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hectorip's review
3.0
Good book but it could be better
The story of how they get from zero to one is amazing and inspiring, but I would liked a more distilled book. May one with better structured chapters with the clear lessons for the reader stated. Though, the advice about tech tools is great.
The story of how they get from zero to one is amazing and inspiring, but I would liked a more distilled book. May one with better structured chapters with the clear lessons for the reader stated. Though, the advice about tech tools is great.
meigs's review against another edition
2.0
This book had a few nuggets but overall annoying as hell. It sounded like two bros playing in other people’s lives and livelihoods. Every single person of power mentioned in the book was a white man. Every person doing labor (outside of a developer and one other person) were all women - no idea if any were of color. The company no longer exists, and from what I can tell from its new interation it’s not making it.
Do you want to know why women and marginalized people are so over white men? This book is a great example.
The book is billed as something that will change how you do and think about business... but all I read was mistakes made from arrogance built on free tools that are either no longer free or obsolete in business run by men that wasted everybody’s time but their own. It was written in 2015 and early 2016, so that may be its only excuse for how dated it seems.
I’ll leave with this excerpt from the book that literally made my jaw drop:
“Meanwhile, Ari’s daughter, Chloe, was born in mid-February. Two days after she got home, her temperature dropped dramatically. She had to be monitored in the emergency room for close to a week. Ari and his wife were with her day in and day out, but he was still able to get his work done.
It occurred to us then that there were no excuses for poor performance. If Ari was able to stay on top of things with everything he had going on, then there was no excuse for anyone else to slack off. No one in the company aside from Nick even knew what was going on with Ari’s daughter, because he didn’t miss a beat.
We started firing people based on the objective standards we had originally set out, but had been too lenient with. Because our internal system was set up so efficiently, we were able to remove those people within a matter of minutes and without any of our clients’ sensitive information being compromised. We were only as good as the perceived value of the VAs.”
Fucking yikes.
In short: please, more people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals writing books about business and productivity.
Do you want to know why women and marginalized people are so over white men? This book is a great example.
The book is billed as something that will change how you do and think about business... but all I read was mistakes made from arrogance built on free tools that are either no longer free or obsolete in business run by men that wasted everybody’s time but their own. It was written in 2015 and early 2016, so that may be its only excuse for how dated it seems.
I’ll leave with this excerpt from the book that literally made my jaw drop:
“Meanwhile, Ari’s daughter, Chloe, was born in mid-February. Two days after she got home, her temperature dropped dramatically. She had to be monitored in the emergency room for close to a week. Ari and his wife were with her day in and day out, but he was still able to get his work done.
It occurred to us then that there were no excuses for poor performance. If Ari was able to stay on top of things with everything he had going on, then there was no excuse for anyone else to slack off. No one in the company aside from Nick even knew what was going on with Ari’s daughter, because he didn’t miss a beat.
We started firing people based on the objective standards we had originally set out, but had been too lenient with. Because our internal system was set up so efficiently, we were able to remove those people within a matter of minutes and without any of our clients’ sensitive information being compromised. We were only as good as the perceived value of the VAs.”
Fucking yikes.
In short: please, more people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals writing books about business and productivity.
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