This book is an anthology of posts on people and project management from 2008 to 2010, when the author was a manager and was roaming between management training sessions. It started as a blog, Management Bits and Tips: Reflections on Software Engineering and Software Technical Support Management, which now survives as a Facebook page, ManagementBits. When the author returned to engineering after management in 2009, he wanted to publish a book with the original title, Management Bits: An Anthology from Reductionist Manager. Around 2015, he changed its title to Critique of Management Reason: Management Bits and Tips from Can't and added a few more bits as late as 2017.
Sunil saw a lucrative side-hustle, but his partner Priya correctly predicted a domestic invasion. When the theft of Priya's luxurious bath sheets kicks off a series of short-term rental disasters, the couple must battle a parade of boundary-pushing strangers to protect their Parramatta home. Who Moved My Towels? is a comedic, exhausting saga about the true emotional and physical cost of the sharing economy.
When an opportunistic girlfriend checks the "honeymoon" box on a hotel reservation just to score free perks, she accidentally triggers a massive celebration that goes viral at her boyfriend's office. Forced to fake a marriage, two drastically different people must figure out how to survive a luxury vacation without destroying their actual relationship.
At 69 Cowper Street, privacy is a myth, silence is a malfunction, and a simple fitness demonstration is about to ignite a building-wide scandal. When a vain bodybuilder's pursuit of his neighbor's wife is repeatedly derailed by an overly observant solution architect, the entire apartment complex gets pulled into the drama. It is a hilarious, heartfelt romantic comedy about marriage, gossip, and the spectacular inconvenience of living among people who refuse to mind their own business.
Nine perfectly quiet bachelors have their isolated routines shattered when a boisterous bodybuilder neighbor decides to aggressively fix their non-existent romantic lives. Forced to stop waiting for the perfect moment, they discover that finding love doesn't require magically transforming into an extrovert—it just requires bravely showing up.
When a distant geopolitical crisis triggers an emergency government registration, nineteen squabbling housemates in Parramatta panic and attempt to prove they are indispensable civilians. From strategic chutney reserves to espionage by pigeon, their hilarious attempts at doomsday prep quickly derail into domestic chaos. Ultimately, they discover that surviving global uncertainty is much easier when you learn to rely on the people you live with.
When a critical data migration project fails at Baba Bank, an executive orders the entire engineering team onto Performance Improvement Plans. Instead of accepting the blame, a manager redefines the mandate to put the bank's toxic bureaucracy, legacy tech, and broken processes on trial. With thirty days to fix the system, the team must prove the company's machinery is the real bottleneck before they take the fall.
When a high-stress Sydney bank hosts a seemingly harmless riddle competition, it accidentally ignites a fierce, high-stakes psychological war among its sharpest employees. As semantic trick questions give way to brutal logic puzzles, a methodical systems architect and a brilliantly observant analyst must face off in a sudden-death showdown where the deadliest trap is their own assumptions.
Nine couples, one massive house, and eighteen different ways to completely lose your mind. When the creeping pressures of modern life push the residents of 69 Cowper St to the absolute brink, one observant solution architect steps in to engineer the ultimate domestic fix.
At FofoSys, an aggressive corporate culture isn't just destroying morale—it is actively feeding an ancient, parasitic entity buried beneath the twenty-third floor. To starve the monster, an IT architect and nine resilient women must execute the ultimate act of corporate sabotage: teaching their coworkers how to finally say no.
Nine couples, one crowded house in Western Sydney, and a hallway whiteboard dedicated to cracking the unwritten, highly confusing rules of everyday Australian etiquette. The Parramatta Social is a heartfelt exploration of culture, community, and the invisible art of making room for others.
When a slick social-media entrepreneur tries to rebrand ordinary, $12 mustard oil as an $800 mystical wellness secret, he forgets one crucial thing: the people who actually cook with it. Armed with stained recipe books, spreadsheet data, and a jury of brutally honest aunties, the chaotic household at 69 Cowper Street sets out to prove that some cultural traditions are too loud, messy, and deeply rooted to be repackaged in a luxury glass bottle.
Nineteen highly opinionated adults living under one roof in Parramatta are driving each other crazy with constant, unsolicited advice and rigid rules. When a quiet solution architect introduces a radical new philosophy—letting people suffer the hilarious consequences of their own harmless mistakes—the household dynamic turns upside down. Discover what happens when a chaotic domestic ecosystem learns the profound power of simply doing nothing.
When the kingdom of Bongapur deploys a revolutionary army of stone-dropping birds, they fully expect to easily conquer their rivals. Instead, they quickly discover that giant war elephants are completely unbothered by tiny falling pebbles. This absurd, bloodless conflict proves that innovative tactics are ultimately no match for basic gravity and physical exhaustion.
Chunmun Singh engineered his life to be a perfectly sterile, closed system—until nine caterpillars decided his kitchen was a playground. When his daily ritual of exiling the intruders inadvertently triggers a metaphysical metamorphosis, the newly formed butterflies systematically dismantle his perception of time, space, and memory. To survive his unraveling reality, a man obsessed with control must learn the hardest lesson of all: how to leave his front door open to the chaos of the world.