfully'.

He joined IBM in the 50's, led the design of the telemetry system for NASA's Mercury project in the 60's, aimed to put humans at the center of software development with 'The Psychology of Computer Programming', and spent the rest of his life working on helping people do software development well together. IMO, any time you spend digging in to his large catalog will be well repaid.

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pjmorrisDec 2025

Jerry Weinberg wrote a number of books to this point, starting with 1971's 'The Psychology of Computer Programming.' Here's what he had to say a decade or so later...

"The First Law of Consulting: In spite of what your client may tell you, there’s always a problem.

The Second Law of Consulting: No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem." [0]

Everything he wrote is worth the time to read.

[0] Weinberg, Gerald. "The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully", 1986

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jfilNov 2024

There is a lot of solid advice in this thread. It all depends on your specific situation:

* Sometimes the answer is to go work for a better boss. Someone who does constant 180s is impossible to work with.

* Sometimes it helps to learn more about business (I recommend "Lean Startup"). You'll understand the rationale for the changes.

* It might help to learn how to present/guide to options, like a consultant (I recommend "Secrets of Consulting" by Gerry Weinberg). "Do nothing" is usually a very solid option, and you have to educate your boss about it.

* You're always in control of energy/timing. Sometimes you can slow-roll a bad initiative and see if it goes away. Sometimes you can work like crazy to get a good initiative completed so that "its done already and can't be rolled back".

* You may be able to piggyback necessary work onto questionable work. So that if the core feature is canceled, you've "cemented" some small unrelated improvements in the codebase

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leetroutSep 2024

Previous thread "I'm an engineer that needs to sell my services. Any good books on sales?"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39316653

From that posting this comment seems useful:

The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully by Gerald Weinberg

https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Consulting-Giving-Getting-Suc...

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kirubakaranMay 2024

Might be somewhat tangential, but I found this book extremely helpful:

The Secrets of Consulting : Gerald Weinberg

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/566213