Customer Reviews

Silicon Follies

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

People who worked in the high tech industry are going to love this book! I've never worked in Silicon Valley (even though I have worked in NYC's Silicon Alley), but still, this book rang so true. The book doesn't really have a main character, but instead focuses on the tales of a few people. Paul Armstrong: a programmer, Liz Toulouse: the liberal arts graduate who tries to work in high tech, Steve Hall: the free bits hacker (Free Bits = Open Source), and Barry Dominic: the CEO of a multinational technical company, TeraMemory. The plot covers a period in the life of these characters in the crazy events which took place around 1999-2000 - the internet bubble era. As part of the story we get to see the environment, coworkers, workplaces of the main characters - the author has truly captured the essence of these. But more than just a very accurate portrayal of the time, "Silicon PFollies" is simply a funny book!

I guess people who have never worked in high tech might not get all the inside jokes (I'm not sure I got all of them either), but I believe they will still enjoy a very amusing book - and get some of what it meant to be a part of the internet craze - I couldn't help but feel a bit nostalgic as I read about the CEO's "motivational speeches"..

The dot.com period might've been an illusion, but it still was quite an experience for me - and I think this book relays that feeling quite well. Highly recommended!

This book starts out hilarious. The writer's knack for humor shines through. The jokes are scathingly accurate in the portrayal of Silicon Valley life, and the characters are recognizable in nearly any company. With a fantastic robot vs. machine battle and a hilarious system administrator (complete with multiple facial piercings), this book keeps the humor level strong.

Toward the end, it tends to slow down as the writer abandons straight humor and tries to develop sympathetic characters, out-of-place poignancy, and an emotional ending. It seemed like a poor attempt to be Douglas Coupland and capture the emotional power of "Microserfs" which, with such a strong, hilarious beginning, was really unnecessary.

One warning for the lay reader: A person will get a good deal more out of this book with at least a little knowledge of the technology lingo: enough to get the jokes but not enough to realize when he's making it up as he goes along.

What a book!

We hear about the trends, the business, the management fads that come and go like each season's fashions. But in the end, it comes down to the people, and what we do in our day to day lives, and the peculiarities that make life interesting. And this book captures it all.

Corporations vs. creative, free-thinking individuals, and the individuals winning out. We hear it all the time, but Silicon Follies puts us inside the mind of both as we follow a typical dotcom's lifecycle through the eyes of its engineers, CEO, salescritters, and marketroids. We also see the people on the outside, the liberal arts graduates doubting if they are doing the right thing, and the people trying to save what hasn't been overrun by the dotcoms, keeping the artistic spirit alive.

And the technology, the quirks, the tradeshow panic, it's all sent up in a brilliant, hysterically funny book. The best part of the book is that it's all accurate, down to the hardware that only responds to stuffed animals and the packed Chinese restaurants.

But it's more than a dot.comedy. The book has wonderfully poignant moments which make it that much more real. There's a hint of sadness behind the humor, the touch of what has been lost, that makes us appreciate what we do have, and tells us to enjoy it while we can.

I'm waiting for the sequel!

I've read the previous reviews, and I agree that the characters are two dimensional, but I enjoyed the book a lot anyway. The descriptions ARE funny and engaging. The characters aren't really the POINT of the book, it's about a lifestyle, and I had trouble putting it down. I disagree with the reviewer that found the writing poor; I think the writing is great for what it is, the choice of wording ofter perfect. Comedies don't usually examine character in depth!

I picked up this book on a whim, since I am not a Silicon Valley type by any stretch of meaning (I live in the Atlanta area, which is a whole 'nother ballpark.) Even so, this book had me falling over myself, laughing. The story is just surreal and witty enough to transcend pop fiction and overlap into the new, techno literature that is emerging -- and it does so with grace and aplomb. The story is not so much about the technology itself powering Silicon Valley, but the people, and people are always the heart of literature.

More like a reference book of Silicon Valley people, places, eateries and hangouts, Silicon Follies is a tapestry of local knowledge, insider jokes and SF Bay Area landmarks.

From Castro St. noodle houses to Santa Clara's Decathlon Club, they're all here, ready and waiting to elicit heaps of "dude, I've been there!" pleasure.

But what about the story? The characters? The prose? (Ah, details...)

The characters are pretty two-dimsensional (Scoville needs to learn that giving each player an extensive personal and professional resume isnt't a substitute for actual character development).

However, it's the dialogue that's the book's real weakness. Every conversation reads like Scoville's idea of what dialogue *should* sound like. It ends up sounding contrived and nothing at all what real people sound like when they talk.

Overall, this story of "love and working" in the Valley is pretty amateurish and serves mostly as a vehicle for the aforementioned local knowledge.

Still, it's a fun read, especially if you're familiar with the SF Bay Area and all its quirks, and a pleasant way to kill some time on your daily CalTrain commute.

(And if you don't know what CalTrain is, don't even bother)

Follies is a welcome respite from the "must have it yesterday" pace of working in tech--a hilarious and relaxing read! Scoville captures especially well the hyperbole that the computer industry fosters with characters reminiscent of Jobs, Ellison, Gates, McNealy, and their Frankensteins.

In reference to other reviews that mention weaknesses in character development, poignancy, etc... No, this book is not Dumas, Tolstoy, or Hemingway; But, Scoville's humor rivals Gogol, and the truth in his sardonic wit would elicit a snicker from Swift.

This is a fun book not a magnum opus, and it is worth every penny. Follies offers perspective for any would-be or rookie techies who bought-in to the revolution only to be greeted by a rude awakening. One does not have to be a resident of the Valley to get a kick out of the book, but it is helpful to have travelled to the Bay area at least once. A great stocking-stuffer. Enjoy!

Silicon Follies is an extremely funny and well-observed novel that, in the wake of the [...] meltdown, reads like prophecy. This is the book Michael Lewis and Po Bronson wanted to write. But as a longtime Silicon Valley software engineer turned author, Scoville has the real goods. While this could have been one more screed against those naughty dot.coms, Scoville writes about the Valley with a manifest good humor and wit reminiscent of Tom Wolfe in his "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" period. Scoville does an excellent job of capturing the messianic, "we-can-do-no-wrong" attitude that pervaded the Silicon Valley during the go-go 1990s. The book provides a timely answer to the question posed by a recent New York Times article on the deflation of the dot.com boom: "How Did So Many Get It So Wrong?" By putting you inside the heads of characters like corporate CEO Barry Dominic, Scoville shows how intelligent people get trapped by their own hype and by a tight-knit social environment built around work, in which no can seem to think "outside the box" of their business models. The book is particularly funny and accurate in describing what it's really like to be a programmer; the episode "Programming in Vampire Mode" garnered rave reviews from programmers when it was released on Salon.com. Programmers are the heroes of the book, and Scoville gives them the best lines--many of them had me laughing so hard I was gasping for breath. Scoville manages to flesh out and humanize programmers in a way that I've never seen in any medium. But while the novel focuses on a software company, it also provides a much broader picture of the Silicon Valley, including the many nearly-forgotten people who are either not involved in computing, or refuse to go corporate. For example, Scoville offers excellent and amusing portraits of the plight of liberal arts majors in the Valley--doomed to low-paying, low-autonomy jobs in marketing, if they make it onto the corporate bandwagon at all. Scoville is perhaps most effective in portraying the talented hackers who populate the Valley and who attempt to keep the original spirit of creativity and craft alive in software, despite the dumbing-down influence of corporations. Like a heat-seeking missile, Silicon Follies locates the most satire-worthy aspects of life in the Valley--crazy corporate behavior, megalomaniac "visionaries," the devaluation of anyone and anything not involved in producing or selling computer products, and the generally inhumane environment. But the large dose of expertly-deployed humor Scoville employs means his message goes down sweet rather than bitter.

First let me say that I did enjoy reading this book, but there are a couple of points of which I did find disappointing. The characters in the story are rather bland and two dimensional; it is really hard to care either way as to what happens to each person. I do not feel that much thought was given to the plot in that it is fairly straight forward and very much predictable. Despite these short comings, the few humorous situations and quips were enough to hold me till the end of the book.

Word of mouth recommendations from my in-the-know Silicon Valley connections drove me to this book with the question burning in my mind: How can anyone take such an intense, highly technical industry and deconstruct it enough to make it understandable, much less funny? Well, Mr. Scoville has done it, and done it well. His sharp tongue and scathing wit serve as a scythe to the greed, self-importance and misdirected goals of characters eerily similar to those we've seen splashed across hi-tech headlines of the last few years. His insights are so accurate that only a real insider could have written them, but presenting them with belly-aching humor is a true gift! Thank you for peeling back the silicon to reveal a dot.comedy this reader will never forget!