<story><title>I run a software book club</title><url>https://notes.eatonphil.com/2025-05-30-how-i-run-book-clubs.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>justin_oaks</author><text>&amp;gt; Doing it at your company likely won&amp;#x27;t go well&lt;p&gt;This has been my experience. I led a book club at one of my jobs and it was poorly attended and those who did attend hadn&amp;#x27;t read the book.&lt;p&gt;My guess is that there is just a low percentage of people who meet all the criteria: 1) interested, 2) have the time to read the book, 3) have the commitment to read the book, and 4) social enough to attend the book club meeting.&lt;p&gt;I understand that many people are busy and may not have time to read the book or have a schedule conflict the day the book club meeting happens.&lt;p&gt;So unless your company is huge, you&amp;#x27;ll not have enough to keep a book club going. There also may be pressure to avoid using company communication tools to promote the club.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>henrik_w</author><text>I ran a book club for 7 years when I worked at TriOptima. We were maybe 40 developers in total at the company, and around 10 would join when we picked a new book. Towards the end of one book, some people would always drop off, but there were still enough people to make it useful.&lt;p&gt;One of the key (unexpexted) benefits of it was how it facilitated discussions about SW development practices between the different teams at the company. The content was usually good for giving us new ideas to try etc, but the usefullness of the discussions surprised me.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve written more about it here:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;henrikwarne.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;developer-book-club&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;henrikwarne.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;11&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;developer-book-club&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>I run a software book club</title><url>https://notes.eatonphil.com/2025-05-30-how-i-run-book-clubs.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>justin_oaks</author><text>&amp;gt; Doing it at your company likely won&amp;#x27;t go well&lt;p&gt;This has been my experience. I led a book club at one of my jobs and it was poorly attended and those who did attend hadn&amp;#x27;t read the book.&lt;p&gt;My guess is that there is just a low percentage of people who meet all the criteria: 1) interested, 2) have the time to read the book, 3) have the commitment to read the book, and 4) social enough to attend the book club meeting.&lt;p&gt;I understand that many people are busy and may not have time to read the book or have a schedule conflict the day the book club meeting happens.&lt;p&gt;So unless your company is huge, you&amp;#x27;ll not have enough to keep a book club going. There also may be pressure to avoid using company communication tools to promote the club.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mysto</author><text>This has been my experience too. However, I found that changing the book club to “article club” where we all read one interesting technical article worked quite well. I have been running such a club with fortnightly meetings for over 3 years now.</text></comment>