Chaos Monkeys

"Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley": https://goo.gl/bK0Aul

Maybe we should all read this together.

I'm serious. You've got a smartphone, probably a tablet too. The Kindle app is free, you go to Amazon (Amazon won't let you buy the book through the iPhone or iPad app, it doesn't want to cough up 30%), purchase the Kindle version of the book, which is presently $12.99, launch the app on your device and then download the book from your library in the cloud. It's just that easy.

Aaron Ross Sorkin broke the book. You know, the boyish financial columnist in the "New York Times," the one you see on Bill Maher's show on HBO. You should be reading Sorkin, along with Eduardo Porter, the "Times'" other financial reporter, I used to depend on the "Wall Street Journal," but in its dash to cover everything and become the right wing paper of record it's faltered in the financial sphere.

And when Sorkin speaks, people pay attention.

And now there's a buzz on this book.

I'd like to tell you it's highly readable, that it cuts like butter. But Antonio Garcia Martinez is no Michael Lewis. And speaking of Lewis, when you've finished reading this column immediately pull up the "Big Short" movie, it's on Netflix. I'm talking now. Obey me, I'm not getting paid here, it's for your own benefit. The film is the best illustration of herd mentality I've ever seen. Not only do so many have faith in a failed system, even those questioning it have no problem profiting from it. There's fraud in America people, WAKE UP!

But as I was saying, just because you're educated, wrote papers in college, that does not mean you're a good writer. Writing is a developed skill, and Martinez is not quite there yet. Not that he's completely off the mark, Martinez references Shakespeare and so many other things with which I'm unfamiliar. But what keeps me reading is his delineation of the Silicon Valley sphere, I've never read anything like this, ever. He names names, he tells the truth, you might hate his personality but he's brimming with facts, he knows the territory, and you can't believe all this is hiding in plain sight, but it's not. That's the dirty little secret of America, you only see the topsoil, what's beneath is hidden, intentionally, it's the code of silence.

So, unwilling to finish his PhD, Martinez goes to work at Goldman Sachs as a quant. If you don't know what that is, Martinez explains it. he explains everything, yet you still don't quite understand what Martinez is saying half the time, but you get the gist. And that's just the point, they don't want you to know.

His compatriots at Goldman?

They end up fired, in jail.

Michael Lewis started at Salomon Brothers. But he's been removed from the trenches for decades.

Then Martinez answers an ad and goes to work for Adchemy, in Silicon Valley. After revealing the shenanigans at Goldman, the eating contests, the other frat boy behavior.

And there's a lot of drinking at Adchemy. As a matter of fact, Martinez gets stopped for drunk driving right away. But he negotiates his way out. He teaches you how to negotiate from a position of weakness.

That's right kiddies, this is a business book, filled with so much insight you'll feel inadequate. And I'll tell you not to obey the learned rules, just know that experience counts and if you don't play you know nothing, everything you say is theoretical, and you don't know what you don't know, which is death.

Like if only one man at the enterprise is still standing that's a bad sign. What did he do to survive? That's gonna impact you.

And making money is also a bad sign. Because frequently you can do this without customers. Sounds counterintuitive, I know, read the book, you'll get it.

And now I'm at the point of Y Combinator.

Read "Wired" or "Fast Company" and you'll know the name, but you truly have no idea what goes on there. Yes, it's an incubator, but... How do you qualify? Who's in charge? What are they looking for?

And most of what they back bombs. Despite millions going in.

Martinez ends up at Facebook. That's how the book starts. We're so busy lionizing Sheryl Sandberg that we don't see her as a real person. She's just that high-ranking female exec who tells us all to lean in. But she does have a job, and so far it looks like it's being Zuckerberg's gatekeeper. And Zuck lives up to his rep, as being autocratic and idiosyncratic, but he just doesn't have enough time to get down into the weeds.

It's every man for himself in today's world. If you're working for the man and evidencing loyalty you're just a mark waiting to get screwed. Drinking the kool-aid and investing good cash in stock options that will be worthless when the company crashes. Doing favors before those above you squeeze you out.

Let me tell you some of the things I've learned so far...

Your enterprise has to have a leader, you can't be egalitarian. Someone has to plot strategy and make the hard decisions, even if they're wrong. That's the story of bands. If there's no leader, failure or breakup or both is on the horizon.

Pick your partners wisely, you'll spend more time and know them better than your spouse. As the chapter title says..."Like Marriage, but without the F___ing."

Don't start small, Mom & Pop are mercurial and you don't have enough manpower to service them. You can help them and they'll still fire you.

"Dogfooding" means to use your own product, to give the illusion of demand when one may not even exist. It derives from those old Alpo commercials, wherein Lorne Greene's dog eats the product. You've got to know the terminology, otherwise you look like a rube.

As I referenced above... "Never trust the survivor of a massacre until you know what he did to survive." That's from Kurt Vonnegut, there are quotes throughout the book, but the point is when the CEO of the record label is the only one left standing is there opportunity in the offing or death?

"A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions." There you have it folks, from Marcus Aurelius himself, not only is a couch potato not worth much, they're going to hold you back. Hook your star to those with big desires.

Friends are soon enemies. They'll hold your immigration status over your head, quit and they'll report you to the government and have your ass deported.

And I'll give you one of Martinez's lists, full of wisdom:

"Investors are people with more money than time.

Employees are people with more time than money.

Entrepreneurs are simply the seductive go-betweens.

Startups are business experiments performed with other people's money.

Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it.

Company culture is what goes without saying.

There are no real rules, only laws.

Success forgives all sins.

People who leak to you, leak about you.

Meritocracy is the propaganda we use to bless the charade.

Greed and vanity are the twin engines of bourgeois society.

Most managers are incompetent and maintain their jobs via inertia and politics.

Lawsuits are merely expensive feints in a well-scripted conflict narrative between corporate entities.

Capitalism is an amoral farce in which every player - investor, employee, entrepreneur, consumer - is complicit."

Antonio Garcia Martinez is the anti-millennial. One who pooh-poohs the trophy just for participating who is not busy fitting in and being a member of the group.

Forget the celebrity feuds. The truth is the hoi polloi, the weaklings, are so busy getting along that they cannot triumph. The winners have sharp edges. You're not gonna like Martinez, but you are gonna marvel that he was able to play the game and move up the food chain, even if he ultimately got canned at Facebook.

And that's the lion's share of the book and I haven't even gotten there yet, I'm only 18% of the way through.

Want an easy life? Read a thriller, a mystery, go for "Girl On The Train."

Want to learn something, want insight you can get nowhere else, want to see how the world really works? Than read "Chaos Monkeys."

We live in an on demand culture with instant gratification. This book is only a click away.

But you won't take the risk. You hate digital books. You're worried about the $12.99. You'd rather watch Netflix.

Pussy.


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