How to win friends... Is an awful book and I'm tired of seeing it.
Since I’m asking you to critique it I’ll go ahead and critique it myself, even though I’m overall positive on it. It’s aimed mainly at middle-aged business owners who are used to getting what they want and are, well, assholes. As such, its main message is to be nice and try to see things from the other person’s perspective. That’s good advice for the target audience, but if an already-nice 16-year-old picks it up I fear they run the risk of thinking the advice is “be a doormat,” which is not a good idea. (I read one review by a young woman who said she read the book and became a doormat. Yikes. Don’t do that).
That one pitfall aside, the book is chock full of good advice and imo deserves its place as a highly recommended guide to better people skills.
Carnegie specifically mentions in the book how you need to be sincere and genuinely cultivate interest in people.
“15% of one's financial success is due to one's technical knowledge. 85% is due to skill in human engineering”
1) adult life is often a swamp
2) not knowing how to play the game can harm you
3) often, cynicism wins over good hearted values for tons of simple reasons..
Not sure how that’s cynical maybe mediocre or trite but it was insightful to me as a programmer focused on code and less on people.