Book Review: Disrupted, by Dan Lyons
People in Limerick like to point out that Angela’s Ashes is more a story of Frank McCourt’s life in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic father than it is about growing up in the Ireland of the 1930s. I’d like to point out that Dan Lyons has written more of a story about one dysfunctional and bizarre company in Boston than any ‘trenchant analysis of the start-up world’ in general.
I can claim to know what I speak of, since I’ve spent my entire career in Silicon Valley and I’m a good decade older than Dan, working in a company where many, but not all, of the employees are half my age. There’s nothing remotely similar to his experiences at HubSpot in the various marketing departments I’ve worked in.
How the mighty have fallen
Perhaps because I did not come from as a rarefied an environment as he did working for Pulitzer Prize winners and interviewing Bill Gates, I’ve never been discombobulated by the generational differences that keep Dan awake at night.
Unlike Dan, I walk to work every day past the Salesforce Tower without thinking of Marc Benioff’s genitalia.
I can converse with younger workers who are the age of my own kids without feeling demeaned by the experience.
I take pride in writing blog postings and managing social media (despite my advanced age…) for the various organizations I’ve worked for.
Bursting the bubble
That said, Lyons does get it right in his broader analysis of the tech world, specifically his telling critique of the well-funded software start-ups that are currently burning through the VC’s cash with abandon. Just this morning I heard a radio program about the dozens and dozens of new companies offering Parking Apps. How many will be around a year from now? These may well become the poster children for the coming collapse of the new tech companies just as pets.com and others were for the first dot-com bust.
Ageism in the software industry
Likewise, he’s got a point about ageism in tech. After all, Mark Zukerberg did say that young people are just smarter and the thin disguise of hiring for ‘cultural fit’ often results in clones of the founders filling the cubes. But just as guilty are the recruiters for trading floors and venture capital companies.
Vaporware
At the end of the day it’s obvious that Lyons was happier vaping cannabis oil on the west coast than eating humble pie back east. He’s one of the gang on the Sony lot in Culver City working with a team that he admits engaged in ‘trading the worst poop-related stories we’ve ever heard, and pitching jokes about enormous cocks’. One can only wonder if the culture shock he experienced at HubSpot would pale in comparison to someone whose not pickled in the same journalistic brine that formed him trying to hold their own in that environment.
Perhaps the best solution would have been for him to bond over a bong with the youngsters in the start-up, ensuring a mellow time for one and all.
3 Comments so far
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Haha – what was it he said about Mark Benioff’s genitalia?
By Matt Pocock on 04.28.16 12:45 am
Now that would be telling Matt! You’ll have to read the book to find out 🙂
By Ian on 04.28.16 8:35 am
Mark Nichols has written in ‘The Modern Team’ about Dan Lyons’ book. In We’re Way Too Nice At Work he notes that the bizarrely ‘nice’ way Hubspot ‘graduates’ (i.e. fires) people implies that:
By Ian on 05.05.16 11:38 am
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