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I‘m divided on this one. An insider account of various startup and Silicon Valley situations appeals to me, and there‘s a walk-on by Paul Graham, whom I know slightly and whose work I know well. But the style, voice and content are that of a world-class, and only half self-aware asshole.

If you are interested in tech and/or the Silicon Valley startup scene, and if you can resist throwing the douchebag out with the bath water, this is worth the read. There really was a lot of douchebaggery to look past, but getting to look behind the curtains at Y Combinator and Facebook kept me reading. Yep, I'm a #geekgirl 😊👍

I was curious to read this 'insider account' of Silicon Valley, but the author comes across as an arrogant schmuck, the writing is not great, and it reads more like a 500 page bloated boast, of which I lasted about 45.

I'm reading this for the #ReadHarder challenge - a book about technology - but with passages like this I might have to bail soon. 😣

Started reading this just before Susan Fowler's infamous blog post about her time at Uber became public. Then all I could notice was the misogynistic behaviour of the author of this book, and couldn't stomach finishing it.

One part memoir, one part explanatory journalism. Also, two halves: first chronicles the story of a tech startup, which is interesting if you can get past all the testosterone soaked hypermasculinity of overcompensating geeks (all male of course). Second half describes the all-consuming, never-ending quest to monetize Facebook. Basically smart young men trading a few (or more) years of soul-crushing work for a chance at obscene fortune. Meh.

Want to know why all the photos in demonstrations of software intended to filter out obscene pics posted to Facebook were of kittens? Because there were no women on FB's software development team!

Want to know which is the most expensive word in the English language? Around 2011 or so, and probably still up to this day, The priciest word in this global auction on words was mesothelioma. Want to screw a slimy lawyer? Google 'mesothelioma' and start randomly clicking on the ads that appear. You're costing a lawyer almost a whole Benjamin every time you do that.

Too simple, maybe?

A little too detailed for my taste, but I might give this look at #SiliconValley #startups a try as an audiobook. #Harper

#epigraph #AdamSmith

Key for startups - it helps to have enemies.

Want to know which is the most expensive word in the English language? Around 2011 or so, and probably still to this day, the priciest word in the global auction on words was "mesothelioma"... Thanks to a series of class-action lawsuits against former factory owners, filed by plaintiffs' attorneys who make fortunes on contingency fees, the value of this word was bid up as high as $90 per click.

With some unnecessary exposition and slow first chapters (so many unnecessary footnotes), it was a slog at first but picks up steam as the author moves from Goldman Sachs to Silicon Valley. With raw honesty, a good dollop of cynicism, and self-admitted hubris, the author tells the true inside story of the Valley, one that very few in this book want revealed. Read it for the Valley gossip and a look inside the machinery of the start-up scene.

Having grown up in Silicon Valley and worked for big tech and start ups, I can vouch for the sheer madness that Antonio writes about during his time at Y Combinator, selling his start up AdGrok ( which I remember) and his time at Facebook building FBX. It's way more cerebral than the recently released Disrupted. As with all CEOs, there's a twinge of ego infused rhetoric which can be annoying. But overall his historical parallels are entertaining.

A chaos monkey is a software tool created by Netflix that tests a server's resiliency against random failures. Imagine a monkey in your server farm unplugging cables and smashing server boxes....

Thus, many markets were and are inefficient, because that inefficiency is very profitable to those running the market, even if only in the short-term picture. As I would eventually see, Wall Street and Silicon Valkey possess surprising parallels.

Great look inside startups that we rarely get to see.