Review by Booklist Review
Investigative reporter and Baffler contributor Pein's first book should terrify you. What starts out as an attempt to join the ranks of successful tech entrepreneurs (and write about it) turns into an exposé of Silicon Valley, where investors put millions of dollars into disruptive technology, often with little else than a marketing plan for an undefined product. Pein moves to the West Coast, starts pitching his own ludicrous start-up idea, and begins to uncover the industry's dark underbelly, starting with the insane housing market, which lands him sleeping in a tent for $35 a night. But things take a much darker turn. Pein dedicates a good chunk of the book to a small but vocal faction bent on government destruction and dabbling in alt-right politics and even eugenics. Even scarier, they face little resistance from the larger tech world. Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humor and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Pein travels to San Francisco to expose the seedy underbelly of Silicon Valley culture with its overworked and underpaid drones toiling in a gig-based economy, nightmarish Airbnb rentals, and false narrative of meritocracy. His hunt for affordable housing provokes a discussion of gentrification and exorbitant rents (Pein ends up paying $35/night to sleep in a tent in someones yard). For employment, he experiments with Fiverr, a directory platform where freelancers offer up their services at $5 per task, before attempting to sell his doomed start-up idea, an app for organizing labor unions. Along the way, Pein examines the unethical and often illegal practices of tech industry giants, from Yelp extorting cash from businesses in exchange for the removal of bad reviews to Grouponsdubious accounting practices in the weeks leading up to its IPO. He also directs his ire at the techpress, referring to it asan interchangeable assortment of sycophantic blogs, gee-whiz podcasts, and thinly veiled advertising supplements. Peins analysis of this toxic culture culminates in a trip to Holland for a conference on technological singularity, thephysical and metaphysical merger of humanity and computers believed by many to be in the near future, which, by this point in the book, will strike many readers as a terrifying prospect. Both entertaining and damning, Peins book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be. (Apr.)
Review by Library Journal Review
Investigative reporter Pein recounts his firsthand experiences in the volatile, unpredictable world of Silicon Valley. In 2015, Pein flew to San Francisco and hoped to "have as authentic an entrepreneurial experience as possible without the phony pretense of going 'undercover.'" He takes readers through a journey involving finding a place a live and ending up in a location he called Hacker Condo and rooming with others interested in making it big in Silicon Valley. Pein moved to various other dwellings, most notably renting an Airbnb tent in someone's backyard. He recounts pitching ideas to investors, attending conferences such as DeveloperWeek, and participating in "Startup Weekend" to join in a competition of "startups conceived designed and pitched to a panel of judges." However, his quest for success was not to be, and he concludes that he did not gain "character or status," as it seemed to him "the only winning move in the startup game was not to play." VERDICT Pein's vivid account makes for fascinating reading about Silicon Valley and the tech industry and the often heartbreaking experiences of would-be entrepreneurs/techies struggling to achieve success.-Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Queens, NY © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An on-the-ground look at Silicon Valley and what its power means for the rest of the world.To research his debut nonfiction book, investigative reporter Pein embedded in Silicon Valley to better understand the technology boom that has been underway since the mid-2000s. Alternating between his roles as a journalist and a would-be entrepreneur as it suits his purposes, he penetrates all manner of industry mainstays: hacker houses overcrowded with eager techies, corporate-sponsored meetups, competitions for startup pitches, and conferences celebrating and promoting the singularity. Seemingly everyone the author encounters in his reporting is confident that the future will be vastly differentand vastly betterthan the present. Pein isn't the first to identify the near-religious faith in technology that is so common to the Silicon Valley crowd, but his deeply unsettling portrait of it is enough to trouble even the most committed tech booster. He presents a place that, far from being a utopia of creativity and efficiency, is a lightly disguised confidence game, where valuation is a meaningless concept, incentives are frequently misaligned, and 95 percent of entrepreneurs fail, often because they don't have the insider advantages that the veterans do. Pein identifies a "cutthroat libertarianism" at the core of the Silicon Valley worldview, which accounts for its indifference and, in some cases, hostility toward those people harmed by their practices: "Most people in the industry," he writes, "were convinced that their work was moral because it increased consumer choice and therefore freedom. New technologies were evidence of progress and therefore innately good." For all the social oddities he observes, cringeworthy encounters he experiences, and wit and outrage he levels at his subjects, Pein's real achievement is his willingness to find out how Silicon Valley works and not become distracted by all its shiny objects.A clearheaded reckoning with consequences of the tech industry's disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
