tl;dr Review:

An attempt at a scathing look at the underbelly of the tech industry, but without any real depth.

Full Review:

Having worked in the tech industry for a few years, there were some parts of this that rang despairngly true. If you want to know the potential flaws of working in tech, then Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Fein is happy to give you the worst case scenario. 

Described by the publisher as follows, the promise of the book held more than the actual tome. 

"A scathing, sardonic exploration of Silicon Valley tech culture, laying bare the greed, hubris, and retrograde politics of an industry that aspires to radically transform society for its own benefit.

At the height of the startup boom, journalist Corey Pein set out for Silicon Valley with little more than a smartphone and his wits. His goal: to learn how such an overhyped industry could possibly sustain itself as long as it has. But to truly understand the delirious reality of the tech entrepreneurs, he knew he would have to inhabit that perspective—he would have to become an entrepreneur himself. Thus Pein begins his journey—skulking through gimmicky tech conferences, pitching his over-the-top business ideas to investors, and rooming with a succession of naive upstart programmers whose entire lives are managed by their employers—who work endlessly and obediently, never thinking to question their place in the system.

In showing us this frantic world, Pein challenges the positive, feel-good self-image that the tech tycoons have crafted—as nerdy and benevolent creators of wealth and opportunity—revealing their self-justifying views and their insidious visions for the future. Vivid and incisive, Live Work Work Work Die is a troubling portrait of a self-obsessed industry bent on imposing its disturbing visions on the rest of us."

Some parts of this description and its corresponding detailing in the book are true.

Is the tech world frantic? Absolutely. Do some of the tech giants give themselves airs of being there to better society, when in fact (cough*Facebook*cough) they may be doing more harm then good? 100%. Are the lives of those who were in San Francisco and Silicon Valley long before the tech boom despairing of these upstarts and what they've done to their cities? Sure. Is it super bro-y and white and about who you know? Yup.

But is the entire tech world rife with evil and nefarious characters out to do us all harm? No.

And that's where this book starts to veer into the slightly ridiculous. If you go in looking for major flaws in the system, of course you will find them. But are many of these problems (lack of diversity, male dominated, over-worked underlings, frantic pace, etc) unique to tech? Not at all. Look at banking and Wall Street and various other industries for plenty of examples.

I'd even go so far as to say I feel like there are far more evil characters in the financial industry than in the tech one. 

So while I appreciate some of his discussion of the flaws of tech, I can't get behind his view that it's the monster he paints it to be.

I give this book 2 out of 5 thumbs up.

Argh, I wanted to like this book more, as I identify strongly with the title sentiment. "THINGS ARE BAD AND WE ARE DOOMED." Whew, really? Great! And here I thought I was just doing something wrong. It's reassuring to read that the people who are supposed to be doing it right-- making apps, working for big companies with cool office spaces, super plugged into all the things, and working 24/7-- are pursuing a delusional path to success that is unlikely to pay off.

Unfortunately, the book quickly devolves into a stunt-filled snarkfest that throws the author's previous assertions into a more suspicious light. We have a full review on Midnight Skull Sessions episode 100. But in short, anyone already interested in this area of the job market is unlikely to learn anything from this book that they haven't read on the Internet.

The book shows corporate greed, special interest groups, lack of innovation, blatant dodging of laws and worker rights in the Silicon Valley. It starts out witty and intelligent but quickly veers off into an endless, insufferable rant. I don't see why the author has to be so angry at business models used for technology / world wide web, that have been successfully used for every industry before. He also has a paranoid way of looking at the power of internet billionaires (like they are anti-people, out to get us, some kind of alien species to enslave us!). It got weird after a while.

The part about India's demonetization and Paytm was revelatory.

I struggled with a rating for this book that I received from NetGalley. This isn't my usual type of book so I'm not sure what to think of it, I may not be the right audience. It is a frequently disturbing explanation of many of the political forces at work in the tech industry. The author gives sinister motives to some companies that I wouldn't entirely agree with. But this certainly game me pause to realize how many misogynistic, racist self proclaimed geniuses were running our largest companies.

The description of this book calls it scathing and that is certainly apt. Corey Pein seems to truly despise his subject matter. The book begins as the story of another person seeking to make it big in Silicon Valley. In many ways Silicon Valley has replaced Hollywood or New York City as the place young people go to make it big. Instead of dreaming of being the next big movie or Broadway star, now people want to be the next Zuckerberg or Musk. Pein starts as another aspirant, crammed into Bay Area Airbnbs with coders, engineers, and dreamers. Pein doesn’t really have an idea other than to tap into California’s latest gold rush. The whole experience leaves him so embittered that the second half of the book has him blaming the startup world for a variety of ills and indeed for tearing the very fabric of civilization. Pein is a talented and funny writer but his portrait of Silicon Valley culture is without nuance, an Upton Sinclair for our times.