A Field Guide to the Yettie: America's Young, Entreprenurial Technocrats [Paperback]

Sam Sifton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2000

The yettie is "young" and "entrepreneurial." His business is technology. He has an extremely difficult time explaining to his parents exactly what it is he does for a living. This book takes a humourous and biting look at all aspects of yettie culture, from clothes to transport, to drinks and dinner to e-mail to accessories to political beliefs to choices of reading material. The guide further classifies yettie behaviour and style based on job title and description and educational background and, perhaps most important, number of stock options. The yettie, after all, is rich on paper.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"(an) astute, witty and well-reported book." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"...Sifton's cultural anthropology...is jampacked with satisfying wisecracks, but it's also wickedly intelligent, scrupulously nuanced and...wise." -- Kurt Anderson, author of Turn of the Century and co-founder of Inside

"...hilarious...contains, among other things, the ultimate acronym directory. This could be very useful to you as you hunt down your prey." -- The New York Observer

"Extremely funny." -- Seattle Weekly

"Hilarious." -- The Daily News

"Laugh-out-loud funny....nastily delicious." -- salon.com

"Someday when paleontologists sift through our bones to fathom the Internet Age, they will need [this books]..." -- Ken Auletta, author of The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway

"Would be a one-joke book about the new tech elite, except it's so dead-on." -- Detroit Free Press, Nov. 30, 2000

About the Author

Sam Sifton worked as a writer and editor at the weekly New York Press before becoming a founding editor at Talk magazine, where he writes about social trends.

Product Details

• Paperback: 152 pages
• Publisher: Miramax Books; 1st edition (November 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786886099
• ISBN-13: 978-0786886098
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,404,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Next please..., August 23, 2001

By 

"pradameinhof" - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Field Guide to the Yettie: America's Young, Entreprenurial Technocrats (Paperback)

"Mommy, what's a Dot Com?" "Mommy, what's The Industry Standard?"

Game Over, Sam. Avoid.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Jaded, June 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: A Field Guide to the Yettie: America's Young, Entreprenurial Technocrats (Paperback)

Oh dear, it all seems so silly now, doesn't it? Bang. There goes another fad. Next.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Hard to reconcile with the real thing!, December 3, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Field Guide to the Yettie: America's Young, Entreprenurial Technocrats (Paperback)

Even though I am a YETTIE myself, working in a .COM operation in New York, I could hardly recognize any of the characters in Sam Sifton's work.

The book is an expansion of an article he wrote on a similar subject for "Talk" magazine, earlier in 2000. In fact, at least one of the illustrations used in that article has been reused here, although all the text is fresh. The problem with this little book is threefold.

Firstly, it's just that - a little book. The subject matter was fine as a magazine article - any expansion really merited a large coffee table book replete with big, glossy, colorful photographs and not the small monochromatic efforts here.

Secondly, I couldn't relate to any of the so-called YETTIE profiles - probably because they're not accurate and have been researched by an outsider. A clue to this can be gained from reading some of the end credits, which reveals, in fact, that the people in the book really are little more than clothes horses and models for major corporate product placement. None of these people are actually real people; they're all "pretend" icons. This is Sifton's way of telling us this is what he thinks that YETTIES should be (presumably we should all now rush out to Cole Hahn, J. Crew, Banana Republic, and the local mobile phone store right away in order to appear to be "with it").

Thirdly, the book is completely anachronistic, and publication is too late to appeal to the masses in any way now other than out of a sense of nostalgic whimsy. Readers of the .COM industry's equivalent of "People" magazine, "The Industry Standard", will be similar disappointed at its lack of timeliness, as they move off to other pastures in search of their rent.

Already, .COMs, the natural habitat of the YETTIE, are tanking (PETS.COM, EVITE.COM, etc., etc., are history) with large-scale layoffs, thus leaving only a handful of major operators (AMAZON.COM, EBAY.COM) and the old stalwart blue chips like Oracle and Microsoft corporations to continue to hold their own. The latest industry research predicts that, by mid-2001, nearly all the present small .COM operations will cease to exist as corporate entities, and already 90% of their lifeblood - advertising revenue - is allocated to the top 10% web sites. The day of the YETTIE is really over - already in San Francisco, there is a 12 Step Recovery Program aimed at their ilk!

So, I'm not sure why anyone would really want to buy this book. Better to read the original "Talk" article in your local library and save your money. Perhaps Sifton will write a book on Starbuck's recently hired new Baristas - called "YETTIES, The Afterlife".