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A review by ederwin
Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein
4.0
This is almost two separate books stuck together. Part one is based on the author's personal experiences of investigative/stunt journalism and is captivating. Part two is more about the ideas of people who, in most cases, he hasn't met. That is still interesting, just not as much.
He travels to SF in 2015 and tries to make it rich in the internet startup culture. Not being rich already, he has to endure horrible housing conditions. It is shocking how much you have to pay to share a shitty Air BnB, or even a tent, with other wannabe techies living in places where previous tenants were either forced to leave, or forced to rent out rooms, due to skyrocketing prices. (I live nearby and know pretty well how insane prices are, but I left the city itself in 2001 and was still shocked by reading the conditions he encounters in 2015.) He goes to tech-sponsored parties where he enjoyes the free food and drinks, goes to job fairs, and tries to pitch start-up ideas to venture capital firms. About 99% of the other people doing the same thing as him will never get rich from this, but everyone is striving to be the next founder of a disruptive tech company. (Even if they succeed at that, the life of a founder often sucks, too.) He has the realization that like in the old gold rush, the ones getting rich are not the miners, but the guys selling shovels to them. But who exactly are the shovel-sellers in this economy? The people hosting job fairs and tech parties, maybe? I dunno....
The next part is only loosely related. He might meet someone who tells him something about, say, Larry Page or Peter Theil, but then he goes off and researches that from secondary sources. What he finds is that powerful tech people have some very wacky and dangerous ideas, mostly ideas that reinforce their feeling that they are the natural leaders of the world now and the rest of us should get out of the way while they build their Utopias.
I was at first annoyed by him treating San Francisco as part of Silicon Valley. When I lived there, they were still distinctly separate. But sadly the merger is now almost complete.
I definitely enjoyed reading this. Your mileage may vary.
One of my favorite stories was when he asks some guy for a description of the great new app idea he has thought of. The guys is too scared to give away the secret, so describes it as 'like Angry Birds, but there are no birds and no one is angry.'
He travels to SF in 2015 and tries to make it rich in the internet startup culture. Not being rich already, he has to endure horrible housing conditions. It is shocking how much you have to pay to share a shitty Air BnB, or even a tent, with other wannabe techies living in places where previous tenants were either forced to leave, or forced to rent out rooms, due to skyrocketing prices. (I live nearby and know pretty well how insane prices are, but I left the city itself in 2001 and was still shocked by reading the conditions he encounters in 2015.) He goes to tech-sponsored parties where he enjoyes the free food and drinks, goes to job fairs, and tries to pitch start-up ideas to venture capital firms. About 99% of the other people doing the same thing as him will never get rich from this, but everyone is striving to be the next founder of a disruptive tech company. (Even if they succeed at that, the life of a founder often sucks, too.) He has the realization that like in the old gold rush, the ones getting rich are not the miners, but the guys selling shovels to them. But who exactly are the shovel-sellers in this economy? The people hosting job fairs and tech parties, maybe? I dunno....
The next part is only loosely related. He might meet someone who tells him something about, say, Larry Page or Peter Theil, but then he goes off and researches that from secondary sources. What he finds is that powerful tech people have some very wacky and dangerous ideas, mostly ideas that reinforce their feeling that they are the natural leaders of the world now and the rest of us should get out of the way while they build their Utopias.
I was at first annoyed by him treating San Francisco as part of Silicon Valley. When I lived there, they were still distinctly separate. But sadly the merger is now almost complete.
I definitely enjoyed reading this. Your mileage may vary.
One of my favorite stories was when he asks some guy for a description of the great new app idea he has thought of. The guys is too scared to give away the secret, so describes it as 'like Angry Birds, but there are no birds and no one is angry.'