Chaos Monkeys

Rating

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year - A Business Insider Top 20 Business Book of the Year - An Inc. Best Book of the Year for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners"Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book -- which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read."
-- Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times

"Eye-popping."
-- Vanity Fair Liar's Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent expose of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio Garcia Martinez, 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 Garcia Martinez.After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, Garcia Martinez 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, Garcia Martinez 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," Garcia Martinez 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?

Reviews

"Traces the evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it's become a part of our daily lives and how it will affect our future."--Leonard Lopate, WNYC "[Garcia Martinez] reads like a philosopher and historian, the exact travel guide you'd want to walk you through the inner workings of Facebook. His tell-all memoir is the best writing out there on one of the world's most powerful companies. And he even manages to make the ins and outs of online advertising fascinating."--Aarti Shahanti, npr.org An NPR Best Book of the Year - A Business Insider Top 20 Business Book of the Year - An Inc. Best Book of the Year for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners-- "Romps through Martï¿½nez's wild trajectory from Wall Streeter to pre-IPO Facebook employee, with the dramatic sale of his Y Combinator-backed ad-tech startup (to Twitter) in between."--Jillian D'Onfirio Business Insider "Unlike most founding narratives that flow out of the Valley, Chaos Monkeys dives into the unburnished, day-to-day realities: the frantic pivots, the enthusiastic ass-kissing, the excruciating internal politics.... [Garcï¿½a] can be rude, but he's shrewd, too."--Bloomberg Businessweek "[Garcï¿½a Martï¿½nez] is, by his own account, a dissolute character.... He is nonetheless, by the end of his account, a winning antihero, a rebel against Silicon Valley's culture of nonconformist conformity.... The reader can't help rooting for him."--Jacob Weisberg, New York Review of Books "There are some books that are just too good to miss.... In his insider-tells-all book, Garcï¿½a Martï¿½nez discusses everything from goofy stories to cultural secrets about some of the country's most powerful and influential businesses."--Atlantic "This year's best non-business book about business.... Garcia Martinez is a real writer.... A classic tale, well told."--Techcrunch "Brilliant."--Financial Times "Michael Lewis was never a top Wall Street bond salesman, but in Liar's Poker he captured an era. Chaos Monkeys aims to do the same for Silicon Valley, and bracingly succeeds."--New York Times Book Review "Reckless and rollicking... perceptive and funny and brave.... The resulting view of the Valley's craziness, self-importance and greed isn't pretty. But it's one that most of us have never seen before and aren't likely to forget."--Washington Post "Incisive.... The most fun business book I have read this year.... Clearly there will be people who hate this book -- which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read."--Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times "This gossipy insider account from the former Twitter adviser, Facebook product manager, and start-up CEO dishes dirt while also explaining the ins and outs of Silicon Valley."--Neal Wyatt, Library Journal "If you're in a startup or even plan to sue one, Chaos Monkeys is the book to read."--John Biggs, TechCrunch "An unvarnished account... of Silicon Valley."--CBS This Morning "An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.... A must-read."--Jonathan A. Knee, New York Times