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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
My boyfriend works in tech and has had experience with startups in the past. This book basically mirrors everything that he's ever told me about them.
funny
informative
tense
fast-paced
after working in tech and being a natural cynic as well this book really hit home.
I couldn't put it down
I couldn't put it down
Conflicted - this book was entertaining and a quick read, but god the author of this book about how startups are filled with assholes is an asshole. Everyone's an asshole here.
Dan Lyons is a Journalist. I can't emphasize that last word enough. Nor, it seems, can Dan Lyons.
Lyons, a former Time writer and internet content raconteur, found himself in his early 50s without a decent job. After decades of covering the latest 20-something billionaires, he (sensibly) decided he wanted to jump into a startup to try to make his own big hit. Disrupted is his tale of woe, bemoaning the millennials and their shoddy union sensibilities and their loud music (no, seriously).
I don't want to dismiss Lyons' takedown of his former employer, Hubspot, as a simple case of "Old guy doesn't get how things work now." There's absolutely no doubt that the management, owners and coworkers at his new employer are insane. The problem is, the things he brings up as issues on which to prosecute an entire industry/generation aren't exclusive to either the industry or that generation: As someone who's worked for a marketing agency, the headquarters of a multilevel marketing company and yes, even newspapers, all of the traits and peculiarities he mentions are things I've encountered. The trait of "being a shitty manager/coworker" is not endemic to a certain age group; it's more just an indicator of shitty people.
Don't get me wrong, the book is fun! See him learn that manager does not equal friend when his crazy direct supervisor's power-tripping petty bullshit constantly tears into Lyons after acting like they're best pals. Watch through some veiled sexism (paraphrase: "I'm not saying all women are shitty, but the three or four whom I interact with the most and are the only ones I talk about in depth in the book are terrible workers AND people") as he grovels to the PR manager for offending her (paraphrase: "I don't understand why she's all upset just because I said an interview she arranged for the CEO went terribly."). Revel as he reveals just how freaking out of touch he is when he tells us about his "hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers" then acts shocked and violated when it turns out his employer is watching what he writes and doesn't particularly enjoy his raining criticism down upon them.
As a former journalist, I particularly disliked the part where he complained about how much better journalists are as people. DID YOU KNOW that journalists: a) don't like meetings; b) would "[slam] doors and [turn] the air blue with profanity" if their boss made them a promise and then someone up the line changed their mind; c) if made to go to training, make fun of each other and the instructors and intentionally waste time. Oh, and also joke about killing someone in front an HR person; d) are lousy when asked to write someone beneath their level, like lead-generating blog posts (because of all their JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE).
Some of those are true, about some of the journalists I've worked with. Most are not. (Though, in fairness, journalists - especially older journalists - do tend to complain a lot that they're not allowed to say literally whatever they want in the newsroom, regardless of sexism/racism/profanity/just terrible ideas. As someone who's listened to a lot of them, this censorship is decidedly in everyone's best interest.) In fact, I'd bet you could replace the word "journalist" with "white guys who worked a white-collar job in the 80s/early 90s" and a lot of Lyons' complaints would have exactly the same meaning. Please note that I'm not calling him racist; I'm saying he's a overprivileged twit.
I'm not so much upset with the book or the writing as I am the idea of the book. Michael Lewis rose to fame with his (then-)shocking expose of the financial industry in Liar's Poker precisely because we didn't already know about. Lyons tended to follow trend stories (he did write for Time, after all) back when he wrote regularly, so his explosive reveal that "most web-based startups have terrible products and even worse business plans" isn't shocking, it's late and, most importantly, lazy. There's lots of good journalism out there about the bad and the good of our current economic/business/cultural climate. And it doesn't require taking a single company as evidence/harbinger of the doom of all things.
In a way, it's a tale of two mistakes. His, for his choice of employer, and me, for choice of reading material. I doubt either of us will make the same mistakes again. Oh, well. Unlike most of the readers of this book, at least I learned something.
Lyons, a former Time writer and internet content raconteur, found himself in his early 50s without a decent job. After decades of covering the latest 20-something billionaires, he (sensibly) decided he wanted to jump into a startup to try to make his own big hit. Disrupted is his tale of woe, bemoaning the millennials and their shoddy union sensibilities and their loud music (no, seriously).
I don't want to dismiss Lyons' takedown of his former employer, Hubspot, as a simple case of "Old guy doesn't get how things work now." There's absolutely no doubt that the management, owners and coworkers at his new employer are insane. The problem is, the things he brings up as issues on which to prosecute an entire industry/generation aren't exclusive to either the industry or that generation: As someone who's worked for a marketing agency, the headquarters of a multilevel marketing company and yes, even newspapers, all of the traits and peculiarities he mentions are things I've encountered. The trait of "being a shitty manager/coworker" is not endemic to a certain age group; it's more just an indicator of shitty people.
Don't get me wrong, the book is fun! See him learn that manager does not equal friend when his crazy direct supervisor's power-tripping petty bullshit constantly tears into Lyons after acting like they're best pals. Watch through some veiled sexism (paraphrase: "I'm not saying all women are shitty, but the three or four whom I interact with the most and are the only ones I talk about in depth in the book are terrible workers AND people") as he grovels to the PR manager for offending her (paraphrase: "I don't understand why she's all upset just because I said an interview she arranged for the CEO went terribly."). Revel as he reveals just how freaking out of touch he is when he tells us about his "hundreds of thousands of Facebook followers" then acts shocked and violated when it turns out his employer is watching what he writes and doesn't particularly enjoy his raining criticism down upon them.
As a former journalist, I particularly disliked the part where he complained about how much better journalists are as people. DID YOU KNOW that journalists: a) don't like meetings; b) would "[slam] doors and [turn] the air blue with profanity" if their boss made them a promise and then someone up the line changed their mind; c) if made to go to training, make fun of each other and the instructors and intentionally waste time. Oh, and also joke about killing someone in front an HR person; d) are lousy when asked to write someone beneath their level, like lead-generating blog posts (because of all their JOURNALISM EXPERIENCE).
Some of those are true, about some of the journalists I've worked with. Most are not. (Though, in fairness, journalists - especially older journalists - do tend to complain a lot that they're not allowed to say literally whatever they want in the newsroom, regardless of sexism/racism/profanity/just terrible ideas. As someone who's listened to a lot of them, this censorship is decidedly in everyone's best interest.) In fact, I'd bet you could replace the word "journalist" with "white guys who worked a white-collar job in the 80s/early 90s" and a lot of Lyons' complaints would have exactly the same meaning. Please note that I'm not calling him racist; I'm saying he's a overprivileged twit.
I'm not so much upset with the book or the writing as I am the idea of the book. Michael Lewis rose to fame with his (then-)shocking expose of the financial industry in Liar's Poker precisely because we didn't already know about. Lyons tended to follow trend stories (he did write for Time, after all) back when he wrote regularly, so his explosive reveal that "most web-based startups have terrible products and even worse business plans" isn't shocking, it's late and, most importantly, lazy. There's lots of good journalism out there about the bad and the good of our current economic/business/cultural climate. And it doesn't require taking a single company as evidence/harbinger of the doom of all things.
In a way, it's a tale of two mistakes. His, for his choice of employer, and me, for choice of reading material. I doubt either of us will make the same mistakes again. Oh, well. Unlike most of the readers of this book, at least I learned something.
funny
informative
medium-paced
Though I don't agree with some of Dan's ideas, this book is hilarious. It is certainly a different perspective on the startup world. Worth reading!
My favorite books are imperfect, but challenge me to reconsider my perceptions and beliefs. Disrupted did that for me.
The Good:
There hasn’t been a major book documenting the dark side of the SaaS tech industry There certainly have been a few books ripping apart Wall Street culture, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, as well as corporation like McDonalds and Wal-Mart, maybe there have been critiques on Apple or Microsoft, but this is the first new tech takedown. Hubspot is the prime candidate because its SaaS marketing automation and this can be seen as the epitome of the industry right now.
I thank the author for pointing out the lack of diversity in these types companies. It’s not just race. It is age and socioeconomic background. It’s also valuable to point out the poor management and personal issues that many founders have had. It’s a service to warn people about the short-termism and the ageism. Everyone in the technology industry should read this book.
I also give the author a lot credit for his storytelling and writing. I was a bit predisposed to rip this book apart. Sometimes takedown or expose books get too passionate about their argument. It’s a fun read of dysfunctional work place. You can simply take the book as that and move on, but I didn’t.
Contrasting the two founders and their metrics HEART v. VORP was well done. It’s a service to remind us that under the huggy-feely, teddy-bear carrying HEART there is a cut-throat, make your number or you’re fired mentality – free beer and candy be damned.
There’s a lot of good here. There are genuinely laugh out loud moments and vivid conflict. The author is somewhat able to tie the woes of Hubspot to the larger issues in the tech industry or Silicon Valley today. The “Glassholes” chapter attempted to drive that home. However, even here, the author is mostly drawing from personal experience because he ran the Valleywag blog – which is a now defunct Silicon Valley Gawker site, which supplied him with dirt on the key players in Silicon Valley venture capital scene.
Which brings us to the bad.
The Bad
First and foremost – the nonstop complaining that Hubspot doesn’t make a profit. Stop it.
The rules of the game that Hubspot is playing do not require it to make a profit. Who says they need to? It’s the authors “Business 10”1 perception that all companies should be profitable despite that intellectually he knows that companies like Hubspot do not have to be profitable – and that’s been the case for the last 20 years.
That leads to the second bad – his depiction that Hubspot is a house of cards. They need to IPO or go broke, he writes. That may have been the feeling 3 months before IP; however, Hubspot consistently raised money. They didn’t raise $100 Million over night and then blow it in 6 years. Here’s the data: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/disrupted-a-look-at-hubspots-funding-and-financial-history
The third bad – once Hubspot IPO’s it will tank. After going public 18 months ago, HUBS is up 40% compared to the S&P 500 up 7% and its closest competitor Marketo is down 10%. So much for profitability.
Moving away from the bad business critiques – the author repeats himself. Same rants about ageism and lack of diversity. Same jabs at the stupidity of co-workers – the lax bros and New England college girls going on a date, middle-America Mary. Over and over.
Further he doesn’t go deep on research. The information above about the funding numbers reveals that. He’s basically just writing from his own experience, which is good; however, when tries to tie that experience to the bigger industry wide issues, it lacks some creditably. The business issues further limit his creditability to just his ability to write entertainingly about his own experience.
His own experience was brutal, but he didn’t help things.
The Ugly
The author self-sabotages.
Three social media mistakes:
1) Don’t post negative comments about the CEO on Facebook, especially when you have a public following and the CEO just wrapped up his first major news interview.
2) Don’t Unfriend or Unfollow your boss, especially when your boss may be crazy and sadistic.
3) Don’t make inside jokes about your co-workers where those coworkers can also see those jokes. He made a veiled little dig at coworker, the coworker saw it, understood it, and then flipped out.
Generally, the author is condescending towards everyone he works with. The whole industry is beneath him. That came through in his personal interactions. His colleagues didn’t like him; not just because he wasn’t like them, but because of his acerbic humor and air of superiority.
His final self-sabotage: he put in his 6 weeks’ notice of resignation the day after a truly brutal and psychologically abusive annual review. This was revenge. Hubspot, themselves vindictive, responded by firing him, immediately. He managed to get a better deal, but he should have just waited a month and given the standard 2 weeks. He put his family at risk of being uninsured and lost salary.
I don’t mean to be too harsh. I probably would have done the same. It’s a testament to self-control that he stayed at Hubspot for 20 months without doing anything worse than petty passive aggressive outbursts,
My Advice:
Read this book today! It’s is an eye-opener. Take his business insights with a grain of salt. Then read the response from Hubspot. It has 1000s of likes on LinkedIn – not surprising if you’ve read his book. That response is exactly the type of thing the author does a great job of fleshing out – part Orwellian, part corporate gobbledygook, part well-intentioned but aloof.
If you are looking for a salacious or raunchy read, you won’t get much here. There’s nothing in the book itself that would kill the company or put people in jail. While damaged, Hubspot has responded and recovered. There was an incident last summer where three major characters in the book tried illegally to obtain a copy of the manuscript. It was investigated by the FBI. This only adds to the drama of the public real-life playout of the book.
It’s a quick read and almost required if you work in the industry.
The Good:
There hasn’t been a major book documenting the dark side of the SaaS tech industry There certainly have been a few books ripping apart Wall Street culture, Private Equity, Hedge Funds, as well as corporation like McDonalds and Wal-Mart, maybe there have been critiques on Apple or Microsoft, but this is the first new tech takedown. Hubspot is the prime candidate because its SaaS marketing automation and this can be seen as the epitome of the industry right now.
I thank the author for pointing out the lack of diversity in these types companies. It’s not just race. It is age and socioeconomic background. It’s also valuable to point out the poor management and personal issues that many founders have had. It’s a service to warn people about the short-termism and the ageism. Everyone in the technology industry should read this book.
I also give the author a lot credit for his storytelling and writing. I was a bit predisposed to rip this book apart. Sometimes takedown or expose books get too passionate about their argument. It’s a fun read of dysfunctional work place. You can simply take the book as that and move on, but I didn’t.
Contrasting the two founders and their metrics HEART v. VORP was well done. It’s a service to remind us that under the huggy-feely, teddy-bear carrying HEART there is a cut-throat, make your number or you’re fired mentality – free beer and candy be damned.
There’s a lot of good here. There are genuinely laugh out loud moments and vivid conflict. The author is somewhat able to tie the woes of Hubspot to the larger issues in the tech industry or Silicon Valley today. The “Glassholes” chapter attempted to drive that home. However, even here, the author is mostly drawing from personal experience because he ran the Valleywag blog – which is a now defunct Silicon Valley Gawker site, which supplied him with dirt on the key players in Silicon Valley venture capital scene.
Which brings us to the bad.
The Bad
First and foremost – the nonstop complaining that Hubspot doesn’t make a profit. Stop it.
The rules of the game that Hubspot is playing do not require it to make a profit. Who says they need to? It’s the authors “Business 10”1 perception that all companies should be profitable despite that intellectually he knows that companies like Hubspot do not have to be profitable – and that’s been the case for the last 20 years.
That leads to the second bad – his depiction that Hubspot is a house of cards. They need to IPO or go broke, he writes. That may have been the feeling 3 months before IP; however, Hubspot consistently raised money. They didn’t raise $100 Million over night and then blow it in 6 years. Here’s the data: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/disrupted-a-look-at-hubspots-funding-and-financial-history
The third bad – once Hubspot IPO’s it will tank. After going public 18 months ago, HUBS is up 40% compared to the S&P 500 up 7% and its closest competitor Marketo is down 10%. So much for profitability.
Moving away from the bad business critiques – the author repeats himself. Same rants about ageism and lack of diversity. Same jabs at the stupidity of co-workers – the lax bros and New England college girls going on a date, middle-America Mary. Over and over.
Further he doesn’t go deep on research. The information above about the funding numbers reveals that. He’s basically just writing from his own experience, which is good; however, when tries to tie that experience to the bigger industry wide issues, it lacks some creditably. The business issues further limit his creditability to just his ability to write entertainingly about his own experience.
His own experience was brutal, but he didn’t help things.
The Ugly
The author self-sabotages.
Three social media mistakes:
1) Don’t post negative comments about the CEO on Facebook, especially when you have a public following and the CEO just wrapped up his first major news interview.
2) Don’t Unfriend or Unfollow your boss, especially when your boss may be crazy and sadistic.
3) Don’t make inside jokes about your co-workers where those coworkers can also see those jokes. He made a veiled little dig at coworker, the coworker saw it, understood it, and then flipped out.
Generally, the author is condescending towards everyone he works with. The whole industry is beneath him. That came through in his personal interactions. His colleagues didn’t like him; not just because he wasn’t like them, but because of his acerbic humor and air of superiority.
His final self-sabotage: he put in his 6 weeks’ notice of resignation the day after a truly brutal and psychologically abusive annual review. This was revenge. Hubspot, themselves vindictive, responded by firing him, immediately. He managed to get a better deal, but he should have just waited a month and given the standard 2 weeks. He put his family at risk of being uninsured and lost salary.
I don’t mean to be too harsh. I probably would have done the same. It’s a testament to self-control that he stayed at Hubspot for 20 months without doing anything worse than petty passive aggressive outbursts,
My Advice:
Read this book today! It’s is an eye-opener. Take his business insights with a grain of salt. Then read the response from Hubspot. It has 1000s of likes on LinkedIn – not surprising if you’ve read his book. That response is exactly the type of thing the author does a great job of fleshing out – part Orwellian, part corporate gobbledygook, part well-intentioned but aloof.
If you are looking for a salacious or raunchy read, you won’t get much here. There’s nothing in the book itself that would kill the company or put people in jail. While damaged, Hubspot has responded and recovered. There was an incident last summer where three major characters in the book tried illegally to obtain a copy of the manuscript. It was investigated by the FBI. This only adds to the drama of the public real-life playout of the book.
It’s a quick read and almost required if you work in the industry.
This book is a very enjoyable read, it is well written, funny and a fascinating look behind the Silicon Valley "tech bubble" and the insane corporate culture. It definitely makes me want to read more of this work.
However, there was parts of this book that didn't sit right with me. Clearly a white guy that is always been appreciated for his talents, didn't. And yes I do agree he experienced ageism but he seemed to lack empathy for other forms of discrimination. He did mention the lack of diversity in tech, but is thrilled to be in a LA writers room with all guys where he can openly make jokes about "huge cocks and dry vaginas", which he wouldn't be able to do at HubSpot...
He describes himself as someone who "could always fit in" and was "never was bullied at school", and fails to acknowledge that his could be due to his white male privilege. I guess I found it hard him describing the ageism he was experiencing but then at times was misogynistic, entitled and arrogant. This unfortunately made him come across a bit out of touch and did ruin it a bit for me.
That being said, I read it in less than 24hrs as I enjoyed it so much. I would recommend it to others, but recommend to keep his lack of introspection in mind as that is not what you will get from this book, but what you will get is a funny, entertaining look behind the curtain of a seemingly insane company that like many other Unicorns makes no profits but yet is worth over a billion dollars.
However, there was parts of this book that didn't sit right with me. Clearly a white guy that is always been appreciated for his talents, didn't. And yes I do agree he experienced ageism but he seemed to lack empathy for other forms of discrimination. He did mention the lack of diversity in tech, but is thrilled to be in a LA writers room with all guys where he can openly make jokes about "huge cocks and dry vaginas", which he wouldn't be able to do at HubSpot...
He describes himself as someone who "could always fit in" and was "never was bullied at school", and fails to acknowledge that his could be due to his white male privilege. I guess I found it hard him describing the ageism he was experiencing but then at times was misogynistic, entitled and arrogant. This unfortunately made him come across a bit out of touch and did ruin it a bit for me.
That being said, I read it in less than 24hrs as I enjoyed it so much. I would recommend it to others, but recommend to keep his lack of introspection in mind as that is not what you will get from this book, but what you will get is a funny, entertaining look behind the curtain of a seemingly insane company that like many other Unicorns makes no profits but yet is worth over a billion dollars.