Lab Rats

February 1, 2019

Lyons (Disrupted: My Misadventures in the Start-Up Bubble) reveals his view of how the worst of the mercenary tech culture has resulted in the multi-trillion-dollar swindle of American workers in virtually every industry. Lyons's perspective is that today's new work culture celebrates overwork and stress and is led by people who care only about making money and venture capitalists and amoral investors who are solely focused on flipping businesses to make a quick buck. His primary concern is the effect on American workers of this empathy-impaired focus. Lyons's four factors that create worker unhappiness include money (low wages and raided pension funds), job insecurity (rapid turnover and capricious terminations), constant change (demeaning and pointless workshops and classes), and dehumanization (open office plans, no privacy). In the author's view, today's new tech-championed tools and models have shattered the once viable social contract between workers and management. While Lyons's findings will likely appeal to workers, his primary target audience includes leaders who buy into the latest fads for innovation and team building. Thankfully, Lyons closes with optimism about responsible business leaders who are building worker-friendly, inclusive, and diverse companies; college business courses that emphasize social responsibility; and socially conscious investment by well-intentioned rich people. The author's clearly enunciated, steady paced reading nicely highlights this material. VERDICT Essential for all libraries supporting business and management curricula. This work will appeal to fans of John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's The Witch Doctors, David Craig's Rip-off!, and Matthew Stewart's The Management Myth. ["A must-read for tech entrepreneurs and anyone interested in the shifting dynamics of workplace culture": LJ 10/15/18 review of the Hachette hc.]--Dale Farris, Groves, TX

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2018
How the tech industry, fueled by greed, is shaping workers' experiences across the business world.Lyons (Disrupted: My Misadventures in the Start-Up Bubble, 2016, etc.), a former staff writer for HBO's Silicon Valley and technology editor at Newsweek, mounts a caustic critique of mercenary tech culture, which, he argues persuasively, is infiltrating many other businesses. "We have a new work culture," he writes, "that celebrates overwork, exhaustion, and stress," led by people who care about nothing but making money. "Instead of geeky engineers," he writes, "the industry draws hustlers, young guys who hope to get rich quick," financed by voracious venture capitalists. Most new startups "are terribly managed, half-assed outfits run by buffoons and bozos and frat boys, and funded by amoral investors who are only hoping to flip the company into the public markets and make a quick buck." After the VC's have taken their bounty, most startups never make a profit. But the author's focus is less on the viability of startups than the fates of workers, who are mercilessly exploited and so desperate that some kill themselves. Among the many tech oligarchs he condemns is Jeff Bezos, "a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge," running sweatshops where workers do physically demanding jobs in unsafe environments, earn low wages, and are forced to be "permatemps" not entitled to benefits. Lyons cites four factors contributing to worker unhappiness: money (besides low wages, many big companies have raided their employees' pension funds); job insecurity (rapid turnover is encouraged, and workers are fired for capricious reasons); constant, random changes, including instituting cultlike philosophies and demeaning workshops, classes, and role-playing games; and dehumanization, such as open office plans where employees have no privacy and endure constant surveillance of their emails, chats, website visits, and even bathroom breaks. The author ends with a note of optimism: his discovery of a "quiet movement" of responsible business leaders building worker-friendly, inclusive, and diverse companies; business courses that emphasize social responsibility; and socially conscious funding by "well-intentioned rich people."A passionate indictment of brutal workplace culture.

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Starred review from September 3, 2018
In this darkly funny journalistic look at the contemporary workplace, Lyons (Disrupted), a former journalist at Newsweek and writer for HBO’s Silicon Valley, reveals how the culture fostered by tech firms has created toxic environments in which workers are dehumanized, wages are low, stressors are constant, and job security is nonexistent. Behind the typical tech start-up trappings, such as ping-pong tables and free snacks, lies a drastically reengineered social contract between employers and employees, one in which notions of contributing to social good have been replaced with profiting at any cost. Lyons traces the emergence of this new corporate style to valley titans such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Netflix CEO and chairman Reed Hastings, whose companies reap billions while their workers get an ever-dwindling share of the pie, and further back, to the erosion of the social safety net in the 1980s. Writing scathingly about management fads such as Agile and Lego Serious Play, Lyons shows that much of the hype around the “lean” start-up model is an illusion, premised on inflated stock values and angel investors. He finds hope in companies such as Basecamp, Patagonia, and Kapor Capital, “zebras” that are playing by more human-friendly rules and still turning profits. By turns sardonic and impassioned, this is an insightful and frequently entertaining guide to the increasingly bizarre world of Silicon Valley and the trends it spawns.

October 15, 2018

In the tradition of works such as Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy, Lyons (Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble) offers a first-person account of contemporary workplace disruption, citing how new technologies supersede older ones, and that the workplace is slow to make the transition. Companies such as IBM, General Electric, and Sears have faced this challenge with varying success. As Lyons notes, employees can become trapped in a situation beyond reason or control. He argues that management consultants fuel the problem; in a fast-moving world, management learned by apprenticeship is no longer practiced or practicable. His hopefulness comes from fields relating to hospitality as customer-facing organizations often have a better handle on valuing both customers and those who support them. VERDICT A must-read for tech entrepreneurs and anyone interested in the shifting dynamics of workplace culture.--Steven Silkunas, Fernandina Beach, FL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.