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“Most startups,” [Dan Lyons] writes, “are terribly managed, half-assed outfits run by buffoons and bozos and frat boys.”
Link information
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- Title
- An entertaining polemic against the tech industry
- Published
- Jan 17 2019
- Word count
- 603 words
I read this one a few weeks ago. Just to put my bias on the table, I've been aware of Dan Lyons since the mid-2000s, and have always thought of him as a person who excels at telling people what they want to hear -- "excels" in that there's always just enough new information, or enough contrarianism, to give the impression of adding something new to the discussion (Usually. In 2010 he learned the word "fanboy", and his writing really took a dive for a few years). From Forbes, to Fake Steve Jobs, to Newsweek, to Silicon Valley, to his Breitbart pitches (which his career seems to have weathered through intense groveling), that low-insight style never fails to make me go "Oh, Dan Lyons wrote this? So that's what he's been up to." Like automotive journalism's Jack Baruth, Lyons quite plainly thinks of himself as a raconteur, but is wise enough to know that specifically identifying himself as one is an invitation for a punch in the mouth from those around him.
So, Lab Rats. It has lots of information you probably didn't need, backed up by new interviews. It's not badly written. It is the book which will finally expose Silicon Valley's malevolent workplace culture to those who don't know that open-plan offices suck ass, to those who thought Amazon's warehouses were well-ventilated meritocratic bouncy castles, and to those who put all of their money into Snapchat's IPO. It tells me what I knew, and makes insight-free suggestions with which I already agreed. It continues Lyons' weird habit of writing about "techies and geeks", as if he just wandered into 2015-2018 Mountain View, bindle in hand, from an 1960s Iowa road crew. Like all of Dan Lyons' writing, I hate it but cannot satisfactorily explain why.
I think you just did. The combination of adding nothing to the discourse and the "well duh" simplicity of the message being delivered.
Of course, this is your perspective as an insider to the situation at hand. I wonder if part of the reason you hate him is that you don't find any use out of what he writes, but someone entirely unfamiliar with the tech sector might.
Mm, it's not the utility per se. There's nothing wrong with writing for a general audience (so I definitely didn't satisfactorily explain why, ha). I think it might instead be that I find something exploitative about his body of work. It always seems like he's ready with an "other" for his audience. When he's on CNN or MSNBC, he's opining about the geeks and their computer-lust; when he's writing for Silicon Valley there's jokes about bros and VCs (but if you're a VC, he's happy to give a talk at your event for $40,000). And when he's emailing Milo Yiannopoulos, he merrily wonders whether Zoe Quinn was born a woman.
I find that particularly frustrating because he tends to do this with a vibe like he's revealing a great insight about that "other" to his chosen audience. So maybe a better way for me to state it is that it's not particularly that his writing doesn't add to the discourse, but more that (my impression is) he seems to be very willing to exploit one subject in order to find acceptance for little-insight writing with other audiences. In that Yiannopoulos instance, I don't bring it up to suggest that Lyons is an alt-rightist, or even vaguely misogynist -- I don't think that. I think he decided that utilizing that language, and that "other", for that audience, was a career opportunity.
Or, to put it more simply, I guess I get the sense that he's always casting his legs about for someone to stand on in service of getting a boost, rather than relying on insight or ethic.
From reading your description that makes him seem like a grifter, I had hoped The Economist would be a little bit more discerning in why they'd advertise, but I guess I got taken for a ride.
I won't delete the thread because I think your comments are informative enough to justify leaving it up.
Ah, now I see the real issue with his writing. In isolation, the book is pretty good, a page-turner, I bought it recently and I'm almost through it and I think it has some good points and feels more approachable. However, when you put it into context like that...I'm not very happy that I contributed to his net worth with the purchase of the book -_-'
In other words; he moves the dial however slightly in the public opinions/ideas forum. Which is still somewhat valuable when there are books dooming and glooming about a world full of AI and robots or the books that suggest only universal basic income is the answer. The book is just a small step in a better direction; annoying if you already know what's going on, but still valuable to the general public (and the book reads well and is approachable).
Full text for those hitting the paywall: https://outline.com/sttd4U
This book is also good and along this vein: https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Jobs-Theory-David-Graeber/dp/150114331X
It's funny to see what gets stocked at bookstores, I was only able to find ONE copy of "Bullshit Jobs" whereas all other books on capitalism, economics, business, self-help have multiple copies hanging around.
Also thanks, I was trying very hard to avoid buying new books but this book looks incredible!
Can confirm this at multiple "startups". The worst are those that come up with company values like "take ownership" or "be accountable" but do not offer equity or stock options or profit sharing or any real semblance of ownership and treat workers as just workers. Class consciousness apparently is only the domain of owners.
Which of the humanities - language, religion, philosophy, history, the arts - is this related to? I want to tag it accordingly. (I can't read the article to find out for myself.)
I suppose economics? Even that doesn't feel totally correct, it's hard to say where exactly between psychology, sociology, and economics meditations on workplace culture should land.
Well, psychology, sociology, and economics are all social sciences - which I've been posting/moving to ~science, until we get groups to separate the natural sciences from the social sciences.
However, if this is a discussion of workplace culture, maybe it belongs in ~life, where people discuss careers and workplaces (among other things).
I'd be happy to. I had moved it to ~science just out of reflex, when @clerical_terrors said it was about a few social sciences. But I was also considering whether ~tech would be a better home, given that it's discussing the tech industry.
Done.
This would kind of put political science and political theory in an awkward position. It is generally categorized as a social science--along with economics, sociology, and anthropology--where it draws a lot of background information from, but it tends to straddle the line and draw from history and philosophy as well, which are firmly in the humanities.
Interdisciplinary fields are always odd ducks, though, so there's always going to be some awkward tradeoffs involved with firm categorizations.
In terms of what faculty in a university it would belong to, 'business' is its own discipline, which has economics, econometrics/business analytics/BIS, finance, accounting, entrepreneurship, management, logistics, marketing, industrial relations, and banking.
Psychology and sociology are some of those funny schools where the vast majority of people practising them never set foot in the school named that. Same with philosophy and more recently maths.
Business schools are more like a trade-school for administrative/managerial professionals. But they don't actually teach you much about broader economic policy, workplace culture, or the politics of labor. That scholarship is usually done by specialized economists and historians.
In all universities I've been involved with in Australia, the school of economics is run by the business school or faculty.
Ah it’s different in the US. Business schools are often separate departments with their own faculty and funding.
Separate to what? They're separate here too, it's just they include economics as a subset of business, the same way history is a subset of arts and civil is a subset of engineering.
I don’t understand your question. They’re separate departments as in, separate from each other. A university’s business school will be as administratively distinct from its economics department as the physics department is from math.
Econ programs are generally focused on minting PhD economists while the business school is primarily focused on cranking out MBAs. They’ll have economics classes, but so do political scientists. It’s still a different program.
Can I read this without signing up?
https://outline.com/sttd4U