Jonathan Arnold reviewed Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez
"The industry provocateur behind such companies as Twitter and a nascent Facebook presents an irreverent …
Review of 'Chaos Monkeys' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This book tells the autobiographical story of a Goldman & Sachs worker bee who headed to the shores of California, looking for some entrepreneurial gold. After working for a small startup, he founded his own, then sold it to Twitter and went to work for Facebook fairly early on (like around 2011). In Chaos Monkeys, he tells the story of getting involved in Y Combinator, how to work a startup, and how crazy Facebook is. All in all, a pretty entertaining read, with 2 major caveats:
1] The macho factor is set to stun. While he is candid about his shortcomings, he still tends to objectify women too much. Which, sadly, makes it even more accurate.
2] My distaste for working for giant companies remains intact. As a developer, I just don't know how you can do it. Towards the end of the book, he mentions how a big tech company becomes a sort of Peter Principle of tech, especially when it comes to middle management. Anyone with any drive has long left, so it is mostly just managers trying to solidify their fiefdoms. Not for me, thank you very much.
But if you're looking for an honest, searing and quite funny dissection of the Silicon Valley tech scene, you need go no further!