Customer Reviews

The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I love Po Bronson's writing -- really I do. Every time I see an article in Wired with his byline, I devour it. His descriptions, particularly those of the people involved, crystallize a wide range of details into focused and evocative prose. His characters are exceptionally memorable.

Which is the problem.

Most of the essays in Nudist appeared in similar form as articles in Wired. I know this because the details in those articles stuck with me. I remember the lady with emphysema and her gift for closing software sales. I remember George Gilder's knee swelling because of his caffeine-fueled excess on a hotel treadmill. I remember Danny Hillis. And on it goes.

For someone who has not read all of the Wired articles, this book is great fun. Bronson's skill with details places the reader right smack in the middle of the chaos that is Silicon Valley. You can practically smell the hot asphalt.

But if you are a regular Bronson reader, save your money. I wish I'd known ... but who can deny a guy a way to make a quick buck on work that's already done?

What an excellent book. A fast read. It was fun to read and get an inside glimpse of the new business environment taking shape in the "valley of the e-Titians!" Po Bronson' style of writing invites the reader to stay and enjoy. His choice of words, stories and metaphors is very enlighten and imaginative. Anyone wanting to get a feel for how the world of venture capitalist, start-ups, the Internet and the truly unique characters that exist in the technology valley of California must read this book. If you have a start up in your mind, read this book first. It will help you get a sense of the required commitment and creativity to be successful in the web technology world of today.

One of the greatest surprises was how the book was broken out, by the different types of business people in the "dot.com" world - i.e. the start-up, the IPO, the drop out, etc. It is a great book to use as a learning tool. It should be required reading in College business classes on setting up an Internet business.

Bronson doesn't seem to have much of a desire to penetrate the multiple layers of hype and expose what's underneath. Instead, he seems quite content to lap up whatever his favored VC buddies dish out to him, and is just grateful for the opportunity to be part of the scene. His writing has that annoying Wired hipsterish feel to it. It's a good thing he got this book out when he did, because the new Michael Lewis book totally blows it away. If you thought Po had any depth at all, reading Lewis's book will cure you of that misconception.

By way of profiles of a dozen or so people, this book chronicles the so-called dot com boom in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1990s. It was an exciting time for the computer industry. Venture capitalists were throwing money every which way, and even a paltry idea could make someone with computer know-how quite rich.

I found this book fascinating for all the wrong reasons. I picked it up in a used book bin for a couple of dollars and devoured it, marveling that people used to live this way.

Bronson describes a handful of self-styled entrepreneurs. Reading this book, it's easy to see why the dot com bubble burst. None of these people are particularly interesting to anyone whose interests don't lie in the computer field. They are all single-minded: they like computers and, even more so, they like money.

The author seems enamored of the Silicon Valley, but reading his account, you wonder why. There is no community in the Silicon Valley. The subjects of this book toil away at their computer projects without any regard for the life around them or the community they live in.

I would glady read a sequel to this book. It would make fascinating reading if Bronson were to look up the subjects of this book and find out what they are up to now. Did they learn anything from the dot com demise? Has their narrow outlook on the world expanded any?

These questions could well be asked of the author as well. This is an insular little book, but a fascinating record of the times.

I knew that Po did not truly understand silicon valley when he tried to say that San Francisco is part of the valley.

According to Po, everyone in the valley is on mega doses of coffee, have no friends and have no life outside of work.

I live in the valley, and work in a former start-up company and I will admit some of the things in the book are worth reading, but most of the stories are over-cliched.

I was on a 10 hour flight and I found it was better to watch the clouds than continue with the book.

Culture is communicated through stories, and Po Bronson's latest book, `The nudist on the late shift', communicates the culture of Silicon Valley through the eyes of a master storyteller.

Silicon Valley has a gold rush culture. People come there from all over the world, armed with talent and initiative, and not much else. They are hoping for that one break, which will write them into history and make them "so much money that they never have to make money again". They are driven by stories of normal people who made it big, stories which invite the punchline, "well if he did it, then I can do it too."

Sabeer Bhatia's story is a prime example. Sabeer arrived in America as penniless immigrant on a scholarship, yet one decade later he was playing brinkmanship with Microsoft, holding out for that extra $50 million on a $350 million offer. Sabeer's story is told by Bronson as a meta-story, in order to cast light on `the lucky or great' question. Is Sabeer a genius, or did he "just happen to be in the right place and at the right time." We learn how Sabeer was turned down by over twenty venture capitalists before he obtained funding for his hotmail concept. But we also see how cannily he protected his idea, by approaching potential funders with an alternative product, one which he knew would be rejected, to see whether they rejected it for the right or wrong reasons. More than once on his way to becoming president of the company with quickest growing subscriber base in history, Basheer bet the company fortune on a single throw.

Yet this book is not about the Valley's most important people; indeed to Bronson that would be forcing an East Coast paradigm onto a West Coast phenomenon. Instead, the book sets out to capture the spirit of Silicon Valley. As Bronson writes: "it is about opportunity to become a mover and shaker, not about being one."

In this vein, we follow a group of newcomers in their enthusiastic quest, to learn in the end, that only one of them is to make it. We do the rounds with the salesmen `dropping his pants' in an attempt to maintain the company's stock analysts `growth category stock' rating. We sit with a CEO through his IPO, which becomes the last, heart-wrenching, roller-coaster stretch of the "eighteen years that it took him to become an overnight success". We ponder the `ABCDEF' problem, which are the range of options facing a Java programmer, who want to be associated with success, but for whom "the variables that he has to go on are not the variables (XYZ) which determine the outcome".

Whereas most journalists screen articles using a `bullshit detector', Po Bronson claims to use a `Goose Bump Meter' to let him know which stories to follow. The stories merge to become a soap opera; they stand alone, and yet they interweave to become a greater whole. The resulting book is a riveting series of interrelated anecdotes and analyses, which paint a different and yet compelling reality.

Book Review: The nudist on the late shift and other tales of Silicon Valley, by Po Bronson. Random House, 1999.

Dr Michael Gering, Michael is a director at Sediba consulting, a company which he co-founded.

Having read several reviews complaining about lack of accuracy in a few small areas, I felt compelled to write this review. Granted I have only recently moved to the Valley, but reading The Nudist on the Late Shift primed me for what was in store. The main focus book, like that of the Valley, was on the technology industry. Since that is my chosen field this book had particular relevance to me. The story detailing the lives of several new migrants to the Bay Area and that of the experienced software consultants were not only accurate reflections of the way things can be here, but also managed to be truly entertaining. I would heartily recommend this book for anyone in the technology industry or those who are thinking of moving to the Valley. Well done, Po.

Early in The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson points out that there is no one landmark at which TV crews can point their cameras to represent Silicon Valley. Instead, they have to resort to a montage of images; the billboards along 101 advertising job openings, the unusual architecture of Silicon Graphics' campus, the dentist-in-a-trailer who drove to Netscape to service the employees' teeth, the washer-and-dryer facility that used to be at Excite's facility. This book takes the same about people in Silicon Valley, including the entrepreneurs, the programmers, the venture capitalists, the sales people, the business people, the futurists, and others.

I found this book to be a very effective description of life here in Silicon Valley (where I live). It was also very well-written, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Bronson, contrary to the quick-turnaround approach of this culture, takes his time with the people he interviews. You get to hear their stories as they tell them, but then you learn what happens to those people over time, when things don't turn out as they'd expected (for better or worse). You get the sense that these people came to know and trust Bronson, and so told them a more well-rounded version of their stories, not the 3-second sound bite version you get in the papers and trade magazines. I liked that he profiled a range of people, not just the 20-year-old dropouts-turned-millionaires, but also the hangers on who keep trying to make it but don't. Also appearing is the CEO who juggles all the unpredictable factors that go into the timing of an IPO, the Big Thinker who tries to make meaning of all this technological wizardry, the Sales Person who uses his understanding of the engineer's mindset to gracefully steer them toward the sale, the programmer who takes off to go squirrel hunting days before a critical deadline, because he can and because if he doesn't, there will always be a critical deadline to meet.

I also thought his analyses were fair, sometimes complementary, sometimes critical. He even managed to cover George Gilder, a conservative futurist, without the smug condescension most journalists can't hide when describing conservative points of view. Even though I didn't find anyone in the book who specifically captured my own experience with Silicon Valley culture, I still found all the people he did profile fully believable - I certainly know people like these. On the other hand, I was introduced to other people I know about but haven't met, and I enjoyed getting a first-hand view of their world. I think this book has a lot to offer to people who are curious about what it's like in Silicon Valley as well as to those of us who are living it.

This is a droll and perceptive look at the current state of high-tech startups. I thought it was both a terrific read and an accurate portrayal of the late 20th century tulip-bulb investment phenomenon. Bronson kept close tabs on several startups, following the whole wacky process from start to beginning. Observing the attorneys from multiple competing backers hash out the final details of a prospectus, he observes "..getting eight attorneys to agree on language is sort of like getting eight children to agree on pizza toppings..." He has a real feel for the humor and insanity of VC-backed firms, but I think that Bronson is on to something deeper. He has captured a significant transition from the glory-bound visionaries to a short-sighted greed-driven model, musing that "..if it stops being fun, our creativity will become formulaic and hackneyed." Perhaps we won't recognize our loss until after nudists are no longer tolerated on the late shift.

After living through too many startups, I recognized a lot of reality here. Bronson is right on with both the details and the spirit. There is a cultural change happening in the nature of startups that won't be completely apparent until it is complete. Then, maybe, we'll look back and recognize the importance of this book.

If that's too profound, then think of it as just a fun book from an engrossing story teller.

This book starts slowly and ends slowly but the middle is outstanding. The tales of individuals trying to make it in Silicon Valley did not hold my attention but detailed chapters about the co-founder of Hotmail, the m.o.s of salespersons, and "studly" programmers were homeruns. Good stuff.