Today I finished reading “Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis.

I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite management book ever, far from it – however, it was definitely worth going through. Moneyball is the story of baseball team Oakland Athletics, which, under the command of its general manager Billy Beane, won the league with the smallest budget in the league.

What I learnt:

Billy’s method: focus on facts rather than fame; trust statistics if and only if well interpreted; mix rookies with veterans to keep your cost structure low; understand the background of the people you hire and listen deep inside in their motivation locus; back up your leads; stay close to your most valuable assets: your people; you don’t build a team by hiring stars.

Why Moneyball hasn’t left an eternal print in my memory:

The book is as much about hiring and managing a team than about baseball. I happen to have a very limited baseball culture and I’m sure baseball fans willing to brush up their management skills would find in Moneyball the perfect book. I didn’t.

Click here to access Amazon and have a look at what other people think.

I discovered (via Benjamin) the Microsoft Beginner Developer Learning Center. Back in computer science University this year, I was trained to hack code in Java, Matlab (signal processing), VHDL (electronics) and even in PHP / MySQL during a practical database session – but hardly in C# or on the .Net framework tools, which would be extremely useful considering 1) the company I’m working for; 2) the fact that many software entrepreneurs I meet tell me their choice in favor of the .Net framework + Visual Studio Team System helps them be 30% more productive than if they had chosen another environment like J2EE + Eclipse or (even worse) PHP + MySQL.

I browsed the site quite extensively today, and I decided I would try to spend 2 hours or so per week going through the tutorials which look really well devised. In terms of level, there are 3 tiers available: 1 (beginner), 2 (beginner-intermediate) and 3 (intermediate). As far as I’m concerned, I guess I’ll try to start with Tier 2.

There are also 2 tracks available: web development & software development. I find the latter track to be more sort of ’straight to the point’, but I may be mistaking.

Feel like doing like me? All you have to do to get started is download 2 free apps: Microsoft Visual Studio Express Edition, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

Click here to access Microsoft’s Beginner Developer Learning Center. All feedbacks / pieces of advice appreciated.