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A review by nhewitt99
Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein
4.0
This book makes me ashamed to contribute to the tech industry. Pein combines his personal misadventures in Silicon Valley with far-reaching investigative journalism to show Big Tech's least flattering angles. We see a Valley that chews up workers and entrepreneurs, makes false promises, provides platforms to fascists, encourages secession, and exacerbates poverty in the name of progress. Pein's investigation makes clear that these are features, not bugs.
The narrative sections of the book are irreverant and well-paced. Pein has the humility to lampoon his own inabilities to succeed in tech; he also shows that, for the most part, "ability" has nothing to do with success in the Valley. The startup bubble has ossified, and new unicorns are only horses with tacked-on horns, yet the hacker-house crowds don't seem to notice.
My main gripe is the latter half's meandering profiles of tech's "celebrities." The tangled web they form with far-right thinkers is extremely relevant, but is somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from. I would have appreciated more concise synthesis of Pein's many findings, so that when someone asks me "what's so wrong about Big Tech?" I can answer in coherent points, rather than simply sighing with a faraway look in my eyes.
The narrative sections of the book are irreverant and well-paced. Pein has the humility to lampoon his own inabilities to succeed in tech; he also shows that, for the most part, "ability" has nothing to do with success in the Valley. The startup bubble has ossified, and new unicorns are only horses with tacked-on horns, yet the hacker-house crowds don't seem to notice.
My main gripe is the latter half's meandering profiles of tech's "celebrities." The tangled web they form with far-right thinkers is extremely relevant, but is somewhat difficult to draw conclusions from. I would have appreciated more concise synthesis of Pein's many findings, so that when someone asks me "what's so wrong about Big Tech?" I can answer in coherent points, rather than simply sighing with a faraway look in my eyes.