What do you think?
Rate this book
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Liar’s Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent exposé of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio García Martínez, a former Twitter advisor, Facebook product manager and startup founder/CEO.
The reality is, Silicon Valley capitalism is very simple:
Investors are people with more money than time.
Employees are people with more time than money.
Entrepreneurs are the seductive go-between.
Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it.
Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a datacenter powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this “chaos monkey” to test online services’ robustness—their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and lodging (AirBnB) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder). One of Silicon Valley’s most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.
After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook’s nascent advertising team, turning its users’ data into profit for COO Sheryl Sandberg and chairman and CEO Mark “Zuck” Zuckerberg. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company’s monetization strategy, García Martínez eventually landed at rival Twitter. He also fathered two children with a woman he barely knew, committed lewd acts and brewed illegal beer on the Facebook campus (accidentally flooding Zuckerberg's desk), lived on a sailboat, raced sport cars on the 101, and enthusiastically pursued the life of an overpaid Silicon Valley wastrel.
Now, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future. Weighing in on everything from startups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital “privacy,” García Martínez shares his scathing observations and outrageous antics, taking us on a humorous, subversive tour of the fascinatingly insular tech industry. Chaos Monkeys lays bare the hijinks, trade secrets, and power plays of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths, opportunists, accidental tourists, and money cowboys who are revolutionizing our world. The question is, will we survive?
The reality is, Silicon Valley capitalism is very simple:
Investors are people with more money than time.
Employees are people with more time than money.
Entrepreneurs are the seductive go-between.
Marketing is like sex: only losers pay for it.
Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a datacenter powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this “chaos monkey” to test online services’ robustness—their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, disruptors testing and transforming every aspect of our lives, from transportation (Uber) and lodging (AirBnB) to television (Netflix) and dating (Tinder). One of Silicon Valley’s most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.
After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook’s nascent advertising team, turning its users’ data into profit for COO Sheryl Sandberg and chairman and CEO Mark “Zuck” Zuckerberg. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company’s monetization strategy, García Martínez eventually landed at rival Twitter. He also fathered two children with a woman he barely knew, committed lewd acts and brewed illegal beer on the Facebook campus (accidentally flooding Zuckerberg's desk), lived on a sailboat, raced sport cars on the 101, and enthusiastically pursued the life of an overpaid Silicon Valley wastrel.
Now, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future. Weighing in on everything from startups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital “privacy,” García Martínez shares his scathing observations and outrageous antics, taking us on a humorous, subversive tour of the fascinatingly insular tech industry. Chaos Monkeys lays bare the hijinks, trade secrets, and power plays of the visionaries, grunts, sociopaths, opportunists, accidental tourists, and money cowboys who are revolutionizing our world. The question is, will we survive?
528 pages, Hardcover
First published June 28, 2016
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,236 reviews
August 15, 2024
…technology entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys, pulling the plug on everything from taxi medallions (Uber) to traditional hotels (AirBnB) to dating (Tinder). One industry after another is simply knocked out via venture-backed entrepreneurial daring and hastily shipped software. Silicon Valley is the zoo where the chaos monkeys are kept, and their numbers only grow in time. With the explosion of venture capital, there is no shortage of bananas to feed them. The question for society is whether it can survive these entrepreneurial chaos monkeys intact, and at what human cost.If you want to learn about sex you will get a lot more useful intel from a hooker than you would from a nun (hopefully). If you want to learn about what life is like in Silicon Valley, you would do well to let to someone who has done the deed and lived the life show you the way. Antonio Garcia Martinez is our Virgil through a dark landscape where every great fortune is founded on a great crime, where morality is not only violated, but where its very existence is not recognized, where millionaires are a dime a dozen and where any sort of social consciousness is kept nicely sedated, a place where greed is king, fast is worshipped to the exclusion of better, and death is always at the door.
Antonio Garcia Martinez - from Money.cnn.com
Martinez has the cred to offer the tour. Having toiled as a quant at that paragon of virtue, Goldman Sachs, he eventually found life on The Street less than fully rewarding. He says that quants at Goldman were
mostly failed scientists like me who had sold out to the man and suddenly found themselves, after making it through years of advanced relativity and quantum mechanics, with a golf-club-wielding gorilla called a trader peering over their shoulder asking them where their risk report was. We were quantitative enablers, offering the new and shiny blessings of modern computation to the old business of buying and selling… quants were the eunuchs at the orgy. The fluffers on the porn set of high finance. We were the ever-present British guy in every Hollywood World War II film: there to add a touch of class and exotic sophistication, but not really consequential to the plot (except perhaps to conveniently take some bad guy’s bullet.)As someone with pretty high end analytical and programming skills, he saw (or says he saw, who knows?) the impending meltdown in the 2007 financial world, and opportunities in the new frontier out west, so traded The Street for The Valley, taking a chance on a job on the other coast.
The book follows Garcia’s chronological trail from startup to finish, from employee to entrepreneur, to buy-out target, to middle-manager at a monster Valley corporation to…well, you’ll see, if you read the book, or just Google the guy. It is a well-worn trail, but not for you or me, most likely. So a tour guide is definitely called for. And Martinez is nothing if not an informative and eager cicerone through what can be a very dark and sulphurous place. Of course, there is plenty of that brimstone stench emanating from the author, an indication of just how well he fit in.
anyone who claims the Valley is meritocratic is someone who has profited vastly from it via nonmeritocratic means like happenstance, membership in a privileged cohort, or some concealed act of skullduggery. Since fortune had never been on my side, and I had no privileged cohort to fall back on, skullduggery it would have to be.It does not seem like it was out of character for AGM to engage in a bit of back-stabbing, double-dealing, and multiple instances of self-serving justification for his various dark deeds. When he talks about his income and net worth, for instance, which would be a pretty sweet take for most of us, yet regarding it as subsistence level, one might be forgiven for gleefully imagining Martinez in his thirty-seven-foot sailboat having a very unfriendly encounter with a pod of large, angry, breaching sperm whales.
He offers an entertaining, if sometimes off-putting, alarming, even rage-inducing account of his experiences, offering many a word to the wise, or at least the ambitious, on how deals are made, how organizations are structured, and how to interpret some of the observables you might see. He is incisive and funny, and has a wicked way with words. I have added a selection of quotes as part of the EXTRA STUFF bit at the bottom of the review. You will definitely see what I mean. And he demonstrates quite a gift for selecting absolutely fabulous quotes to introduce most chapters.
Martinez covers the highs and lows of the struggle to rise up in The Valley. This includes the ABCs of doing a startup, getting funding, how to divide your equity for the most efficient operation, handling media to get the most buzz for your launch, researching the people you will be dealing with, and, if things go well, negotiating with the bigger blobs that want to absorb your company. One revelation was that acquisition of startups by the big players is just a higher-ticket form of HR recruiting.
There are worse ways of monetizing sociopathy than startups. If you know any better ways, I’m listening.For policy wonks, you will learn about the H-1B sort-of immigration program that brings thousand of foreign workers to American jobs in a form of high-end indentured servitude.
Martinez offers a peek inside the operations of Twitter and Facebook, which is either entertaining or depressing, depending. But every company has its own culture, and AGM has a keen eye for the differences, and an analyst’s talent for examining structure. His take on large corporations functioning like nation-states, to the point of exchanging what are essentially diplomats, adds definite texture to the notion of corporations as the trans-national entities they truly are. Worse, he points out not only how corporations are like religion, but how, in that, they are very like the cult-world of some communist nations.
There are a few things that made this less than an entirely effervescent read. First, while part of his story line was how he worked towards installing a particular form of ad-revenue generation at FB, the details tended to get in the way of the overall picture. Office politics are nothing new, even in this bubbly narrative. Second, while AGM is obviously an uber-bright guy, with a keen mind for some things, and a talent for writing, he comes across as (and probably is) someone with the soul of a slave-trader. If you can hold your nose at his unnecessary tales of sexual adventure, his willingness to endanger the lives of regular folks with childish antics, and his casual acquaintance with ethical standards, there is much to be gleaned in Chaos Monkeys. It is a look at the sausage factory, a peep-show of how
Review Posted - August 19, 2016
Publication date – June 28, 2016
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
August 24, 2016 - A really interesting NY Times Magazine article on how FB has become a very large kahuna in the delivery of political ads - Inside Facebook’s (Totally Insane, Unintentionally Gigantic, Hyperpartisan) Political-Media Machine - by John Hermann
==================================QUOTES
-----196 - humans, even at the rarified heights of the economic elite, are in truth scared, needy children playing at dress-up and pretending to be grown-ups.
-----324 - Here’s what people don’t understand about advertising. Facebook is simply a routing system, almost like an old-time telephone exchange, that delivers a message for money. The address on that message can be approximate (e.g. males aged thirty five in Ohio), or it can be specific (e.g., the person who just shopped for a specific pair of shoes on Zappos). But either way, Facebook didn’t make the match of user and messenger, and at most decides secondary things like how often the ad is seen in general, or which of two ads addressed to you is seen that particular instant. In this sense, ads on Facebook are no different from phone calls or emails.
-----355 - At their extremes, capitalism and communism become equivalent:
Endless toil motivated by lapidary ideals handed down by a revered and unquestioned leader, and put into practice by a leadership caste selected for its adherence to aforementioned principles, and richly rewarded for its willingness to grind whatever human grist the mill required?
Same in both
A (mostly) pliant media that flatters the existing system of production, framing it as the only such system possible?
Check!
Foot soldiers who sacrifice their families and personal lives for the efficient running of the system, and who view their sole human value through the prism of advancement within that system?
Welcome to the People’s Republic of Facebook.
But one can simply quit a job in capitalism, while from communism there is no escape, you’ll protest.
As for the actual ability to opt out under capitalism: look at Seattle or SF real estate prices, and the cost of a decent US education, and consider whether Amazon or Facebook employees could really opt out of their treadmill I’ve never known one who did, and I’ve known many.
Ask your average family providers, even those in a two-income family, whether they felt they could simply quit when they liked. They could barely get a few weeks off when they had a child, much less opt out. Switching jobs would amount to nothing more than changing the color of the shackles.
... The reality is that capitalism, communism and every other sweeping ideology feed off the same human drives—the founder’s or revolutionary’s narcissistic will to power, and the mass man’s desire to be part of something bigger than himself—even if with very different outcomes...yoking together the monomaniac’s twitchy urge and the follower’s hunger for a role in some captivating story.
-----359 – What was intriguing was how the unwealthy embraced the system, even if they weren’t the beneficiaries of this new social order we’d all joined. The junior hire was sucked along by enthusiasm and cluelessness, but the more senior employees at the middle-manager level knew the score. They knew that they lived one lifestyle, but their old-timer supervisor, who wasn’t necessarily more talented, lived very much another.
This was a textbook case of the Marxist argument that capitalists instill the values of the property owners into their managerial classes, while still keeping most of the fruits of labor, in order to make common cause against the exploited proletariat, even though manager and worker have more in common than either does with the senior leadership.
July 8, 2016
The title is a little misleading. It really is one guys story about building his company, selling it to Twitter and then working at Facebook. Full of stories of egomaniacs and hubris - from the author and the characters he works for. Not a great statement of humanity's progress, not inspirational, not really a story with a reason to be told other than to garner more media to inflate an enormous ego. So the cycle goes. If you are really interested in a great book on the building of a company, read Hatching Twitter - it wasn't written by the founder and is SO entertaining and enlightening. This book wasn't either.
July 21, 2016
Pretentious, pseudo-intellectual misogynist pontificates about his theories on tech business, society, and capitalism while sneering at every other human with Olympian contempt and making unacceptable sexist comments about women for about 500 pages.
Had he not insisted on cultivating such an insufferable persona for the narrative, the book would have been better as he does give some interesting information on the tech world and the people and companies involved in it.
Had he not insisted on cultivating such an insufferable persona for the narrative, the book would have been better as he does give some interesting information on the tech world and the people and companies involved in it.
July 27, 2023
I’m not a techie - I use a minimal amount of my smartphone’s many capabilities and survived the introduction of major technology into my chosen career with a bit of luck and much help from friends and colleagues – but I am interested in the business of technology. That’s to say, how the introduction of electronic technology has transformed industries I’ve known and worked in and how it has introduced new businesses I couldn’t have dreamt of when I began my working life. I know (or knew) little about Silicon Valley, other than an awareness that it’s the home of mega-companies such as Facebook, Google and Apple. So this ‘insider’ exposé, from a man who had worked his way up the ladder from launching his own start-up company to holding a prominent role at Facebook, seemed like the ideal place to commence my education.
Antonio Garcia Martinez quit his PhD studies in Physics to earn some lucre working for Goldman Sachs. His job was to model prices for credit derivatives (he explained this but I’d have to say it flew way over my head). After becoming disillusioned with banking he used his skill set to set up a new technology company in the field of advertising and after it’s sale to Twitter he took up a role within the Facebook hierarchy. By this stage he’d developed some expertise in linking data streams (e.g. Facebook’s own knowledge of it’s members and their personal internet browsing history) with which he hoped to leverage monetisation of the business through the improved ability to supply a more focused advertising approach. Well, that’s my own interpretation/understanding of what he was trying to achieve – in truth, one downside of this book is that there is a lot of technical language here with dozens of acronyms thrown in for good measure and consequently I’m sure his own one-liner on this would be much more colourful.
Aside from this, there is a good deal of interesting insight here. For instance, how new technology businesses are typically funded and how the entrepreneurs are ultimately rewarded for their efforts is explained in some detail. Also, the way in which online advertising has become increasingly targeted to individuals is brought to life. This is good stuff and it’s interspersed with the account of the author’s own life and experiences, though there’s not a lot on Martinez’s life outside of work simply because there wasn’t much life outside of his work. It’s clear that if you’re going to be a success in Silicon Valley then work is your life! There are some humorous moments too, but in truth these are few and far between.
Possibly the most interesting section for me was where he lifted the lid on the culture inside of Facebook. For instance, I didn’t know that meals were (and maybe still are) provided free to all workers - either as purely benevolent act on the part of the company or possibly to remove a reason for workers to head home or outside of the workplace for their next refuelling stop. And in the eager push to land new projects mantras such as ‘done is better than good’ and ‘perfect is the enemy of good’ were thrown about with abandon.
Overall I enjoyed my time with this book. I do think that the tech-savvy reader/listener will extract more than I was able from this account but there was certainly enough here for non-techies like me too.
Antonio Garcia Martinez quit his PhD studies in Physics to earn some lucre working for Goldman Sachs. His job was to model prices for credit derivatives (he explained this but I’d have to say it flew way over my head). After becoming disillusioned with banking he used his skill set to set up a new technology company in the field of advertising and after it’s sale to Twitter he took up a role within the Facebook hierarchy. By this stage he’d developed some expertise in linking data streams (e.g. Facebook’s own knowledge of it’s members and their personal internet browsing history) with which he hoped to leverage monetisation of the business through the improved ability to supply a more focused advertising approach. Well, that’s my own interpretation/understanding of what he was trying to achieve – in truth, one downside of this book is that there is a lot of technical language here with dozens of acronyms thrown in for good measure and consequently I’m sure his own one-liner on this would be much more colourful.
Aside from this, there is a good deal of interesting insight here. For instance, how new technology businesses are typically funded and how the entrepreneurs are ultimately rewarded for their efforts is explained in some detail. Also, the way in which online advertising has become increasingly targeted to individuals is brought to life. This is good stuff and it’s interspersed with the account of the author’s own life and experiences, though there’s not a lot on Martinez’s life outside of work simply because there wasn’t much life outside of his work. It’s clear that if you’re going to be a success in Silicon Valley then work is your life! There are some humorous moments too, but in truth these are few and far between.
Possibly the most interesting section for me was where he lifted the lid on the culture inside of Facebook. For instance, I didn’t know that meals were (and maybe still are) provided free to all workers - either as purely benevolent act on the part of the company or possibly to remove a reason for workers to head home or outside of the workplace for their next refuelling stop. And in the eager push to land new projects mantras such as ‘done is better than good’ and ‘perfect is the enemy of good’ were thrown about with abandon.
Overall I enjoyed my time with this book. I do think that the tech-savvy reader/listener will extract more than I was able from this account but there was certainly enough here for non-techies like me too.
July 2, 2016
This book is several things.
1) A great introduction to how Silicon Valley tech really works. I've worked in tech startups for two decades, and this is exactly they kind of stuff which often happens but is rarely publicly discussed.
2) An enthralling memoir of one of the most interesting people around in tech. Middling for a rock star or international war correspondent, but vastly more interesting than most of the people in tech.
3) Insights into how Facebook made critical product decisions in what was to them initially a non-core area, and later core to their revenue. Particularly, multiple mistakes, political squabbles, etc., all ultimately rendered irrelevant through a tangential success, followed by going all-in on the winner.
4) A spectacular bonfire of bridges.
1) A great introduction to how Silicon Valley tech really works. I've worked in tech startups for two decades, and this is exactly they kind of stuff which often happens but is rarely publicly discussed.
2) An enthralling memoir of one of the most interesting people around in tech. Middling for a rock star or international war correspondent, but vastly more interesting than most of the people in tech.
3) Insights into how Facebook made critical product decisions in what was to them initially a non-core area, and later core to their revenue. Particularly, multiple mistakes, political squabbles, etc., all ultimately rendered irrelevant through a tangential success, followed by going all-in on the winner.
4) A spectacular bonfire of bridges.
December 10, 2016
At no point do you get the sense that Martínez is censoring himself beyond what he might absolutely have to do for legal reasons. He’s all in. His personal life is a wreck and he shamelessly puts it out there for all the world to see and judge him by. His career in both Wall Street and Silicon Valley is full of of ups and downs and decisions that are, at best, morally ambiguous.
The writing is good. It’s funny, irreverent, and shows more than a passing knowledge of history and literature. There’s a ton of hard won advice and insight into not only Valley culture, but business, negotiation, and how to live the startup life. For all the self deprecation: “there was nothing badass about my career in technology. The scant success I had was due purely to happenstance, combined with being a ruthless little shit when it counted.” it’s clear that his mostly upward career trajectory was due to more than just luck.
You’ll learn a lot about the cutthroat world of online ads. About how decisions are made inside Facebook, and to a lesser degree, Twitter. You’ll get some lessons in the mysterious machinations of His Holiness Paul Graham and vice-pontiff Chris Sacca. You’ll learn how to optimize your job offer, how to read a term sheet and how to win from a position of weakness. It’s information that someone who wasn’t willing to sacrifice their career at the alter of full-disclosure could never tell you. I seriously doubt you’ll ever read anything like this again.
Come for the schadenfreude, stay for the insight.
The writing is good. It’s funny, irreverent, and shows more than a passing knowledge of history and literature. There’s a ton of hard won advice and insight into not only Valley culture, but business, negotiation, and how to live the startup life. For all the self deprecation: “there was nothing badass about my career in technology. The scant success I had was due purely to happenstance, combined with being a ruthless little shit when it counted.” it’s clear that his mostly upward career trajectory was due to more than just luck.
You’ll learn a lot about the cutthroat world of online ads. About how decisions are made inside Facebook, and to a lesser degree, Twitter. You’ll get some lessons in the mysterious machinations of His Holiness Paul Graham and vice-pontiff Chris Sacca. You’ll learn how to optimize your job offer, how to read a term sheet and how to win from a position of weakness. It’s information that someone who wasn’t willing to sacrifice their career at the alter of full-disclosure could never tell you. I seriously doubt you’ll ever read anything like this again.
Come for the schadenfreude, stay for the insight.
July 13, 2016
An interesting inside baseball start-up tale is ruined by the authors ego dysfunction. While there are some interesting bits and even a few accurate observations they are ruined with insults and crudeness.
The authors casual insults to women, the Bay Area, his co-founders and investors betrays some deep insecurities. I wont repeat them here.
When Bay Area natives complain about "techies" Mr. Martinez is what they are talking about.
Do not waste your time with this book.
The authors casual insults to women, the Bay Area, his co-founders and investors betrays some deep insecurities. I wont repeat them here.
When Bay Area natives complain about "techies" Mr. Martinez is what they are talking about.
Do not waste your time with this book.
February 6, 2017
An otherwise interesting insider account of the intrigue and machinations of Silicon Valley... it's unfortunate that the author comes across as possibly the most insufferable personality I've yet to come across in Silicone Valley lit--which is saying something. At nearly every unfortunate instance he turned the book away from SV and towards his own loathsome self, I rolled my eyes to heaven and reminded myself why, fundamentally speaking, I have never pursued a similar career: no amount of millions in vested stock options could compensate for the torture that would be working alongside egos like Antonio García Martínez.
In his smug, off-hand manner, he manages to disparage women (who are consistently given the Trump treatment), people of color (one maligned Indian man is likened to a bored Delhi rickshaw driver; the unsavory flavor of San Jose neighborhood's dangerous character is evoked by mentioning that its two public high schools are named after venerated persons of color), and anyone with any minimal sense of decency (he takes care to distance himself from his own children, whom he treats as mere distractions, and this fact is a recurring "joke.") His assumed reader is a frat boy like himself (this is made explicit every time he annoyingly addresses "you, dear reader" directly), and, between his descriptions of women as if they were nothing more than the spoils of successful entrepreneurship, he attacks Silicon Valley's system of values (purely a case of sour grapes, in his case) and, within the same pages, mentions that even uttering the word "privilege" makes him want to throw up.
Every time this man feels under-compensated for his shining brilliance (≈$1 million a year is "barely cutting middle class in San Francisco!), he takes a moment to harangue us on the evils of capitalism, how it robs us of meaning, etc. This from the man who prides himself effusively, page after page, on the genius of his advertising strategies and the tragedy of his visionary ideas not being taken seriously enough by the evil, evil Facebook capitalists who employ him.
He refers to the cofounders of his startup almost exclusively as "the boys," to hammer home just how superior he finds himself to them, and everyone else, in comparison. No opportunity to take credit for a clever idea is lost on this man, nor is any opportunity to exculpate himself from a bad one. There is an entire chapter dedicated to his borrowing a Tesla and racing down a hill with zero regard to the fact that it would have resulted in a severe head-on collision had another car been working its way up (this disregard for the safety of anyone else is touted as a character trait of successful visionaries like himself; I'm reminded of a quote from Miranda July's novel: "He drove like he lived, with entitlement.").
I can't say enough bad things about this person. I suspect he masturbates to visions of this masterpiece being adapted for the big screen, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as himself. What an unpleasant, narcissistic tool. He brags about the cuh-razy drunken nights in the Mission with his "friends" and his in-office beer-brewing operation ("I'm such a radical dude!!"), meanwhile claiming to have been too busy reading Michel Houllebecq (e.g.) to have known who Lady Gaga or Alicia Keys is. /rolls eyes.
I give this two stars because, at the very least, this book is informative in its technodrivel (you will learn more about the farce that is social media monetization than you'll know what to do with) and in the grim picture it paints of the SV milieu in general: this is a culture where people like Martínez are given the reigns in the building of our technological infrastructure. Essentially: our new "social" lives are being engineered and monetized by antisocial, narcissistic, sexist, entitled pricks.
In his smug, off-hand manner, he manages to disparage women (who are consistently given the Trump treatment), people of color (one maligned Indian man is likened to a bored Delhi rickshaw driver; the unsavory flavor of San Jose neighborhood's dangerous character is evoked by mentioning that its two public high schools are named after venerated persons of color), and anyone with any minimal sense of decency (he takes care to distance himself from his own children, whom he treats as mere distractions, and this fact is a recurring "joke.") His assumed reader is a frat boy like himself (this is made explicit every time he annoyingly addresses "you, dear reader" directly), and, between his descriptions of women as if they were nothing more than the spoils of successful entrepreneurship, he attacks Silicon Valley's system of values (purely a case of sour grapes, in his case) and, within the same pages, mentions that even uttering the word "privilege" makes him want to throw up.
Every time this man feels under-compensated for his shining brilliance (≈$1 million a year is "barely cutting middle class in San Francisco!), he takes a moment to harangue us on the evils of capitalism, how it robs us of meaning, etc. This from the man who prides himself effusively, page after page, on the genius of his advertising strategies and the tragedy of his visionary ideas not being taken seriously enough by the evil, evil Facebook capitalists who employ him.
He refers to the cofounders of his startup almost exclusively as "the boys," to hammer home just how superior he finds himself to them, and everyone else, in comparison. No opportunity to take credit for a clever idea is lost on this man, nor is any opportunity to exculpate himself from a bad one. There is an entire chapter dedicated to his borrowing a Tesla and racing down a hill with zero regard to the fact that it would have resulted in a severe head-on collision had another car been working its way up (this disregard for the safety of anyone else is touted as a character trait of successful visionaries like himself; I'm reminded of a quote from Miranda July's novel: "He drove like he lived, with entitlement.").
I can't say enough bad things about this person. I suspect he masturbates to visions of this masterpiece being adapted for the big screen, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as himself. What an unpleasant, narcissistic tool. He brags about the cuh-razy drunken nights in the Mission with his "friends" and his in-office beer-brewing operation ("I'm such a radical dude!!"), meanwhile claiming to have been too busy reading Michel Houllebecq (e.g.) to have known who Lady Gaga or Alicia Keys is. /rolls eyes.
I give this two stars because, at the very least, this book is informative in its technodrivel (you will learn more about the farce that is social media monetization than you'll know what to do with) and in the grim picture it paints of the SV milieu in general: this is a culture where people like Martínez are given the reigns in the building of our technological infrastructure. Essentially: our new "social" lives are being engineered and monetized by antisocial, narcissistic, sexist, entitled pricks.
July 31, 2022
If you're considering reading this book, you can read ten reviews and see how the room is split: half think that AGM is funny (if caustic), provides excellent analysis of the tech start-up world, and is brutally (if perhaps excessively) honest. The other half would label him egomaniacal, misogynistic, and a fool--a rather clever fool with the emotional depth of a pet rock. Neither would be wrong, and your enjoyment may come down to how you situate yourself to the narrative voice, which infuses every joke, story, and breakdown in this book.
I've talked to some ambitious tech guys, so I had hardened myself for the man-boy , hypercompetitive, tone-deaf voice. Comparatively, I think AGM probably cut his twenty most egregious statements when writing this book. Part of that register, for me, is the fascination with reading this book, and discovering the cultural milieu that start-up culture has created and then attempted to reign in. It's like the Wolf of Wall Street, except now they are doing cocaine to work a few more hours, instead of doing cocaine on a yacht.
As others have noted, AGM is effective as explaining monetization of data, tech mergers, hierarchies within tech companies, how they create leverage, and the culture of some of the most powerful companies on the planet. Unlike TV shows like Silicon Valley (ragtag bunch against the world) or The Dropout (evolution of a con-woman), this is a real, classic tale of exposing trade secrets: outsider breaks into an industry, embeds themselves within a tightly-knit network, and then cashes out with a tell-all. It's as American as apple pie or the CIA funding dictators in developing counties.
I've talked to some ambitious tech guys, so I had hardened myself for the man-boy , hypercompetitive, tone-deaf voice. Comparatively, I think AGM probably cut his twenty most egregious statements when writing this book. Part of that register, for me, is the fascination with reading this book, and discovering the cultural milieu that start-up culture has created and then attempted to reign in. It's like the Wolf of Wall Street, except now they are doing cocaine to work a few more hours, instead of doing cocaine on a yacht.
As others have noted, AGM is effective as explaining monetization of data, tech mergers, hierarchies within tech companies, how they create leverage, and the culture of some of the most powerful companies on the planet. Unlike TV shows like Silicon Valley (ragtag bunch against the world) or The Dropout (evolution of a con-woman), this is a real, classic tale of exposing trade secrets: outsider breaks into an industry, embeds themselves within a tightly-knit network, and then cashes out with a tell-all. It's as American as apple pie or the CIA funding dictators in developing counties.
February 10, 2017
Not able to finish. After reading about half the book, I decided it was not worth my time. The author's jargon and general writing style were annoying, but it was how he wrote about women, as non-existent except as sex objects in this technological business world that made me just close the book. (less)
July 11, 2016
As somebody who overlapped at FB on the Ads team with the author (though we never actually worked together), I found this an extremely accurate portrayal of the company and the larger Silicon Valley culture in general. If you're interested in the inside perspective, I recommend this highly.
January 18, 2018
The book covered two major stages of the author's Silicon Valley career: his co-founding of a startup, and his experience as a project manager at Facebook. Prior to those parts, he also briefly traced his short tenure at Goldman Sachs and later at a sinking Valley startup.
it was an unique insider account, and an illustrative presentation on how the animal spirit being exposed and exploited in the Silicon Valley startup world.
it was an anatomy of technology venture capital machine, and a detailed guide to startup funding rounds.
it was an extensive study of the Facebook culture, from a mid-level manager’s point of view, through FB’s early-stage data monetization endeavors.
it was an excellent technical primer on ever-growing internet advertising business, particularly targeted ads that increasingly penetrating into our digitally-connected life.
To me the book earned 5 stars entirely on its information value as a textbook on Silicon Valley . As a biography, it was hard to overlook the author’s over-devotion to settling scores, while giving little heartfelt appreciation where credit was due. That said, he did not shy away from portraying himself as a jerk at times, and hardly shook off his own guilt while handling murky situations.
I'd recommend it to those who are curious about the inner workings of Silicon Valley.
it was an unique insider account, and an illustrative presentation on how the animal spirit being exposed and exploited in the Silicon Valley startup world.
it was an anatomy of technology venture capital machine, and a detailed guide to startup funding rounds.
it was an extensive study of the Facebook culture, from a mid-level manager’s point of view, through FB’s early-stage data monetization endeavors.
it was an excellent technical primer on ever-growing internet advertising business, particularly targeted ads that increasingly penetrating into our digitally-connected life.
To me the book earned 5 stars entirely on its information value as a textbook on Silicon Valley . As a biography, it was hard to overlook the author’s over-devotion to settling scores, while giving little heartfelt appreciation where credit was due. That said, he did not shy away from portraying himself as a jerk at times, and hardly shook off his own guilt while handling murky situations.
I'd recommend it to those who are curious about the inner workings of Silicon Valley.
July 16, 2016
This book was a tough slog for me. I thought the author was skilled at reading people, and did a great job of exposing the inner workings of a large tech company in Silicon Valley. However, like many of the other reviewers, I found the author and his writing style obnoxious. At times, he came across as a pretentious know-it-all, and his vindictiveness knew very little bounds. In addition, it seemed like when he had the option to use a $10 word instead of a more common one, he took it without fail. Finally, I realized that everything he said should be taken with a grain of salt (cum grano salis? he had a flair for foreign quotes as well) relatively early in the book when he discussed outfitting a 26 ft sailboat for what he described as some serious offshore sailing.
March 1, 2017
Do you want an inside look at 1) What it's like to run a mildly successful Y Combinator startup, and 2) What it was like to work at Facebook during Battle of Google Plus, through the IPO? Then read this book.
But grit your teeth and prepare to find the narrator incredibly annoying. Martinez writes like a guy who's charming until you realize he's cynical about everything and impressed with nobody. In the first 380 pages, the only things he unabashedly likes are Belgian beer, sex, and Michel Houellebecq.
There are a few writerly quirks that, like the narrator's tone, are fine in small doses but annoying after a while.
What's an example? Zooming back from the storyline to provide background detail, and always introducing it with a rhetorical question.
Is this bad? Not if done in moderation, no.
Does Chaos Monkeys do it in moderation? No, not at all.
Does that start to grate? Let me explain: if every rhetorical question is followed by a professorial explanation (and most of them are!) it gets annoying fast.
The book has a couple good lines (granted, the joke about carbs and heroin was lifted from Nassim Taleb without attribution, but that was probably an accident*). A sample:
>In New York, the old joke is that Wall Street starts in a graveyard and ends in the river. In Silicon Valley, just as symbolically, Sand Hill Road starts in a shopping mall and ends at a particle accelerator.
and
>Since Facebook Ads didn’t ship products that people actually asked for, launching always had a certain foie-gras-duck-undergoing-gavage quality to it: open up and pump it in.
A shorter, kinder version of this book would have been just as good and much less bad.
* Ironically, while double-checking to make sure I didn't miss a citation, I stumbled on a footnote that begins "For the first (and the last) time in my life, I’ll quote that intellectual poseur Nassim Nicholas Taleb..." Oops.
But grit your teeth and prepare to find the narrator incredibly annoying. Martinez writes like a guy who's charming until you realize he's cynical about everything and impressed with nobody. In the first 380 pages, the only things he unabashedly likes are Belgian beer, sex, and Michel Houellebecq.
There are a few writerly quirks that, like the narrator's tone, are fine in small doses but annoying after a while.
What's an example? Zooming back from the storyline to provide background detail, and always introducing it with a rhetorical question.
Is this bad? Not if done in moderation, no.
Does Chaos Monkeys do it in moderation? No, not at all.
Does that start to grate? Let me explain: if every rhetorical question is followed by a professorial explanation (and most of them are!) it gets annoying fast.
The book has a couple good lines (granted, the joke about carbs and heroin was lifted from Nassim Taleb without attribution, but that was probably an accident*). A sample:
>In New York, the old joke is that Wall Street starts in a graveyard and ends in the river. In Silicon Valley, just as symbolically, Sand Hill Road starts in a shopping mall and ends at a particle accelerator.
and
>Since Facebook Ads didn’t ship products that people actually asked for, launching always had a certain foie-gras-duck-undergoing-gavage quality to it: open up and pump it in.
A shorter, kinder version of this book would have been just as good and much less bad.
* Ironically, while double-checking to make sure I didn't miss a citation, I stumbled on a footnote that begins "For the first (and the last) time in my life, I’ll quote that intellectual poseur Nassim Nicholas Taleb..." Oops.
January 10, 2017
When reading a good memoir, the protagonist needs to be relatable and likeable.
The author is neither. He comes off as an awful person who consistently shirked responsibility, both professionally and personally. He essentially abandons his baby mama and kids (but at least he paid the minimum child support, congrats bud). He complains how Facebook moved to slow for an start-up guy like himself (he was at his startup AdGrok for less than a year). Every single female character in the book is insulted. Needless insults are hurled at former co-workers and associates.
There were two compelling part of the book. The author's revealing of how his negotiations went down during the AdGrok acquisition and the personalities of the protagonists of the deal adds color to modern Silicon Valley. Also strong were the last few chapters describing the building of Facebook Ad Exchange. As insufferable as the author is a human being, it is clear that he can build an ad exchange and his descriptions gave a good overview of the technical and cultural challenges in launching that product.
The author is neither. He comes off as an awful person who consistently shirked responsibility, both professionally and personally. He essentially abandons his baby mama and kids (but at least he paid the minimum child support, congrats bud). He complains how Facebook moved to slow for an start-up guy like himself (he was at his startup AdGrok for less than a year). Every single female character in the book is insulted. Needless insults are hurled at former co-workers and associates.
There were two compelling part of the book. The author's revealing of how his negotiations went down during the AdGrok acquisition and the personalities of the protagonists of the deal adds color to modern Silicon Valley. Also strong were the last few chapters describing the building of Facebook Ad Exchange. As insufferable as the author is a human being, it is clear that he can build an ad exchange and his descriptions gave a good overview of the technical and cultural challenges in launching that product.
May 17, 2019
Chaos Monkey is about Silicon Valley which is one of the most interesting places in the world. First, chaos monkey is a metaphor for Silicon Valley which resembles a monkey running crazy through a server farm literally punching boxes, pulling on cables etc. So like Travis Kalanick at Uber once have said – you know what, we are not going to have taxis anymore. We’re just going to have a mobile app and anybody can be a taxi driver. You’re just going to hail a taxi through your phone.
Another example is Brian Chesky who once have said – you know what. We’re not going to hotels anymore. We’re just going to have an app and monetise an underutilised asset which is your spare bedroom and everyone would be a hotel keeper. So Silicon Valley is like the Zoo where the chaos monkeys are kept and there’s a lot of bananas, a lot of money to chase after.
Anyway, Antonio Garcia Martinez, the author of the book, tells the honest story of working in Silicon Valley the way it really looks like. He goes into great details about meetings, planning and everything else that goes on in Silicon. He takes the reader from Goldman Sachs all the way to his stint at Facebook where he focuses in the middle of the book. It was really interesting to read his opinion that Facebook didn’t have any vision and still doesn’t have the idea where it should be heading. The thing which the company is really great at is a combination of the agile approach, a quick response towards customer needs, marketing trends and luck. You might treat his story as a kind of revenge on his former employees as he writes in a bit ranty way. Nevertheless, I believe there is much truth in his stories and reflections.
The reader would see what it is like to work in the tech start-up environment. How challenging it is and how downright vicious people you could meet there. The book hits the status quo and describes certain companies in very high regard as the gold standard for corporate culture. However, the truth is... (if you like to read my full review please visit my blog https://leadersarereaders.blog/chaos-...)
Another example is Brian Chesky who once have said – you know what. We’re not going to hotels anymore. We’re just going to have an app and monetise an underutilised asset which is your spare bedroom and everyone would be a hotel keeper. So Silicon Valley is like the Zoo where the chaos monkeys are kept and there’s a lot of bananas, a lot of money to chase after.
Anyway, Antonio Garcia Martinez, the author of the book, tells the honest story of working in Silicon Valley the way it really looks like. He goes into great details about meetings, planning and everything else that goes on in Silicon. He takes the reader from Goldman Sachs all the way to his stint at Facebook where he focuses in the middle of the book. It was really interesting to read his opinion that Facebook didn’t have any vision and still doesn’t have the idea where it should be heading. The thing which the company is really great at is a combination of the agile approach, a quick response towards customer needs, marketing trends and luck. You might treat his story as a kind of revenge on his former employees as he writes in a bit ranty way. Nevertheless, I believe there is much truth in his stories and reflections.
The reader would see what it is like to work in the tech start-up environment. How challenging it is and how downright vicious people you could meet there. The book hits the status quo and describes certain companies in very high regard as the gold standard for corporate culture. However, the truth is... (if you like to read my full review please visit my blog https://leadersarereaders.blog/chaos-...)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 21, 2017
Uma ótima perspectiva do que se passa no Silicon Valley e com o Facebook em especial, vindo de alguém de dentro. O Antonio Martinez é formado em física, saiu da Goldman Sachs para criar uma startup e foi para o Facebook logo depois. E o livro conta a experiência do processo, ao mesmo tempo que se afasta da situação e conta como a transição do Facebook de 2010 para 2014 refletiu na plataforma e em como se faz publicidade na internet.
Um bom livro para entender a mentalidade das plataformas atuais, como acontece o processo empírico de descobrir o que dá dinheiro e o que prende a atenção das pessoas. Escrito de forma bem irreverente. Um pouco mais autobiográfico e menos sistêmico do que o que procuro ler, mas valeu bem a leitura de qualquer forma.
Não sei até onde o autor é parcial para falar de si e dos colegas de trabalho, mas ele se coloca como mais um que comprou a mentalidade do FB (bebeu o Kool-Aid). Não se coloca acima disso ou como alguém que lá atrás sabia o que estava fazendo ou onde tudo ia terminar.
Um bom livro para entender a mentalidade das plataformas atuais, como acontece o processo empírico de descobrir o que dá dinheiro e o que prende a atenção das pessoas. Escrito de forma bem irreverente. Um pouco mais autobiográfico e menos sistêmico do que o que procuro ler, mas valeu bem a leitura de qualquer forma.
Não sei até onde o autor é parcial para falar de si e dos colegas de trabalho, mas ele se coloca como mais um que comprou a mentalidade do FB (bebeu o Kool-Aid). Não se coloca acima disso ou como alguém que lá atrás sabia o que estava fazendo ou onde tudo ia terminar.
September 1, 2018
Liar’s Poker—remember that book? I wonder how it was received in 1989. It’s now considered a classic and is gleefully passed around summer training classes. It’s the North Star in a constellation of Wall Street memoirs spanning from Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923) to Straight to Hell (2015). I’ve spent many a night gazing into this galaxy, exploring some celestial objects that are little more than dimly lit orbs of gaseous matter.
In Liar’s Poker, which is one of about four Wall Street books that anyone should ever consider reading twice, Michael Lewis (who is now a respected American novelist) details his experience during the glory days of Salomon Brothers, an investment bank that specialized in bond trading. Lewis wrote astutely of everything from his days in training class (which is probably why new recruits find the book so charming) to the big swinging d****s (high performers) who roamed the trading floor, to the game that is the book’s namesake.
Through all of this, Lewis was on the sidelines. In fact, he might have only been in New York for summer training and spent the rest of his time in London. He had no importance to the story—and an endearing criticism of the book is that he was just a snarky little twentysomething who ended up writing what was, to 1980s Wall Street, received as if it were tabloid journalism.
Many have tried and failed to capture the magic of the company exposé like Michael Lewis did. Dan Lyons wrote Disrupted, which was about his time at Hubspot, in a similar vein, but it was nothing compared to Liar’s Poker. As soon as it becomes obvious that someone is sticking around just for the story, some of the magic is lost. So one must walk a fine line when writing a Liar’s Poker.
Antonio Martinez goes overboard on a few occasions, but he’s come closer than anyone else to writing the Liar’s Poker of Silicon Valley. And this is not an easy thing to do. Michael Lewis himself attempted to write the Liar’s Poker of Silicon Valley. It was called The New New Thing and was published in 1999. It’s now embarrassingly dated and has been relegated to the lowest quartile of Lewis’ published works ranking. There is a parallel between the excesses of 1980s Wall Street and late 90’s Silicon Valley, but the book was forgettable. It didn’t read the same way that Liar’s Poker did.
Michael Lewis failed to write the Liar’s Poker of Silicon Valley. Why did we have to wait seventeen years for a quant to come along and commit career suicide with the goal of delivering it?
First and foremost, Antonio Martinez knows what he’s talking about. He’s exceptionally well-read, smart, ambitious, and has high emotional intelligence. One of my favorite thing to do is bust phonies like Tai Lopez who claim to be voracious readers and aren’t. Faced with mountains of well-selected quotes, tight editing, and advanced vocabulary, I believe Antonio when he says he spent his childhood in the library. He convinced me to read Meditations with one great quote selection. This gives him significant credibility as a narrator, and affords him some room to make derisive statements, such as calling Nassim Taleb a pseudo-intellectual.
Antonio knows what he’s talking about because he followed the noble path of starting as an engineer before transitioning to project management. During these years, he was at the forefront of advancements in the ad space. He knew the business so well and was able to seamlessly describe what was going on. Unlike Wall Street, which always is accompanied by a murky foreboding, the implications of digital ad technology are both very real and very easy to understand. He did a wonderful job explaining his industry, his role in the industry, and the valley as a whole.
So, why isn’t this book considered a modern classic?
We’ll start with a softball. Character development is poor compared to a Lewis book. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: we know them. A few others: geeks like me know them. The other actors are hard to connect with because Antonio’s narration style is overwhelming. Saying he’s an egoist might be a stretch, but he remained the center of attention throughout. Also, the monikers ‘British Trader’ and ‘Israeli Psychologist’ were ill-conceived. To me, those are two of the worst countries to use as descriptors because there’s no consistency in the mental images readers will generate. The only character I really remember is the CMU football player, but only because the guy who sits next to me at work also played there, also studied engineering there, and shares some facial features.
When it comes to storytelling, Antonio is talented, but he and Michael Lewis apply their wit differently. On one hand, it’s a wildly fun read. On the other hand, it sacrifices the potential for cultural longevity to appeal to what people like me want to read right now. Will people be reading Tucker Max in ten years? Shenanigans are funny, but unless you’re a master of the craft, it’s hard to phrase these things timelessly (not to suggest Antonio was trying to be timeless, or that timelessness is even a goal worth pursuing when writing a memoir). To that point, the DUI incident and reckless driving were kind of dumb.
Generally, the way Antonio discusses his relationships women will be perceived as politically incorrect. I don’t care. But the flippancy of it all irked me. His relationship with British Trader leading to the birth of their first child fit into the story well, but after that it became haphazard. The reader is left without any real comprehension of the nature of Antonio’s relationships with women or his children. And if all of this irked me, there is no doubt that it’s the main reason the book has been rebuked within certain circles. Antonio never could have predicted popular opinion moving so harshly against the alpha male, but more prudence would have gone a long way here.
Liar’s Poker was meant to serve as a warning; it’s remembered for being an arousal. Chaos Monkeys was intended to be an electrifying, divisive, no-holds-barred memoir. It will be remembered as an electrifying, divisive, no-holds-barred memoir.
View this review and others on my blog
In Liar’s Poker, which is one of about four Wall Street books that anyone should ever consider reading twice, Michael Lewis (who is now a respected American novelist) details his experience during the glory days of Salomon Brothers, an investment bank that specialized in bond trading. Lewis wrote astutely of everything from his days in training class (which is probably why new recruits find the book so charming) to the big swinging d****s (high performers) who roamed the trading floor, to the game that is the book’s namesake.
Through all of this, Lewis was on the sidelines. In fact, he might have only been in New York for summer training and spent the rest of his time in London. He had no importance to the story—and an endearing criticism of the book is that he was just a snarky little twentysomething who ended up writing what was, to 1980s Wall Street, received as if it were tabloid journalism.
Many have tried and failed to capture the magic of the company exposé like Michael Lewis did. Dan Lyons wrote Disrupted, which was about his time at Hubspot, in a similar vein, but it was nothing compared to Liar’s Poker. As soon as it becomes obvious that someone is sticking around just for the story, some of the magic is lost. So one must walk a fine line when writing a Liar’s Poker.
Antonio Martinez goes overboard on a few occasions, but he’s come closer than anyone else to writing the Liar’s Poker of Silicon Valley. And this is not an easy thing to do. Michael Lewis himself attempted to write the Liar’s Poker of Silicon Valley. It was called The New New Thing and was published in 1999. It’s now embarrassingly dated and has been relegated to the lowest quartile of Lewis’ published works ranking. There is a parallel between the excesses of 1980s Wall Street and late 90’s Silicon Valley, but the book was forgettable. It didn’t read the same way that Liar’s Poker did.
Michael Lewis failed to write the Liar’s Poker of Silicon Valley. Why did we have to wait seventeen years for a quant to come along and commit career suicide with the goal of delivering it?
First and foremost, Antonio Martinez knows what he’s talking about. He’s exceptionally well-read, smart, ambitious, and has high emotional intelligence. One of my favorite thing to do is bust phonies like Tai Lopez who claim to be voracious readers and aren’t. Faced with mountains of well-selected quotes, tight editing, and advanced vocabulary, I believe Antonio when he says he spent his childhood in the library. He convinced me to read Meditations with one great quote selection. This gives him significant credibility as a narrator, and affords him some room to make derisive statements, such as calling Nassim Taleb a pseudo-intellectual.
Antonio knows what he’s talking about because he followed the noble path of starting as an engineer before transitioning to project management. During these years, he was at the forefront of advancements in the ad space. He knew the business so well and was able to seamlessly describe what was going on. Unlike Wall Street, which always is accompanied by a murky foreboding, the implications of digital ad technology are both very real and very easy to understand. He did a wonderful job explaining his industry, his role in the industry, and the valley as a whole.
So, why isn’t this book considered a modern classic?
We’ll start with a softball. Character development is poor compared to a Lewis book. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg: we know them. A few others: geeks like me know them. The other actors are hard to connect with because Antonio’s narration style is overwhelming. Saying he’s an egoist might be a stretch, but he remained the center of attention throughout. Also, the monikers ‘British Trader’ and ‘Israeli Psychologist’ were ill-conceived. To me, those are two of the worst countries to use as descriptors because there’s no consistency in the mental images readers will generate. The only character I really remember is the CMU football player, but only because the guy who sits next to me at work also played there, also studied engineering there, and shares some facial features.
When it comes to storytelling, Antonio is talented, but he and Michael Lewis apply their wit differently. On one hand, it’s a wildly fun read. On the other hand, it sacrifices the potential for cultural longevity to appeal to what people like me want to read right now. Will people be reading Tucker Max in ten years? Shenanigans are funny, but unless you’re a master of the craft, it’s hard to phrase these things timelessly (not to suggest Antonio was trying to be timeless, or that timelessness is even a goal worth pursuing when writing a memoir). To that point, the DUI incident and reckless driving were kind of dumb.
Generally, the way Antonio discusses his relationships women will be perceived as politically incorrect. I don’t care. But the flippancy of it all irked me. His relationship with British Trader leading to the birth of their first child fit into the story well, but after that it became haphazard. The reader is left without any real comprehension of the nature of Antonio’s relationships with women or his children. And if all of this irked me, there is no doubt that it’s the main reason the book has been rebuked within certain circles. Antonio never could have predicted popular opinion moving so harshly against the alpha male, but more prudence would have gone a long way here.
Liar’s Poker was meant to serve as a warning; it’s remembered for being an arousal. Chaos Monkeys was intended to be an electrifying, divisive, no-holds-barred memoir. It will be remembered as an electrifying, divisive, no-holds-barred memoir.
View this review and others on my blog
June 15, 2017
There's a fine line between entertaining gonzo journalism and self-aggrandizing egoism. Martinez crosses the line big time. At first I was drawn in by the wry description of Facebook politics and the gleeful take down of valley culture. But more and more the narrative centers around Martinez's stories of his own glory and brilliance. He totally loses me when he veers into patriarchal/misogynistic characterization of his girlfriends and women in general. How about this one?
"Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
Nice, huh?
"Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they’d become precisely the sort of useless baggage you’d trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
Nice, huh?
February 7, 2017
I found it pretty boring. This isn't how Silicon Valley is. This is a glimpse inside the life of a tech bro. The author wasn't very likable, and my opinion was confirmed late in the book when he admitted that he had a lifted truck AND a Mustang GT. I'd give this a pass.
July 10, 2017
Honestly, after 5 hours of this audiobook I wanted all of this guy's businesses to fail.
Read
June 27, 2024DNF at 35%- this dude's manic snarky tech bro energy was too much to handle, if honestly quite amusing at times. The first person no-holds barred narrative was unlike any memoir I'd yet experienced with the possible exception of the oft-depraved My Life by Renaissance artist Cellini.
July 7, 2016
Were it not for the possibility of legal complications, Chaos Monkeys could have been titled “Fear and Loathing in Silicon Valley.” It is a unique blend of high stakes gambling, sex, alcohol and hubris. For those willing to wade through technical detail, it shows how Internet applications like Facebook and Google convert pixels into dollars. For the rest of us, the story of the excruciatingly hard work and intense drama that go into both a startup company and the internal machinations of an established, aggressive hi-tech company provide plenty of drama.
Garcia Martinez is obviously widely read. His well chosen chapter heading quotes and references to disparate sources make that clear. His writing is articulate, fast paced, intense and focused. The fact that he names names and gives an insider perspective to well known events makes the story an especially interesting one.
Having been sucked in, ground up and spit out of the Silicon Valley madness, Garcia Martinez is talking about taking off on a circumnavigation aboard his sailboat. One cannot help but wonder if he can make the change from the pressure and fast pace of his old existence to the new. I hope so.
Garcia Martinez is obviously widely read. His well chosen chapter heading quotes and references to disparate sources make that clear. His writing is articulate, fast paced, intense and focused. The fact that he names names and gives an insider perspective to well known events makes the story an especially interesting one.
Having been sucked in, ground up and spit out of the Silicon Valley madness, Garcia Martinez is talking about taking off on a circumnavigation aboard his sailboat. One cannot help but wonder if he can make the change from the pressure and fast pace of his old existence to the new. I hope so.
November 17, 2017
People ask me why I give three stars to books I consider mediocre. It's so that I'll have plenty of room for books like this.
At first, I like the sarcastic and trenchant analysis of banking at Goldman. But as the book wore on, it became apparent that the author is just a nasty person from every dimension. Every colleague and company is demeaned but OF COURSE the author knows the best course of action. It is no wonder nobody listened to him.
But what really grated on me was the constant barrage of sexism, from the author's description of his partners and colleagues to the anecdotes. There were too many to cite. I once read part of Creasy's Fifteen Greatest Battles of the World and was shocked by the casual racism. But it was written in 1851. This was written last year, and the author and publisher and everyone associated with it should be ashamed of themselves.
The kicker was when he got fired from Facebook and I wanted to enjoy just that one moment of schadenfreude. But then he talked about how he knew he was going to be fired when the hot chick HR lady (pretty sure that's a quote) came into the room. ::barf::
It was awful.
At first, I like the sarcastic and trenchant analysis of banking at Goldman. But as the book wore on, it became apparent that the author is just a nasty person from every dimension. Every colleague and company is demeaned but OF COURSE the author knows the best course of action. It is no wonder nobody listened to him.
But what really grated on me was the constant barrage of sexism, from the author's description of his partners and colleagues to the anecdotes. There were too many to cite. I once read part of Creasy's Fifteen Greatest Battles of the World and was shocked by the casual racism. But it was written in 1851. This was written last year, and the author and publisher and everyone associated with it should be ashamed of themselves.
The kicker was when he got fired from Facebook and I wanted to enjoy just that one moment of schadenfreude. But then he talked about how he knew he was going to be fired when the hot chick HR lady (pretty sure that's a quote) came into the room. ::barf::
It was awful.
October 31, 2017
There's only so much mysoginistic bullshit and insufferable prose I'm ready to stand in exchange for some "insider knowledge" on FB ads and SV culture, and this book overstayed its welcome around the 50 page mark.
June 11, 2023
This is pretty much what you'd expect from the cover. It's an autobiographical account of Martínez' journey from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, with all of the insider's views of companies like Goldman Sachs and Facebook that implies. He has an engaging style, and a real gift for explaining arcane technical matters in language simple enough that even I can follow it. The book is written with the clarity of hindsight. Any mistakes that may have been made are acknowledged.
The book is engaging and engrossing. Martínez knows how to tell a good story, and his lively prose made this a pleasure to read. I enjoyed this book a great deal. Recommended!
The book is engaging and engrossing. Martínez knows how to tell a good story, and his lively prose made this a pleasure to read. I enjoyed this book a great deal. Recommended!
November 29, 2017
I found myself highlighting many passages in this book. Half the time, because they were interesting/funny. The other half of the time, because they were shockingly offensive. I'm torn on the rating because the author is both a pretty entertaining writer, and also somewhat delusional about himself and his talents. I certainly wouldn't enjoy getting a drink with the man, but might actually buy this book as a gift for a friend.
The prime example to me of his lack of self-awareness is the narrative arc of the book - he was not as successful as many people around him were. He stumbled onto several lucky opportunities, getting into Y combinator and working with "the boys", engineers who based on his description, are more talented than he is. He torpedos basically every personal and business relationship he has due to a problem with authority and his inflated self-regard. He somewhat screwed over the other cofounders of the company he started for so that he could work for Facebook instead of Twitter. This decision was made because (1) someone at Facebook took a laptop to the bathroom and (2) one Twitter interviewer mentioned work-life balance as a positive aspect of the company. He then went on annoy many important people at Facebook, and got fired. "The boys" and other people he meets along the way generally ended up doing pretty well, despite the author's disdain for everyone who isn't himself.
There is a deep thread of misogyny and narcissism that runs through the book. He does make some interesting points about people being excluded from tech jobs due to "cultural fit," but largely views his female coworkers as potential sex receptacles. He makes several questionable statements about other races.
Here are some quotes that I think get at his personality. If you can stand these, and the overwrought writing style, and want to learn more about how companies like facebook or google make money from someone who is not afraid to burn bridges, I'd recommend reading the book.
He's not your typical fellow: "I don't watch anything resembling 'TV.' I don't listen to what you'd call music (and I'd call noise). An exciting Friday night to me is a bottle of Maredsous 10 Tripel, sucked down while gloomily reading Michel Houellebecq.... I don't know shit about whatever dancing monkey of the moment is amusing the plebes."
His view on being a parent: "Like the Civil War draft, in which the wealthy could pay a commoner to take their spot on the firing line, I paid my way out of fatherhood, mostly out of fear of the compromise to freedom it represented."
On women: "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they'd become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
His attempt to describe good writing: "[Paul Graham] possesses the only prose style among techies that doesn't trigger a literary gag reflex.... Reflecting his background in philosophy and formal logic, his tightly argued disquisitions often read almost syllogistically, like a Socratic dialogue, as he dissects funding rounds, hiring, cash flow, and product development."
The prime example to me of his lack of self-awareness is the narrative arc of the book - he was not as successful as many people around him were. He stumbled onto several lucky opportunities, getting into Y combinator and working with "the boys", engineers who based on his description, are more talented than he is. He torpedos basically every personal and business relationship he has due to a problem with authority and his inflated self-regard. He somewhat screwed over the other cofounders of the company he started for so that he could work for Facebook instead of Twitter. This decision was made because (1) someone at Facebook took a laptop to the bathroom and (2) one Twitter interviewer mentioned work-life balance as a positive aspect of the company. He then went on annoy many important people at Facebook, and got fired. "The boys" and other people he meets along the way generally ended up doing pretty well, despite the author's disdain for everyone who isn't himself.
There is a deep thread of misogyny and narcissism that runs through the book. He does make some interesting points about people being excluded from tech jobs due to "cultural fit," but largely views his female coworkers as potential sex receptacles. He makes several questionable statements about other races.
Here are some quotes that I think get at his personality. If you can stand these, and the overwrought writing style, and want to learn more about how companies like facebook or google make money from someone who is not afraid to burn bridges, I'd recommend reading the book.
He's not your typical fellow: "I don't watch anything resembling 'TV.' I don't listen to what you'd call music (and I'd call noise). An exciting Friday night to me is a bottle of Maredsous 10 Tripel, sucked down while gloomily reading Michel Houellebecq.... I don't know shit about whatever dancing monkey of the moment is amusing the plebes."
His view on being a parent: "Like the Civil War draft, in which the wealthy could pay a commoner to take their spot on the firing line, I paid my way out of fatherhood, mostly out of fear of the compromise to freedom it represented."
On women: "Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism, and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or foreign invasion, they'd become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel."
His attempt to describe good writing: "[Paul Graham] possesses the only prose style among techies that doesn't trigger a literary gag reflex.... Reflecting his background in philosophy and formal logic, his tightly argued disquisitions often read almost syllogistically, like a Socratic dialogue, as he dissects funding rounds, hiring, cash flow, and product development."
November 11, 2016
If Antonio Martinez never writes another book, he will still go down as the author who best captured the Zeitgeist in the hottest (dare I say central?) industry of our times.
Much like Michael Lewis’ debut a short 26 years ago, this is the story of a young graduate who lands a seat at the high table without having formally been invited, makes the most of it, keeps his sanity and lives to tell.
So you follow him from the Vampire Squid to Adchemy, you cheer for him when he persuades two engineers to leave and help him set up AdGrok, you do the math alongside him when he’s selling to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, you pitch FBX (Facebook Exchange) with him to Sheryl… I guess I’ve spoilt it enough, let’s leave it there.
You may cringe at language that would make Matt Taibbi blush, but the profanity is always a propos and would certainly never be out of place at the series of workplaces where this drama unfolds. The author’s writing is truly mesmerizing, constantly reminding me that no matter how hard I try I shall never be able to write as well as the truly gifted.
Martinez’ command of the English language is only bettered by his grasp of the nowadays high tech business of persuasion and his ability to convey the basics to the reader. Now I’ve read Chaos Monkeys I have some faint idea of how it all works.
Here’s to hoping that he’s got more books in him.
Much like Michael Lewis’ debut a short 26 years ago, this is the story of a young graduate who lands a seat at the high table without having formally been invited, makes the most of it, keeps his sanity and lives to tell.
So you follow him from the Vampire Squid to Adchemy, you cheer for him when he persuades two engineers to leave and help him set up AdGrok, you do the math alongside him when he’s selling to Twitter and Facebook at the same time, you pitch FBX (Facebook Exchange) with him to Sheryl… I guess I’ve spoilt it enough, let’s leave it there.
You may cringe at language that would make Matt Taibbi blush, but the profanity is always a propos and would certainly never be out of place at the series of workplaces where this drama unfolds. The author’s writing is truly mesmerizing, constantly reminding me that no matter how hard I try I shall never be able to write as well as the truly gifted.
Martinez’ command of the English language is only bettered by his grasp of the nowadays high tech business of persuasion and his ability to convey the basics to the reader. Now I’ve read Chaos Monkeys I have some faint idea of how it all works.
Here’s to hoping that he’s got more books in him.
August 31, 2024
A look at business in Silicon Valley, primarily facebook. Apparently it's a viper pit or so says a project manager responsible for advertisement apps on facebook. Not so shockingly, the financials are smarmy, so are the executives, callous, lack compassion etc. This book held a lot of what most people would expect. Things I found interesting was that this book actually marks the start of the public beginning to become aware of privacy and how much data is being collected. The author was let go from facebook in 2013 so, this really was at the start of the whole data science subject. The second thing I found interesting was that despite the book, the author has a positive opinion of fb and of Zuckerberg. I was kind of amused that he thought your data was much safer with fb than other places. He meant that fb doesn't sell the data. Again, this book was written almost 10 years ago. I think lots has changed. Also, the author clearly didn't envision the uses of the data being gathered. In the book, he says all of those bad pictures are just data and not that interesting to fb. Fb cares about pitching advertisements to you. It cares about what products interest you or tv shows etc. He felt that there was just so much data that those embarrassing pics would never be found. Sigh. I think it was a naive assessment when the book was written but for a tech guy, clearly not a visionary. He didn't see AI coming. I guess he assumed the readers would not be technical. I think a short-sighted assessment regardless.
On the whole, these days a book written 8-10 years ago is almost a classic. The book was a little outdated on the technical level, but from a business standpoint who knows. I suspect that world is still the same, just fewer startups. An interesting look and an interesting book. Beware the sexism and misogyny, there is a lot here...as there is in Silicon Valley (I suspect).
4ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. Dan John Miller was good. The bonus interview with the author and Steven Levy was enlightening with regards to the author.
On the whole, these days a book written 8-10 years ago is almost a classic. The book was a little outdated on the technical level, but from a business standpoint who knows. I suspect that world is still the same, just fewer startups. An interesting look and an interesting book. Beware the sexism and misogyny, there is a lot here...as there is in Silicon Valley (I suspect).
4ish Stars
Listened to the audiobook. Dan John Miller was good. The bonus interview with the author and Steven Levy was enlightening with regards to the author.
December 23, 2017
I wish I could give this book a lower star. I absolutely hated every single word of this book. mysogenistic, arrogant, self serving, an absolutely horrible example of a human being and what passes as a software engineer these days. Antonio should be a model for how not to bring up your sons and not allow your daughters to meet. Every single phrase in this book reeks of his egotism and self gratifying life style. He is the prime example of the era we live in, driven by money, power and narcissism. All I can say is yuck! and I'll think twice about blindly picking up a book to read. shame on the publisher who killed trees to get this out onto the bookshelves.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,236 reviews