This book affected me at a profound level. I was the oldest employee at various startups for a decade, and Dan Lyons accurately described the absurdity and frustration I encountered at all of them. He crafted his story so well that I felt transported back to that special hell of a fifty-something writer toiling away for years in a frat-house sweatshop with a "team" of ill-prepared (yet oh-so-special) snowflakes.
If you find yourself considering employment at a similar company, and if you're "old" (over 40 and certainly over 50), please read this book before you sign anything or accept any job offers. It's a cautionary tale that is the most perfect description of the current startup "culture" I've ever read. It made my blood boil while reading it, and at the same time I found myself laughing out loud throughout.
The book is a remarkable achievement, giving both prospective employees and investors a razor-sharp look inside a hellhole that seems so pleasant from its exterior. I loved this book and hope all my former, present and future colleagues take the time to read it.
Other Sellers on Amazon
$25.89
& FREE Shipping
& FREE Shipping
Sold by:
Book Depository US
Sold by:
Book Depository US
(910519 ratings)
89% positive over last 12 months
89% positive over last 12 months
In stock.
Usually ships within 3 to 4 days.
Shipping rates
and
Return policy
Usually ships within 3 to 4 days.
Sold by:
Erbi
(43 ratings)
92% positive over last 12 months
92% positive over last 12 months
Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Shipping rates
and
Return policy
Add to book club
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club?
Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Flip to back
Flip to front
Follow the Author
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
OK
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble Hardcover – April 5, 2016
by
Dan Lyons
(Author)
|
Dan Lyons
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
|
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
|
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$0.00
|
Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$22.75 | $4.87 |
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book.
Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
-
Print length272 pages
-
LanguageEnglish
-
PublisherHachette Books
-
Publication dateApril 5, 2016
-
Dimensions6.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches
-
ISBN-100316306088
-
ISBN-13978-0316306089
Inspire a love of reading with Amazon Book Box for Kids
Discover delightful children's books with Amazon Book Box, a subscription that delivers new books every 1, 2, or 3 months — new Amazon Book Box Prime customers receive 15% off your first box. Sign up now
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
-
Apple
-
Android
-
Windows Phone
-
Android
|
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon ValleyPaperback$15.30$15.30FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of UsHardcover$10.20$10.20FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Tuesday, Sep 7Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Uncanny Valley: A MemoirHardcover$11.99$11.99FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley StartupPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonIn stock soon.
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the WorldPaperback$15.59$15.59FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and BetrayalPaperback$14.99$14.99FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon ValleyPaperback$15.30$15.30FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Uncanny ValleyPaperback$14.99$14.99FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of UsHardcover$10.20$10.20FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Tuesday, Sep 7Only 1 left in stock - order soon.
Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and BetrayalPaperback$14.99$14.99FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley StartupPaperbackFREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonIn stock soon.
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of AmazonPaperback$12.39$12.39FREE Shipping on orders over $25 shipped by AmazonGet it as soon as Monday, Sep 6
Editorial Reviews
Review
New York Times bestseller
Wall Street Journal bestseller
San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
"Using his trademark wit and clear-eyed analysis, Dan Lyons has delivered a much-needed referendum on the current state of Silicon Valley. In wildly entertaining fashion, Disrupted explores the ways in which many technology companies have come to fool the public and themselves. Lyons has injected a dose of sanity into a world gone mad."―Ashlee Vance, New York Times-bestselling author of Elon Musk
"Dan 'Fake Steve' Lyons runs such a savage burn on his ex-employer, HubSpot, that the smoke can be seen clear across the country in Silicon Valley. Disrupted is fun, compulsively readable and just might tell us something important about the hypocrisy and cult-like fervor inside today's technology giants."―Brad Stone, New York Times-bestselling author of The Everything Store
"Dan Lyons goes deep inside a company that uses terms like 'world class marketing thought leaders' to show us how ridiculous, wasteful, and infantile tech start-ups like this can be. And best of all, Lyons does this with his trademark pejorative and hilarious tone."―Nick Bilton, New York Times technology columnist
"Troubling but funny ... [a] coolly observant book ... [with] a splendidly weird coda ... You couldn't have written a tastier ending, even for HBO."―Dwight Garner, New York Times
"Disrupted by Dan Lyons is the best book about Silicon Valley today.... Simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, Disrupted is an insider's look at a technology start-up from an outsider's perspective. Yet it's more than a chronicle of Lyons' tenure at one company, but a broader commentary on a business culture that often appears to be built on financial quicksand."―Los Angeles Times
"As the writer behind the satirical blog Fake Steve Jobs, [Lyons] could not have imagined a place so ripe for parody as HubSpot. Every detail of the hip office space, incompetent management, and delusional workforce described by Lyons in his hilarious and unsettling exposé is like something out of a scripted comedy (the author writes for HBO's Silicon Valley) ... An exacting, excoriating takedown of the current startup 'bubble' and the juvenile corporate culture it engenders."―Kirkus Reviews
"Scathingly funny .... Like the show 'Silicon Valley,' Disrupted nails the workings of spastic, hypocritical, delusional tech culture."―New York Post
"Laugh-out-loud funny." ―Newsweek
"Read this book if you work or invest in tech and, in particular, tech startups. And not just for the tales of corporate intrigue, hypocrisy, and ridiculousness that have caused HubSpot and its allies to get so hot under their collective collar.... [Lyons] makes a strong case for how all of that young labor, when increasingly wrapped up into an over-arching 'corporate culture,' creates subtle age discrimination that these employees won't recognize for years to come. This not only is a real (albeit virtually ignored) issue at tech companies today, but is going to become a much larger one as digital natives continue to age."―Dan Primack, Fortune.com
"Hilarious and eye-opening."―Business Insider
"It would be incomplete to classify Disrupted as merely an Office Space-esque critique of Corporate America. It also serves as social commentary about the way that more senior employees are viewed and valued in a hyper-aggressive startup culture hell bent on an IPO. In other words, you will both laugh and think. I consumed the book in less than a day and highly recommend it to people curious about what could very well happen to them."―Phil Simon, The Huffington Post
"Disrupted provides an eye-opening and gut-busting account of the maddening world of startup excess, hubris and groupthink from the unique perspective of a prominent technology reporter and satirist who was inexplicably hired and given a front row seat to the lunacy."―Mashable
"A juicy read.... Disrupted is worth a read for its exploration of startup culture and its effect on labor....The book made me fearful of the fact that startup culture--from Google-style perks and zero work-life balance to corporate cheerleading and a cult-like devotion to the 'mission'--has become aspirational to many corporations. The ways in which the worst parts of startup culture benefit managers and investors while making workers disposable are particularly scary, and Lyons attacks that issue in a compelling way.... Disrupted is a foil to all those awful books that make sweeping generalizations about how to work with millennials."―Erin Griffith, Fortune.com
"Lyons finds the right company, if only for the raw material that he, a seasoned satirist, spins into gold.... But the book is not just a chronicle of the tech bubble's silly quirks.... Lyons uses the lens of his growing disillusionment to focus a broader critique of Silicon Valley."―Financial Times
"An often-delightful tour through startup culture... But there are parts of his book that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who uses the Internet."―Harvard Business Review
"The tech industry needs more writers like Lyons who are willing to probe its hyperbole, the ridiculous valuations, injustices and inconsistencies."―MarketWatch
"Hilarious... A must-read, not just in the real Silicon Valley but also on Wall Street... A highly entertaining, highly troubling tale of greed, graft, possible extortion, marketing nonsense, #content, incompetent bozos, investor hype, the impossibly wealthy and a man just looking to make his cut. That, folks, isn't just the Silicon Valley dream. It's the American dream."―Chris Taylor, Mashable ("Geek Book of the Week")
"This humorous and well-crafted memoir is part of a proud literary tradition: the disgruntled ex-employee tell-all. It's a genre that includes classic nonfiction accounts such as John DeLorean's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (detailing the carmaker's decline in the 1970s) and Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker (describing life at Salomon Brothers during the 1980s boom)."―Harvard Business Review
"Disrupted...offers an unvarnished insider's view of a tech startup.... That makes the book a must-read for anyone who works at a tech startup or wants to create one, in the same vein that books like One L became mandatory reading for soon-to-be law students.... A delightful portal into the world of a tech startup."
―Lilly Rockwell, Austin American-Statesman
"[Lyons's] artful reporting from the inside makes for a funny and thoughtful account of the current culture surrounding technology startups. But in addition to entertainment, Lyons's book is also flush with analysis of those the entrepreneurs that founded these companies and the myriad firms that fund them."―The Atlantic
Wall Street Journal bestseller
San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
"Using his trademark wit and clear-eyed analysis, Dan Lyons has delivered a much-needed referendum on the current state of Silicon Valley. In wildly entertaining fashion, Disrupted explores the ways in which many technology companies have come to fool the public and themselves. Lyons has injected a dose of sanity into a world gone mad."―Ashlee Vance, New York Times-bestselling author of Elon Musk
"Dan 'Fake Steve' Lyons runs such a savage burn on his ex-employer, HubSpot, that the smoke can be seen clear across the country in Silicon Valley. Disrupted is fun, compulsively readable and just might tell us something important about the hypocrisy and cult-like fervor inside today's technology giants."―Brad Stone, New York Times-bestselling author of The Everything Store
"Dan Lyons goes deep inside a company that uses terms like 'world class marketing thought leaders' to show us how ridiculous, wasteful, and infantile tech start-ups like this can be. And best of all, Lyons does this with his trademark pejorative and hilarious tone."―Nick Bilton, New York Times technology columnist
"Troubling but funny ... [a] coolly observant book ... [with] a splendidly weird coda ... You couldn't have written a tastier ending, even for HBO."―Dwight Garner, New York Times
"Disrupted by Dan Lyons is the best book about Silicon Valley today.... Simultaneously hilarious and terrifying, Disrupted is an insider's look at a technology start-up from an outsider's perspective. Yet it's more than a chronicle of Lyons' tenure at one company, but a broader commentary on a business culture that often appears to be built on financial quicksand."―Los Angeles Times
"As the writer behind the satirical blog Fake Steve Jobs, [Lyons] could not have imagined a place so ripe for parody as HubSpot. Every detail of the hip office space, incompetent management, and delusional workforce described by Lyons in his hilarious and unsettling exposé is like something out of a scripted comedy (the author writes for HBO's Silicon Valley) ... An exacting, excoriating takedown of the current startup 'bubble' and the juvenile corporate culture it engenders."―Kirkus Reviews
"Scathingly funny .... Like the show 'Silicon Valley,' Disrupted nails the workings of spastic, hypocritical, delusional tech culture."―New York Post
"Laugh-out-loud funny."
"Read this book if you work or invest in tech and, in particular, tech startups. And not just for the tales of corporate intrigue, hypocrisy, and ridiculousness that have caused HubSpot and its allies to get so hot under their collective collar.... [Lyons] makes a strong case for how all of that young labor, when increasingly wrapped up into an over-arching 'corporate culture,' creates subtle age discrimination that these employees won't recognize for years to come. This not only is a real (albeit virtually ignored) issue at tech companies today, but is going to become a much larger one as digital natives continue to age."―Dan Primack, Fortune.com
"Hilarious and eye-opening."―Business Insider
"It would be incomplete to classify Disrupted as merely an Office Space-esque critique of Corporate America. It also serves as social commentary about the way that more senior employees are viewed and valued in a hyper-aggressive startup culture hell bent on an IPO. In other words, you will both laugh and think. I consumed the book in less than a day and highly recommend it to people curious about what could very well happen to them."―Phil Simon, The Huffington Post
"Disrupted provides an eye-opening and gut-busting account of the maddening world of startup excess, hubris and groupthink from the unique perspective of a prominent technology reporter and satirist who was inexplicably hired and given a front row seat to the lunacy."―Mashable
"A juicy read.... Disrupted is worth a read for its exploration of startup culture and its effect on labor....The book made me fearful of the fact that startup culture--from Google-style perks and zero work-life balance to corporate cheerleading and a cult-like devotion to the 'mission'--has become aspirational to many corporations. The ways in which the worst parts of startup culture benefit managers and investors while making workers disposable are particularly scary, and Lyons attacks that issue in a compelling way.... Disrupted is a foil to all those awful books that make sweeping generalizations about how to work with millennials."―Erin Griffith, Fortune.com
"Lyons finds the right company, if only for the raw material that he, a seasoned satirist, spins into gold.... But the book is not just a chronicle of the tech bubble's silly quirks.... Lyons uses the lens of his growing disillusionment to focus a broader critique of Silicon Valley."―Financial Times
"An often-delightful tour through startup culture... But there are parts of his book that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who uses the Internet."―Harvard Business Review
"The tech industry needs more writers like Lyons who are willing to probe its hyperbole, the ridiculous valuations, injustices and inconsistencies."―MarketWatch
"Hilarious... A must-read, not just in the real Silicon Valley but also on Wall Street... A highly entertaining, highly troubling tale of greed, graft, possible extortion, marketing nonsense, #content, incompetent bozos, investor hype, the impossibly wealthy and a man just looking to make his cut. That, folks, isn't just the Silicon Valley dream. It's the American dream."―Chris Taylor, Mashable ("Geek Book of the Week")
"This humorous and well-crafted memoir is part of a proud literary tradition: the disgruntled ex-employee tell-all. It's a genre that includes classic nonfiction accounts such as John DeLorean's On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors (detailing the carmaker's decline in the 1970s) and Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker (describing life at Salomon Brothers during the 1980s boom)."―Harvard Business Review
"Disrupted...offers an unvarnished insider's view of a tech startup.... That makes the book a must-read for anyone who works at a tech startup or wants to create one, in the same vein that books like One L became mandatory reading for soon-to-be law students.... A delightful portal into the world of a tech startup."
―Lilly Rockwell, Austin American-Statesman
"[Lyons's] artful reporting from the inside makes for a funny and thoughtful account of the current culture surrounding technology startups. But in addition to entertainment, Lyons's book is also flush with analysis of those the entrepreneurs that founded these companies and the myriad firms that fund them."―The Atlantic
About the Author
Dan Lyons is a novelist, journalist, and screenwriter. He is currently a co-producer and -writer for the HBO series Silicon Valley. Previously, Lyons was technology editor at Newsweek and the creator of the groundbreaking viral blog "The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs" (AKA "Fake Steve Jobs"). Lyons has written for the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Wired. He lives in Winchester, MA.
Start reading Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble on your Kindle in under a minute.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Product details
- Publisher : Hachette Books; 1st edition (April 5, 2016)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 272 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316306088
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316306089
- Item Weight : 1 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#344,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #304 in Business & Professional Humor
- #319 in Lawyer & Judge Biographies
- #332 in Computers & Internet Humor
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
1,340 global ratings
How are ratings calculated?
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sobering, Shocking and Hilarious Look at a Utopian Hellhole Rings True on Every Page
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2016Verified Purchase
290 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2016
Verified Purchase
Okay - Dan Lyons is a great writer. There is no denying that. And this book is FUNNY, and as a middle-aged former journalist who now works in content marketing for a company similar to HubSpot, so much of it coincides with my own life and experiences. That said, about two-thirds of the way through it starts getting really tedious, and when you stop and take a step back from the humor you can really see (and feel) what an angry, insecure and unhappy person Dan is, and after a while you start to squirm because, for all his wit and insight, Dan doesn't seem to realize how pedantic and condescending he is being and he doesn't seem to have any insight into himself. Dan is exactly like every other middle-aged former journalist I've ever worked with in the tech world: curmudgeonly, insecure, and angry at life. My message to other readers is: read this book because it's funny and its portrayal start-up culture is biting and accurate. My message to Dan is: get off your high horse and get over yourself -- you'll be much happier if you do.
41 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on May 18, 2016
Verified Purchase
If you've ever considered investing in an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of a company about to go public, and it's a Technology StartUp, don't waste your money. I couldn't believe what I was reading of what really happens when a Tech company goes public. This book is non stop reading once you pick it up. At around 260 pages, easy to read font, you'll feel like you're right there at HubSpot with the author working at a playground. Kids are left to run a company started by adults for no other reason than to create a lot of hype that the company is important enough to go public. Companies without profits are being allowed to list on the stock exchange so venture capitalist and founders can get rich off of your money. There's absolutely no oversight or regulations to protect public investors who want to invest in an IPO and someone needs to go to prison as a result of whats happening. This book describes part two of "Wall Street Gone Wild" and it all starts in Silicon Valley where venture capital firms raise money from wealthy people to finance scams called Tech StartUps. When you hear that a company valuation is in the billions, don't believe it because it's just one opinion to create hype before a company goes public. There once was a time when a company had to show a profit before an IPO, "Not Anymore" as this book depicts. As an investor of a tech startup today, your money pays for beer, candy and play, all so a so called tech company can hire a bunch of kids who are willing to work cheap writing blogs and engaging in phone solicitations to sell a worthless cloud software product (SaaS) otherwise known as software as a service. Hold on to your money and read this this book is all I can say. As for HubSpot, the tech company where the author worked, it's losing borrowed money each day while it trades on the stock market, yet analyst tell you to buy it. In my opinion after reading this book, it's uncovered some things the tech industry and venture capitalist hoped the general public never knew.
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Book Should Be a True Story Movie
By DP on May 18, 2016
If you've ever considered investing in an IPO (Initial Public Offering) of a company about to go public, and it's a Technology StartUp, don't waste your money. I couldn't believe what I was reading of what really happens when a Tech company goes public. This book is non stop reading once you pick it up. At around 260 pages, easy to read font, you'll feel like you're right there at HubSpot with the author working at a playground. Kids are left to run a company started by adults for no other reason than to create a lot of hype that the company is important enough to go public. Companies without profits are being allowed to list on the stock exchange so venture capitalist and founders can get rich off of your money. There's absolutely no oversight or regulations to protect public investors who want to invest in an IPO and someone needs to go to prison as a result of whats happening. This book describes part two of "Wall Street Gone Wild" and it all starts in Silicon Valley where venture capital firms raise money from wealthy people to finance scams called Tech StartUps. When you hear that a company valuation is in the billions, don't believe it because it's just one opinion to create hype before a company goes public. There once was a time when a company had to show a profit before an IPO, "Not Anymore" as this book depicts. As an investor of a tech startup today, your money pays for beer, candy and play, all so a so called tech company can hire a bunch of kids who are willing to work cheap writing blogs and engaging in phone solicitations to sell a worthless cloud software product (SaaS) otherwise known as software as a service. Hold on to your money and read this this book is all I can say. As for HubSpot, the tech company where the author worked, it's losing borrowed money each day while it trades on the stock market, yet analyst tell you to buy it. In my opinion after reading this book, it's uncovered some things the tech industry and venture capitalist hoped the general public never knew.
By DP on May 18, 2016
Images in this review
20 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2019
Verified Purchase
I can't understand how this book received such good press. The author spends the entire book trashing his former co-workers while including comments such as "nobody likes a whiner". He comes across as the old bitter white guy who doesn't understand why things aren't the way they used to be in the old days. I am in my fifties and have worked in Silicon Valley high tech for the last thirty years; yes, the times have changed. yes, people are less likely to laugh at your stupid phallus jokes, and yes, it's not funny to refer to the Russian guy as Trotsky. The only redeeming part of this book is when he stops the personal attacks and talks about how the venture capital industry has lost its way with regard to investment strategy.
12 people found this helpful
Report abuse
Top reviews from other countries
Gregg
4.0 out of 5 stars
Read it and decide for yourself.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2017Verified Purchase
On balance I am pleased to have read this book. The writing is fluent - as one should expect from an ex-journalist - and indeed the whole thing reads like a very long news article (but still a fairly short book). I think the reader needs to complement this by looking at some of the social media responses to it and, in particular the response "Undisrupted" on LinkedIn from Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah, who are the main targets of Dan Lyon's often harsh, but possibly not entirely unjustified criticism. Read it, look at the responses and comments, compare with your own experience and make up your own mind. There is also a rather strange aftermath, covered to some extent in the last chapter of this Kindle edition. Some of the people he worked with tried to stop the book and two or three of them took some unspecified action that resulted in their being dismissed from the company or (allegedly) reprimanded. Unavoidably we are left to speculate on the details. You can find more about it in news reports etc.
This book gives what looks to me like a credible account of what is really going on in the process of creating tech start-ups in the US and carrying them through to IPO and beyond. What's odd is that this author seems not to have known much of this before going to work for one of these start-ups despite having been a well-established and successful journalist writing about exactly this industry.
He also writes convincingly about ageism in the industry and about the general cultish atmosphere in the company he joined and, very likely, others. But again, it is strange that he reports such surprise at all this. Did he really not know at all what to expect? Maybe, or maybe it's a technique for making us react more strongly to his narrative. Given that he was well known for a satyrical column, was his new employer really that surprised at his reactions to them? Just puzzling.
On the one hand I an less than 100% sympathetic to this author. Some commenters have accused him of planning to write a book like this from the time he decided to look for a job in a tech start-up. He does say that part of his plan was to join the start-up and stick with it long enough to gain from the share options that he acquired for a year's service and it's quite consistent that he would also have regarded it as an opportunity to gather material from some sort of later writing. He also says, without any sense of fault, that he worked for quite a while on the production of blog posts without finding out what the company's business purpose was in doing it. When he eventually found out he was surprised and disappointed. The company gave him leave to take a completely different temporary job working with people more like him. He mentions their informal jokey atmosphere, but it sounds as though the jokes were often objectionable and might get people sacked fro other organisations. This gives a bit of a hollow ring to his complaints abbot the lack of diversity in the start-up he joined.
But, having worked for decades in programming/computing/systems integration/IT/whatever you call it this week, I have to say I recognise some of the ageism and incompetence he complains of. I have been disregarded as an "old fogey" and have been associated with projects that were set up with huge overconfidence - including one case where dozens of people were employed generating a loss averaging at over £1 million each and another where the shocking thing about the dysfunctional team organisation was that the project's senior members had been congratulating themselves on how brilliant it was. Not exactly like Dan Lyon's experience, but near enough for the book to trigger unhappy memories.
This book gives what looks to me like a credible account of what is really going on in the process of creating tech start-ups in the US and carrying them through to IPO and beyond. What's odd is that this author seems not to have known much of this before going to work for one of these start-ups despite having been a well-established and successful journalist writing about exactly this industry.
He also writes convincingly about ageism in the industry and about the general cultish atmosphere in the company he joined and, very likely, others. But again, it is strange that he reports such surprise at all this. Did he really not know at all what to expect? Maybe, or maybe it's a technique for making us react more strongly to his narrative. Given that he was well known for a satyrical column, was his new employer really that surprised at his reactions to them? Just puzzling.
On the one hand I an less than 100% sympathetic to this author. Some commenters have accused him of planning to write a book like this from the time he decided to look for a job in a tech start-up. He does say that part of his plan was to join the start-up and stick with it long enough to gain from the share options that he acquired for a year's service and it's quite consistent that he would also have regarded it as an opportunity to gather material from some sort of later writing. He also says, without any sense of fault, that he worked for quite a while on the production of blog posts without finding out what the company's business purpose was in doing it. When he eventually found out he was surprised and disappointed. The company gave him leave to take a completely different temporary job working with people more like him. He mentions their informal jokey atmosphere, but it sounds as though the jokes were often objectionable and might get people sacked fro other organisations. This gives a bit of a hollow ring to his complaints abbot the lack of diversity in the start-up he joined.
But, having worked for decades in programming/computing/systems integration/IT/whatever you call it this week, I have to say I recognise some of the ageism and incompetence he complains of. I have been disregarded as an "old fogey" and have been associated with projects that were set up with huge overconfidence - including one case where dozens of people were employed generating a loss averaging at over £1 million each and another where the shocking thing about the dysfunctional team organisation was that the project's senior members had been congratulating themselves on how brilliant it was. Not exactly like Dan Lyon's experience, but near enough for the book to trigger unhappy memories.
16 people found this helpful
Report abuse
R. Whitehead
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty good, although...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 3, 2019Verified Purchase
This is the story of a 50 year old man who makes the mistake of going to work in a "unicorn" startup.
As a 50 year old man who has recently started work in a startup myself, I should be the ideal reader. A lot of what happens is pretty scary, especially the epilogue when it turns out that the company tried dirty tricks (coercion, blackmail) to try to prevent the book's publication.
There are stories of ludicrous mis-management, and the terrifyingly naive acceptance of stupid ideas such as "fearless Friday" by everyone around him.
However, on a couple of occasions I did find myself siding with the young people around him. If you make a quip about The Beatles to someone who was born in 1990, why on earth would you expect them to know or care what you're talking about? What's wrong with putting a lunch appointment in your electronic diary? - it prevents someone inviting you to a meeting that would clash with it. He gets very upset about age discrimination, but I'm not sure he always helps himself.
He does make some very important points about diversity in the tech industry. The leader of the company says he want to employ people who "he'd like to have a beer with" - and so, unsurprisingly, the workforce is almost exclusively young, metropolitan and white. "Not just white, but all the same kind of white", in the author's words.
The fact that people can become so rich and powerful, by delivering a product that's so pathetically poor and while being so completely ignorant of the basics of good management, is what's really scary about this book.
As a 50 year old man who has recently started work in a startup myself, I should be the ideal reader. A lot of what happens is pretty scary, especially the epilogue when it turns out that the company tried dirty tricks (coercion, blackmail) to try to prevent the book's publication.
There are stories of ludicrous mis-management, and the terrifyingly naive acceptance of stupid ideas such as "fearless Friday" by everyone around him.
However, on a couple of occasions I did find myself siding with the young people around him. If you make a quip about The Beatles to someone who was born in 1990, why on earth would you expect them to know or care what you're talking about? What's wrong with putting a lunch appointment in your electronic diary? - it prevents someone inviting you to a meeting that would clash with it. He gets very upset about age discrimination, but I'm not sure he always helps himself.
He does make some very important points about diversity in the tech industry. The leader of the company says he want to employ people who "he'd like to have a beer with" - and so, unsurprisingly, the workforce is almost exclusively young, metropolitan and white. "Not just white, but all the same kind of white", in the author's words.
The fact that people can become so rich and powerful, by delivering a product that's so pathetically poor and while being so completely ignorant of the basics of good management, is what's really scary about this book.
5 people found this helpful
Report abuse
woodythemagician
4.0 out of 5 stars
Informative but with faults.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 2, 2017Verified Purchase
This is a very interesting book....but it's very one sided.
In the book Dan joins Hubspot and he's told how important it is to fit in. Now if I wanted to go for lunch or have a meeting with the person sitting next to me I would, like Dan ask the person for lunch. However, it's the Hubspot protocol/way/culture/ to invite someone via an intranet calander. That's the way they work and I'm a big believer if you join something you go with what's done. If everyone uses their own system it's chaos. You have a centralised system and everyone knows what works. Also, Dan would say that the environment was all frat boys and there were very few women working there, yet when he goes back to working in Journalism for a project he was right at home with all the knob jokes flying about - hardly an environment suitable for women.
In the book Dan joins Hubspot and he's told how important it is to fit in. Now if I wanted to go for lunch or have a meeting with the person sitting next to me I would, like Dan ask the person for lunch. However, it's the Hubspot protocol/way/culture/ to invite someone via an intranet calander. That's the way they work and I'm a big believer if you join something you go with what's done. If everyone uses their own system it's chaos. You have a centralised system and everyone knows what works. Also, Dan would say that the environment was all frat boys and there were very few women working there, yet when he goes back to working in Journalism for a project he was right at home with all the knob jokes flying about - hardly an environment suitable for women.
6 people found this helpful
Report abuse
David Travis
5.0 out of 5 stars
Humour with a dark side
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 7, 2017Verified Purchase
I was expecting this to be a laugh-out-loud exposé of what it’s like to be a 50+-year-old in a start up full of 20-somethings. Some parts of the book fit that brief but there are many other parts that are darker. There are tales of bullying and being isolated at work that make it a tough read in parts. Lyons makes the point that Silicon Valley isn’t about technology but about making money — it’s the new investment banking. The aim is to invest in a start-up, take it to IPO, convince mom and pop investors to buy shares, and then get out while you can. The notion that a company should make a profit is irrelevant. Because the book had this darker side, I actually enjoyed it even more than I expected.
4 people found this helpful
Report abuse
mskr
5.0 out of 5 stars
Really great book, great insight to the tech startup bubble
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2019Verified Purchase
Anyone who has ever worked in tech startup companies or knows someone who has must read this book. It's eye opening, scary and hilarious at the same time. Once I started this book I couldn't put it down and read it all the way through in one day. The reason I got this book it because someone close to me had gone to work in a very big famous tech startup company and after a short few months they had changed for the worse. I could see the company was changing them and taking over their life and with a little research online I came across this book. When I read it I quickly understood what was happening and it answered all the questions I needed to know. Very disturbing indeed.
One person found this helpful
Report abuse
Deals related to this item
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Pages with related products.
See and discover other items: long beach island, auto technology







