Authors Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin neatly summarize the operating principle behind NetSlaves: "People are nuts, no matter what profession they're in, but people forced to work like dogs with the carrot stick of stock options and 'untold' wealth dangling under their noses are especially nuts."
If all you know about the Internet business is what you've read in the financial press, then NetSlaves provides a cold slap of reality. For every headline-making company like Yahoo! or Amazon.com, there are hundreds or perhaps even thousands more like the ones Net vets Lessard and Baldwin have worked for. These are the startups that never finish up, companies that hire hundreds of programmers and Web-site designers and techies of all stripes, then merge or downsize or go out of business before anyone can cash in. The authors take the reader on an anthropological expedition through what they call the New Media Caste System. At the bottom rung are the "garbagemen," the guys who have to get the server up and running when it crashes, who have to rush to help the digital morons who can't figure out how to open their e-mail. At the top, of course, are the "robber barons," the guys who really do get mind-blowing wealth and profiles in Wired magazine. For each level, the authors tell an instructive, cautionary tale of life in the new economy.
Although Lessard and Baldwin clearly set out to create revenge journalism, enjoyed by all those who've lived on pizza and Mountain Dew for months on end only to end up with pink slips, those outside the tech universe should enjoy it, too. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but it's easy to warm up to NetSlaves. --Lou Schuler
From Publishers Weekly
Readers who can't bear another glossy magazine profile of Internet IPO kids will welcome this tour through the writhing underbelly of the tech biz. Lessard and Baldwin, who founded a site called www.netslaves.com in 1998, set out to document the depravity and desperation of the Internet economy, which they call the most widely misunderstood business phenomenon of our time. Far from the glamorous world painted by the few Internet winners, the authors contend, the business of technology is largely strapped to the four million or so backs of carpal-tunnel-prone freelancers and real-life Dilberts. To illustrate their point, they provide a guide to the new media caste system, which converts standard industry roles into a hierarchy of "garbagemen," "fry cooks" and "cab drivers." Case studies of disgruntled tech support operators and HTML code writers make for bitterly funny reading. There's cybercop Kilmartin, who burns out after patrolling a Web community for obscene references to goats and blenders, and freelance coder Jane, who was blamed for uploading the wrong verdict to a major O.J. Simpson trial Web site. The sources' names have been changed to protect them from their employers' retribution, but company names are disguised thinly enough to make the book a kind of industry roman ? clef. The billionaire software tyrant "Royster G. Pfeiffer" lords over his Washington-based office campus (which is packed with resentful "perma-temps"), and there's the crash-prone Internet browser developed by "NetScathe." On the whole, this insider's look at the industry offers an amusing antidote to the media's chronic case of Internet hype. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
