Customer Reviews

Microserfs

5 star:		(137)
4 star:		(53)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

After reading Tracy Kidder's acclaimed (by the New Yorker crowd) Soul of a New Machine, I thought to myself "here's a guy who spent 12 hours/day with engineers for an entire year and learned nothing about engineering, nothing about what matters to engineers, and nothing about the hearts and minds of engineers. After reading Microserfs, I thought "here's a guy who seems to have spent a week with engineers and effortlessly absorbed everything that is important about engineering culture, everything that matters about working at a big company, and everything that matters about working at a startup." Coupland's writing is better crafted here than in his earlier books, e.g., Generation X.

Being a spanish-speaking person and spanish-language reader, I don't have much opportunities to read American contemporary authors, unless they're writing computer systems technical books. So I must admit, my first glance at Microserfs was motivated by the curiosity of someone trying to describe how tech-obsessed, workaholic and project-slaved workers (as most people in my carreer) thought, felt and dreamed. I thought it would certainly be a challenge to build a plot with such characters. Copeland proved me wrong.

As I read this book, I got lest interested with the similarities to real geeks and more involved in the real metaphor of Microserfs: the search for personal realization in each of this genious but not so life-wise characters. This process, narrated with humor, tech & tv real-world metaphors, self-inspection and lots of deliciously imaginative - and fantastic- theories in the minds of each character, is what really drives the reader to love this book from beginning to end.

So I would recommend Microserfs twice: 1: to get a good understanding of geeks - which after reading this book will probably be no stranger to the reader than any average football fan, or any other obsessed kind, 2, to read a funny and imaginative novel while learning how this 21st century life is reshaping American's relationships and personal quests. The book's ending, fantastically crafted and at the same time full of new questions, is the best example of how this two ideas live together in Copeland's book.

This would easily be a 4 star book for me and in paperback I'd give it that in a heartbeat but the Kindle edition is horrible. It seems like someone ran a hardcopy through a scanner and then OCR'ed it without proofreading it at all. There are letters missing, a few entire words missing and many, many instances of the wrong letter over and over (like a U instead of a V - there's an entire section where it says Silicon Ualley over and over) and places where the wrong word was picked up (ie - Interiority becomes Inferiority, somewhat appropriate in describing this edition).

I've read the book before and enjoyed it but the Kindle edition was a bit of a chore. It looks like the publisher didn't even proofread this book once before uploading it. A shame, really.

I first read this novel in 1996 just after it was published. Twelve years later and in a new century, it is disturbing to read how much of this is still relatively realistic. It is almost as though the organisational arrangements and lifestyles described have been adopted both as a management and lifestyle model and transplanted, at least in part, around the world.

This book was funny in 1996 when it seemed in part a satirical comment on the new world of geeks and technology. Now it seems more ironic. Many of those for whom this was an accurate depiction of life in the 1990s are still caught in this time warp. The tragedy is that so many others have joined them.

If you have not already read this novel and wondered about the design of a working world in which human interaction through technology has largely replaced direct human interaction: the time is right. After all, in reading this review you are relying on the technology developed by geeks and nerds.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Chances are you'll get that feeling when you read Microserfs. That warm feeling of nostalgia you get when a book so successfully transports you to a time when life was full of surprises which you thought of as mere routine, and things were more exciting than they seemed, and you were happy and clueless about everything.

Years have gone by, and looking back you can see how strange routine was, and how the cynicism of then was tame when compared to the cynicism of now. Being transported back to then gives you hope for the now, and the comfort of open arms that will hold you, and of a mouth that will whisper into your ear "There are things that you must remember." It's almost supernatural. My skin crawls.

I'm not a coder, never was. Never worked in the Silicon Valley. Lived there during the time this book takes place, but never was friends with people that remotely resembled the people this book tries to characterize. But, ah, the zeitgeist! As said elsewhere...this IS the zeitgeist. It is the zeitgeist made flesh through words. Coupland is less talented than this book allows us to conclude, but Microserfs is just sublime, and one of my favorite pieces of writing ever.

It reminds me of old videogames; empty outlets in the middle of the desert; sleepwalking through part of a technological revolution; warm microwave ovens; trashy sci-fi TV shows and Saved by the Bell reruns; clever toys that time forgot; Taco Bell restaurants; ancient DOS manuals; dusty floppy disks; healthy junk food; slow days; the golden age of Vallco Mall in Cupertino; riding Bus 81 in San Jose, and the Caltrain from Santa Clara to San Francisco; buying Lucasarts games at Fry's Electronics...All of these things, which are particular to me but might be common to you, come together along with others I'm not brave enough to mention, when I'm reading Microserfs. So this really IS the zeitgeist. The feeling of being there again takes over me so violently it's physically noticeable, even though I shared only very few of the characteristics of the people pictured in this book. But I was there, and felt what Coupland has put on paper.

Microserfs is a powerful, touching, sad, happy, wonderful time machine. Read it along with Game Over, by David Sheff. If you're anything at all like me, you'll probably cry and wish it was 1993 all over again.

A lot of reviewers seem to love or hate this book based on its references to The Bill, Star Trek, politically aware grrlies, and such forth.

But unless your experiences on the high school football team have left you with a visceral hatred of all things 'nerdy', you should be able to enjoy this book without a Comp Sci degree. Disadvantaged, oppressed, sometimes confused characters set out towards the distant horizon of opportunity, at great risk to their personal and financial security. In the course of their journey they bond, learn about life, and discover strengths and weaknesses in themselves and each other that they never even suspected. Don't let the lack of covered wagons fool you. This is the Great American Pioneer Story, which every generation needs a version of for its own.

Stylistically, this is quirky enough to be engaging, but by no means difficult.

All in all, highly recommended

Microserfs is my all time favorite book, so when I received my Kindle, it was the obvious choice for the test drive of my new gadget. I was so disappointed to find the multitude of typos due to OCR scanning (words misspelled, modified, or just plain missing; u's instead of v's, etc.) and seemingly zero proofreading. On top of that, there a several image scanned pages (notably the "subconscious file" pages) where the edges are trimmed and words are clipped. Finally, the book doesn't even have a proper cover, just a clip-art page with the title unceremoniously typed in the center.

Harper Collins should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this e-book in the state that it's in, and doubly ashamed for charging $9.99 for it. If a publisher is just going to OCR scan a book, then they need to proofread it before releasing it, or better yet, just use one of the original electronic manuscripts (if available) and bypass the issues with OCR altogether.

By all means, read the book, but avoid the e-book at all costs and pick up a paperback or hardback instead.

I'm dyslexic and I hate to read. Just can't concentrate or deal with the frustration of reading. Stuck on a 5 hour long Amtrak train one evening I read this book. I couldn't put it down!

The character development is fantastic. Each character is very different, and Coupland explores the depths of each in striking, whimsical detail. Dating a unix geek myself I could fully appreciate the latenight code hacker references. This book was funny, witty and at times downright philosophical. Did I spell everything right?

Bottom line: a must read. If you don't enjoy this book there is something wrong with you.

The previous reviews have pretty much said it all, so this review is going to be a little more subjective. At first I thought this book was going to to be a sour-mouthed put-down of Microsoft. Wrong! Coupland has his main character keep a diary of what is going on with a small group that has left Microsoft to start their own small software company. The heart of the diary, though, is the little details Coupland includes that: say so much about relationships (between both friends and lovers), make the reader feel as if he or she personally knows each character down to the ground, and provide rich, interesting, entertaining descriptions of plot and character development. Coupland uses the diary technique extraordinarily well, focusing on mood, relationships, how Silicon Valley works, and a range of interesting observations as he sees fit. The diary technique also allows Coupland to manipulate time. If he wants to skip ahead in time, he simply dates the next diary entry months ahead. This book is an extraordinary read in that Coupland packs a lot of complexity into a highly entertaining, sometimes laugh-out-loud book that is also most readable. Buy it, and marvel and laugh. By the end of the book, you'll wish the trip had lasted longer.

"Microserfs", besides being one the the easiest reads I've ever had, is also one of the most accurate portrayals of geek twentysomething (circa the mid 90's) confusion, compasion and comradery I've ever read.

It also effortlessly skewers the high-tech community with laser-like accuracy, both in the oppresive, monoculture environment of Microsoft coders as well as the hyperpaced whirlwind of Silicon Valley. The book is presented in the form of a journal by Daniel Underwood, who initally identifies himself only through his Microsoft email address danielu@microsoft.com. Surrounding him is a cadre of fellow coders all willing to submit their lives wholesale to their fearless corporate diety (B..B..B..Bill!), until a chance for equity and "one-point-oh" status lures them into Silicon Valley Start-up Hell. The story arc provides an exhilarating study of geeks in search of a life, with no pop-culture reference left unturned. Incredibly for a book mired so much in a technological world advancing at a logarithmic pace, it is as relevant in its characterizations and themes as the day it was published.

It's these characterizations that really make this book sing. The ensemble players seem as if they were carefully removed from a petre dish at the Atlanta Center for Dweeb Control...the bemused narrator obsessed with the randomness of popular culture, the riot grrl, the ultra-sensitive high-strung coding genius, to mention just a few...and the story arc provides them with ample room for change as they embark on their quests to find lives and loves. And again for a novel that deals with the software industry, it has an amazing feel for the female perspective. Not only are three strong women characters provided, their each distinct personalities provide the spectrum of geek-girl sensibilities. Along with a show-stopping female tirade about...well, you'll know what I'm talking about when you read it.

It is probably enough to say that Microserfs out- Generation-Xes "Generation-X", author Douglas Coupland's other study of slacker culture. Within the mechanical confines of the software industry, Coupland conjures an incredibly enjoyable and touching tale of young people finding their way out of digital serfdom.