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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
I really wish we could give half stars because I REALLY want to give it 2.5stars.
Firstly, the good side, Daniel Lyon's makes some good points about the tech industry, especially the issues with these unicorn businesses that make no money yet have wild valuations. His points of the sexism, racism and ageism within the industry is a problem, I worked with the tech industry for a year, but this also isn't JUST a tech industry issue, it's still a society issue within the 'prestigious' industry's. it's obvious but also know after working in journalism for a few months, it's very much an 'old boys club'.
The bad side, I 100% believe the writer is an arsehole to work with and is so far up his own that he can't see this. The ageism is shocking when it happens to him but he mentions how young everyone is all the time and how are they in the position they are. At lot of what he explains he did during his time at Hubstop is horrendous and not surprised they tried to push him out for months.
All you're going to get from this book is one guy complaining how victimized he is rather than anything to do with the tech industry as a whole.
Firstly, the good side, Daniel Lyon's makes some good points about the tech industry, especially the issues with these unicorn businesses that make no money yet have wild valuations. His points of the sexism, racism and ageism within the industry is a problem, I worked with the tech industry for a year, but this also isn't JUST a tech industry issue, it's still a society issue within the 'prestigious' industry's. it's obvious but also know after working in journalism for a few months, it's very much an 'old boys club'.
The bad side, I 100% believe the writer is an arsehole to work with and is so far up his own that he can't see this. The ageism is shocking when it happens to him but he mentions how young everyone is all the time and how are they in the position they are. At lot of what he explains he did during his time at Hubstop is horrendous and not surprised they tried to push him out for months.
All you're going to get from this book is one guy complaining how victimized he is rather than anything to do with the tech industry as a whole.
This company may be highly mismanaged but the author doesn't come off as pleasant person to work with either.
Really enjoyed the snark of the author and the points it made about the tech culture. On the other hand, the book gets a bit repetitive. The Fortune article adapted from this book ( http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyons/ ) is far shorter and gets most of the same exact points across.
Amazing
A great and funny insightful look into the tech industry and the hyperbole that passes for internet marketing. The descriptions of over the top corporate culture are funny but true to life. What I find extremely interesting is how other industries are also being affected by silicon valley culture - more than a few times I found my work experience to relate to what I was reading on page even though I have never worked in tech or even the U.S. What is also good food for thought is the bigger picture patterns of the nature of work and organizations that the author also pulls out and highlights for which there are few easy answers. Laugh, get angry and rage at what work now is when reading this.
A great and funny insightful look into the tech industry and the hyperbole that passes for internet marketing. The descriptions of over the top corporate culture are funny but true to life. What I find extremely interesting is how other industries are also being affected by silicon valley culture - more than a few times I found my work experience to relate to what I was reading on page even though I have never worked in tech or even the U.S. What is also good food for thought is the bigger picture patterns of the nature of work and organizations that the author also pulls out and highlights for which there are few easy answers. Laugh, get angry and rage at what work now is when reading this.
2.5 stars. My sense of what rating I would give teetered wildly as I read this book. If you want to read it because you are old like me and think this narrative will be sympathetic, forget it. The writer is a highly successful white male, and his experience was used mostly for snark comedy value as he gets stuck in a crappy job at a crappy company and decides to treat it like an anthropology assignment he can then write a book about. Probably it will not seem relatable to any ageism, sexism, racism, etc. that you or those you know encounter in the workplace. Particularly at the beginning he comes across as an arrogant a-hole, at least as unsympathetic as his incompetent, fratty coworkers. Later, he does a good job of depicting their social bullying, although it goes no further than they managed to hurt his feelings (until the end, where some illegal alleged hacking makes him so paranoid he goes beyond journalistic objectivity and writes a revenge-y epilogue). So if you are looking for a heart-type connection (pun on an acronym in the book), you probably won't feel it. What he does well is to go back to his roots as a tech business reporter and explain the evil shenanigans that the venture capitalists and IPO-striving rotten start-up companies are perpetrating on the rest of us. It turns out that many key components of the horrible wealth redistribution that most of us have been suffering from, and horrible abuses in worker's rights (which pretty much don't exist anymore) originated with tech industry practices and manifestos. Ignore this at your own risk, and if you are lucky enough to have any investments, don't bet your retirement on any of these garbage companies. And if he's right about this current tech bubble, expect a crash much greater than the one in 2008.
A successful, respected tech journalist loses his job at Newsweek and decides to try and hit it big at HubSpot, an internet “remarketing” startup (read: spam factory). The author satisfyingly skewers the many inane aspects of their workplace culture: focusing on the ”delightion” of the users they are spamming, using the euphemism of “graduate” to describe those who have been fired, evaluating whether new ideas are “1+1=3” enough, striving to develop a personality that is completely “HubSpotty”. For a few chapters, this concept really works. The author is also a contributor to HBO’s Silicon Valley; he clearly has his finger on the pulse of all that makes the tech industry ridiculous.
I spent half the book laughing along with him, until I started wondering why he was sticking around. Why would the author put himself through this cognitive dissonance, especially when he suggests he has other opportunities? He ridicules the company’s business model while writing memos on ways to improve the corporate blog. He despises the company’s office politics but is depressed when no one respects him. At many points when I empathized with his struggle, he’d inevitably mention again that he still wanted to try and hit an IPO jackpot. I don’t begrudge that pursuit, but the empathy does evaporate a bit.
I spent half the book laughing along with him, until I started wondering why he was sticking around. Why would the author put himself through this cognitive dissonance, especially when he suggests he has other opportunities? He ridicules the company’s business model while writing memos on ways to improve the corporate blog. He despises the company’s office politics but is depressed when no one respects him. At many points when I empathized with his struggle, he’d inevitably mention again that he still wanted to try and hit an IPO jackpot. I don’t begrudge that pursuit, but the empathy does evaporate a bit.
Astonishing! While there are always two sides to a story, I have no doubt his experience was very close to accurate. I've experienced semblances of this type of culture at various points during my years in the tech industry. However nothing has been this extreme. Lyons is a born storyteller. He was a fish-out-of-water in an environment he really knew very little about. He attempted to make the best of A challenging situation, but he eventually lost the culture battle. I am certainly rethinking my perspective on this industry after reading this book.
First impressions is that this is not a book written for someone like me, a 20-something kid just a few years out of university in a marketing job. At first I thought: wow, this entitled old fart certainly thinks he’s better than everyone. However, Lyons does have a witty way of presenting his situation and provides a fun-to-read description of how he experienced working in a new tech start-up. I can honestly say that as a millennial I would probably not be a HEART person myself. I am kind of disappointed, but not entirely surprised by what he is saying about HubSpot and their development versus actually using their own product to get further in business. All in all, the book was a fun read, and offers what I believe to be a more accurate representation of what working in the newest, hottest, tech start-ups would feel like for us “normal” people.