Customer Reviews

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

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

Game Over, Sam. Avoid.

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

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".

No one, not even ....com, was blind-sided worse by the dot.com crash than this book. Based on the obsolete notion that the so-called New Economy was eternal, it gives new meaning to the word "hubris". Supposedly detailing the various stereotypes inhabiting the e-companies that sprang up in the wake of the Internet (the "Young Entrepreneurial Technocrats" of the title), it sets out to prove that everything is cool in E-Land. Sure thing.

Paying obsequious homage to the big money powerhouses of E-Land, he also backhands the working class (his words) of the "New" Economy. You know, the poorly paid, overworked mouse jockeys sitting in their cubicles pounding out code so you can enjoy the newest game based on the last newest game. Of course, when the bubble broke, they were "let go" (or down-sized or "de-hired") by the thousands, and now there is a new type of Yettie: the Homeless Nerd.

There is also venom for the supposed "fools" who sensed something amiss about the E-Economy: the Analysts and the Journalists. Supposedly anxious about the E-Economy out of jealousy for the dot.com millionaires, they are presented as leeches ready to jump to the E-Economy the first chance they can. Of course! Why on earth could anyone doubt the eternal growth potential of the New Economy unless it was through malice.

Sifton blathers on in blind optimism about how Everything Has Changed. Clearly he's never heard Tulip Panic or the Great South Sea Bubble. All those Homeless Nerds are now learning that, no matter how casual he lets you dress, the boss is still the boss.

Although the book functions perfectly as a primer to the recent and already superfluous silicon culture, it is astonishingly well-written. The archetypical profiles gently skewer the players in the net economy, using equal parts solid reporting and tongue-in-cheek precision that should give anyone reading, whether they are e-inolved or not, the willies of recognition. There are also glossaries of terms and acronyms that are as useful as any "-For-Idiots" book still in print. But this walking tour of the economic trend that changed the world really has more in common with E.B. White's "Here Is New York" than any cat calendar/throwaway humor title, as the author's strong and concise prose and sober sense of humor really shine through.

Sam Sifton has a book that is as good as any I have read or written. What sets it apart: Sifton doesn't let the glitz of the new market bias him in the Yettie's favor. Instead, he makes his own decisions about them. It's a nice surprise; my friends at "Talk" described him as a bootlicker, and told me not to read "A Field Guide." Boy, were they wrong! Sifton is truly the Tofler of the new millennium, an Ayn Rand for our age. If you enjoyed my "Bright Young Things," you will love what this bright young thing can do.

I liked the book. it's a little simplistic, like "the preppy handbook" without the polish, but that's kind of what I expect from an anthropological study of something that's still happening. yetties (and bobos as well, though they're distinct) are basically real phenomena. if you're in the industry (as most of us on the list are), you won't actually *learn* anything, but it's an amusing & harmless read.

if you're not in the industry, it's the best stab I've seen at somebody writing a book that my mom might understand about what kind of people are in the industry. (I read it and gave her a copy while I was home for thanksgiving; she's found it amusing and interesting in the ways I expected her to.)

An staggeringly sharp contribution to the 21st century's already bulging cannon of cultural criticism, Sam Sifton's A Field Guide to The Yettie is a must-read for anyone still in the dark about the sub-section of humans we (or should I say Sifton) has so wittingly dubbed "the Yettie." Sprung from the fertile and always avant-garde intellectual womb that is Tina Brown's Talk, "A Field Guide . . ." tracks and describes these brand-new, never-before-considered creatures with laser-like acuity and imagination. Tackling the anthropological/sociological/pop-cultural landscape with Foucauldian grace and a razor-sharp eye that would do Faith Popcorn proud, the book will stand the test of time and stock market. Generations of readers will embrace the Sifton voice. Smoothly street-wise -- like the foie gras in the Hudson Cafeteria's mac-n-cheese and hip enough for any Williamsburg thrift shop, Sifton has produced a post-ironical Ulysses for our time.