About a week ago, I saw a tweet from someone who was praising a new book I hadn’t heard about called Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
I have been absolutely captivated by this book. Indeed, it brought to mind a Dilbert from about 27 years ago (yes, my mind is littered with junk like this):
As the book jacket describes it……..
Liar’s Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent exposé of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio García Martínez, a former Twitter advisor, Facebook product manager and startup founder/CEO.
The reality is, Silicon Valley capitalism is very simple:
Investors are people with more money than time.
Employees are people with more time than money.
Entrepreneurs are the seductive go-between.
Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it.
I just love that last line.
Anyway, I’m precisely halfway through the book, so I’m in no position to do a proper review yet. But I can certainly state this is the best book about the Silicon Valley I’ve ever read (as opposed to, say, any of the countless biographies of Steven P. Jobs) and will certainly stun many of the folks the book’s author mentions by name (suffice it to say there are plenty of bridges burned). If you have an interest in the valley and its inner workings, I cannot recommend this book any more strongly.
