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Title: 21 Dog Years : Doing Time @ Amazon.com by Mike Daisey ISBN: 0-7432-2580-5 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 17 June, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.7 (53 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Life in the Stupidly Fast Lane
Comment: Mike Daisey has a gift for taking perfectly ridiculous situations that he found himself in the middle of and making them not just humorous but side-splittingly funny. I've seen the play on which this book was based, and the book isn't a transcription. In fact, it's an entirely new level: it's a love story. Well, two love stories. One of the love stories is about him and his now-wife, and her sensible, grounded, occasionally wild-party animal advice and behavior. The other love story is about a crush on a company and its founder (well, this company that you're reading the review on).
The book waxes and wanes both love stories, though you know he's going to wind up with the girl, not the stock options and the guy.
I worked at Amazon.com before Mike's tenure, and I recognize many of the portraits in the book. I left before I lost my soul to overwork; the corporate culture was a thing of beauty when I was there. I still work for a living, and Mike works incredibly hard to turn the grist he got during the height of dotcom insanity into a beautiful set of life lessons that, hopefully, we'll all take to heart. I know I did and still do.
Rating: 3
Summary: Good News and Bad News
Comment: There's good news and bad news about this book. The good news is that Daisey will make you laugh out loud reading his anecdotes and descriptions about his life as a customer service rep, low on the totem pole, at amazon. Amazon told the employment agencies to "send us your freaks" with almost predictable mayhem to follow. You'll probably enjoy his descriptions of cubicle life more than his bragging how drunk he gets, but he tells a great story nevertheless.
The bad news is his sophomoric, leftist rant on amazon and capitalism in general. His lengthy letter to CEO Jeff Bezos is particularly mean-spirited and lacks any depth of analysis. He actually laments not joining the WTO protests in Seattle because he chose to work. His most amazing claim is that the "Boomers control everything." Now THAT'S funny, though he didn't mean it to be.
Daisey managed to sell his stock and get out while amazon was riding high, after which he immediately criticizes the dot.com bust, almost as if he's laughing at those who held on. He is just so SMART to be a self-proclaimed slacker! He also has something bad to say about nearly everyone, coworkers and managers alike, including their physical attributes. Daisey is a very funny guy, but he needs to grow up. ...
Rating: 3
Summary: A humourous & "philosophical" dot-com-mentary of sorts
Comment: I was close to putting down this book before I got to the middle of it, but something kept calling me back to it, as odd as it may sound. I was actually very entertained by the few opening pages, since Daisey sure has an odd way of 'knowing' himself and making fun of how (much of a slacker) he is and how he's gone about life so far being that way. Something else that caught me were his ficticious e-mails to Amazon's head, Jeff Bezos, which are a consistent way he has to wrap up every chapter in the book.
Granted that he keeps on bring in new "characters" into the story (he actually seems pretty good at disclosing when he's talking about a real person -his BizDev boss, Employee #5, for example- as opposed to when he's aggregating traits from several different characters into one, as a literary license -his peer Cody, for instance), the problem with the book is that his humorous style starts getting old after a few chapters. So, you can see how, when I was close to the middle, the book felt quite heavy. Yet I stuck with it. While I don't feel particularly fond (or sorry) that I did finish it (it is not like a lifechanging book, if you must know), I did find a couple of things of value beyond the sheer fun he insists on making of Amazon:
1) Regardless of what company you work for, it is not healthy to idealize them. All companies (like the people they're made up of), even the best ones have flaws, which makes any idealization of them a flawed process, destined to disilussion those who can't deal with anything but perfection from their "idols".
2) What goes around, comes around. The author (apparently) tried to go against what he truly was, in trying to be corporate, and it bit him back, because he was a slacker at heart, and as much as he satirized the company's behavior, his was no example to be followed. Simply put, no "wrong" deeds by an employer justify a wrong response by an employee. Still, it took him 21 dog years (3 human years) to realize he was just in the wrong place to start with: good for him that he left!
All in all, a book to read in little chunks or in one sitting. Not a source of overwhelming wisdom or a source of endless laughter, but a quite humourous & "philosophical" dot-com-mentary of sorts. A straight-up 3-star book.
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Title: Amazon.com: Get Big Fast by Robert Spector ISBN: 0066620422 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 22 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: 21 Dog Years : A Cube Dweller's Tale by Mike Daisey ISBN: 074323815X Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: F'd Companies: Spectacular Dot-Com Flameouts by Philip J. Kaplan ISBN: 0743228626 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Perfect Store: Inside eBay by Adam Cohen ISBN: 0316164933 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 03 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Dot.con : How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era by John Cassidy ISBN: 0060008814 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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