Nov 17, 2000 12:53 PM
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The title of this book can be deceptive. The first time I came across a review on this book was on a Sunday last December in the New York Times. At first glance, I thought it was again one of those wacky books with a focus on the sexual lives of Americans. Times passed by and I never picked a copy. Past July, I decided to buy this book…ordered it from our friendly Crossroads in Mumbai…they delivered it at home free of any delivery cost…hey Amazon, are you reading this.
Well the next few days, I immersed myself in this interesting piece of literature…hahaha; can I call it memoir…investigative? Expose…it's all compressed in one.
The central idea of the book is to present to the readers a bird's eye-view of how Silicon Valley operates. Who are the people who are defining next generation technology? Bronson's style of writing has always impressed me and this book is no different. He mentions stories of Sabir Bhatia, of how the founder of Yahoo would sleep under his desk after putting in 36 hours non-stop at work, even today!!!
This bestseller is divided into 7 chapters. Each chapter has a central character. And these are like the microcosm of the Valley--as it is known in the United States. So it has a chapter called the New Comer, The IPO…The Entrepreneur, The invincible Programmer, The irritating but humble Salespeople, the big mouth Futurist and ofcourse the billionaire dropouts.
After reading this book, a reader will have a clear idea of how cut-throat it is in the valley. Of how difficult it is to establish something in the technology world, dominated by people who are 500 times brighter than you are…and who work 104% more than you do.
It gives you a perspective of what it takes to build world class companies and what is it that motivates people to put in 19hour work days even after accumulating $750million in their bank accounts.
I would recommend this book to ANYBODY who aspires to be SOMEBODY in the IT world of tomorrow.
BTW, The title of the book is also mentioned in one of the chapters…it's about a programmer who would strip himself of all clothing after all the employees of his company were gone and then continue programming.
