Down and Out in Silicon Valley

Down and Out in Silicon Valley PDF Author: Mel Krantzler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
"Drawing on their extensive counseling practice, psychologists Mel and Pat Krantzler, who have helped hundreds of managers, CEOs, engineers, and human resource specialists of high-tech companies cope with dreams turned to nightmares, expose the shadowy side of Silicon Valley, the mind-set it exported to other areas of the country, and the awesome personal costs of "success." Down and Out in Silicon Valley presents a side of high-tech, dot-com culture never explored by the media. The authors reveal the haunting truths that Silicon Valley and its techno-cloned communities throughout the country have one of the highest divorce rates in the world, more children who are psychologically disturbed than in less-affluent areas, no affordable housing even for those earning $50,000 a year, eighty-hour work weeks, and widespread alcohol and drug use."--BOOK JACKET.

Down and Out in Silicon Valley

Down and Out in Silicon Valley PDF Author: Mel Krantzler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Drawing on their extensive counseling practice, psychologists Mel and Pat Krantzler, who have helped hundreds of managers, CEOs, engineers, and human resource specialists of high-tech companies cope with dreams turned to nightmares, expose the shadowy side of Silicon Valley, the mind-set it exported to other areas of the country, and the awesome personal costs of "success." Down and Out in Silicon Valley presents a side of high-tech, dot-com culture never explored by the media. The authors reveal the haunting truths that Silicon Valley and its techno-cloned communities throughout the country have one of the highest divorce rates in the world, more children who are psychologically disturbed than in less-affluent areas, no affordable housing even for those earning $50,000 a year, eighty-hour work weeks, and widespread alcohol and drug use."--BOOK JACKET.

Down and Out in Silicon Valley

Down and Out in Silicon Valley PDF Author: Mel Krantzler
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 161592826X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, many once-promising dot.com entrepreneurs have been burned by overweening ambition and come crashing to the ground. Besides the economic wreckage left in the wake of their high-flying dreams there is also a good deal of psychological turmoil. Psychologists Mel Krantzler and his wife Pat, both counselors who have helped hundreds of managers and CEOs of high-tech companies cope with dreams turned to nightmares, expose the shadowy side of Silicon Valley in this revealing book about the personal costs of "success." In addition to being a psychologist, Dr. Krantzler is also a trained economist. His economic expertise, combined with his psychology practice, enables him to uniquely illuminate Silicon Valley's culture from both perspectives. This is the first book to explode the romanticized myth of Silicon Valley, which is still so prevalent in advertising and the media. What you never hear about this Mecca of high-tech culture is that it has one of the highest divorce rates in the world, more children who are psychologically disturbed than in less-affluent areas, almost no affordable decent housing even for those earning $50,000 a year, and widespread alcohol and drug use. What the Krantzlers make clear is that aside from the simple geographical designation, Silicon Valley is the name for a psychological obsession found any place where people believe that instant fame and fortune can be gained through silicon chips and Web sites. This dream nourishes itself on an illusion of power and instant gratification. And like heroin and cocaine, it is highly addictive, promising total happiness, but often ending in disarray and despair. Based on interviews with many Silicon Valley executives who have decided to change their lives to achieve true well-being for themselves and their families, this book concludes with a formula for real success - a well-rounded, balanced, and fully human life.

Abolish Silicon Valley

Abolish Silicon Valley PDF Author: Wendy Liu
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1912248719
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. "Lucid, probing and urgent. Wendy Liu manages to be both optimistic about the emancipatory potential of tech and scathing about the industry that has harnessed it for bleak and self-serving ends." -- Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal "An inspiring memoir manifesto...Technologists all over the world are realizing that no amount of code can substitute for political engagement. Liu's memoir is a road map for that journey of realization." -- Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Little Brother Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised "innovation" is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.

Down and Out in Silicon Valley

Down and Out in Silicon Valley PDF Author: Nicole Jerome
Publisher: Untied Artists
ISBN: 9780982402405
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
"Down and Out in Silicon Valley" is a head-on collision between Saturday Night Live and Facebook, a humorous send-up of Silicon Valley's over-the-top lifestyles. The story is a warm, modern comedy. In today's economic times, people need a good laugh more than ever. The story captures the flavor of Silicon Valley's 24 x 7, hyper-drive world and the challenges faced in balancing life, love and job. Scenes cover a diverse landscape of people and cities - Web 2.0 lifestyles, venture capitalists, surfers, workaholics and Bohemians. "Down and Out in Silicon Valley" is focused on the social experience of the Valley rather than technology. The main character is a smart, hip, funny woman. She works with a wacky bunch. They're funny and heartbreaking at the same time, like your friends. Story Line ... Michelle Beldatori is in an impossible situation. Her credit cards are maxed out. Her boyfriend's laid off. Their savings are gone. She can't face living out of a camper shell and showering in a gym. Not to worry - Michelle's got a plan. She'll get hired by an Internet startup company, earn bonuses and pay the rent. Goodbye to Starbucks barista - hello to Twitter and life on the run. Then she meets Bud. He's got a different plan for Michelle. Bud's going to use her as a scapegoat for his problems. Watch sparks fly as Michelle struggles her way through Silicon Valley's hot new startup. She faces outrageous assignments - scavenger hunter for gourmet Chinese food, planner of wireless ski trips, divorce court nanny, therapist for pets ... Her life shifts again when she meets a wealthy, but misunderstood man. Martin Avery's a rogue and a risk taker, which makes him sexy and unpredictable. But he's caught in a lifestyle that's paid for with his freedom. Find out what happens when Michelle and Martin collide - and her future twists in an unexpected direction.

Disrupted

Disrupted PDF Author: Dan Lyons
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 031630607X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
An instant New York Times bestseller, Dan Lyons' "hysterical" (Recode) memoir, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as "the best book about Silicon Valley," takes readers inside the maddening world of fad-chasing venture capitalists, sales bros, social climbers, and sociopaths at today's tech startups. For twenty-five years Dan Lyons was a magazine writer at the top of his profession--until one Friday morning when he received a phone call: Poof. His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."

Seeing Silicon Valley

Seeing Silicon Valley PDF Author: Mary Beth Meehan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678648X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 113

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Book Description
Also published in French as Visages de la Silicon Valley.

Always Day One

Always Day One PDF Author: Alex Kantrowitz
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593083482
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
"This is a terrific book" - Kara Swisher An acclaimed tech reporter reveals the inner workings of Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, showing how to compete with the tech titans using their own playbook. At Amazon, "Day One" is code for inventing like a startup, with little regard for legacy. Day Two is, in Jeff Bezos's own words, "stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death." Most companies today are set up for Day Two. They build advantages and defend them fiercely, rather than invent the future. But Amazon and fellow tech titans Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are operating in Day One: they prioritize reinvention over tradition and collaboration over ownership. Through 130 interviews with insiders, from Mark Zuckerberg to hourly workers, Always Day One reveals the tech giants' blueprint for sustainable success in a business world where no advantage is safe. Companies today can spin up new products at record speed -- thanks to artificial intelligence and cloud computing -- and those who stand still will be picked apart. The tech giants remain dominant because they've built cultures that spark continual reinvention. It might sound radical, but those who don't act like it's always day one do so at their own peril. Kantrowitz uncovers the engine propelling the tech giants' continued dominance at a stage when most big companies begin to decline. And he shows the way forward for everyone who wants to compete with--and beat--the titans.

Down and Out in the New Economy

Down and Out in the New Economy PDF Author: Ilana Gershon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226833224
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Finding a job used to be simple. You’d show up at an office and ask for an application. A friend would mention a job in their department. Or you’d see an ad in a newspaper and send in your cover letter. Maybe you’d call the company a week later to check in, but the basic approach was easy. And once you got a job, you would stay—often for decades. Now . . . well, it’s complicated. If you want to have a shot at a good job, you need to have a robust profile on LinkdIn. And an enticing personal brand. Or something like that—contemporary how-to books tend to offer contradictory advice. But they agree on one thing: in today’s economy, you can’t just be an employee looking to get hired—you have to market yourself as a business, one that can help another business achieve its goals. That’s a radical transformation in how we think about work and employment, says Ilana Gershon. And with Down and Out in the New Economy, she digs deep into that change and what it means, not just for job seekers, but for businesses and our very culture. In telling her story, Gershon covers all parts of the employment spectrum: she interviews hiring managers about how they assess candidates; attends personal branding seminars; talks with managers at companies around the United States to suss out regional differences—like how Silicon Valley firms look askance at the lengthier employment tenures of applicants from the Midwest. And she finds that not everything has changed: though the technological trappings may be glitzier, in a lot of cases, who you know remains more important than what you know. Throughout, Gershon keeps her eye on bigger questions, interested not in what lessons job-seekers can take—though there are plenty of those here—but on what it means to consider yourself a business. What does that blurring of personal and vocational lives do to our sense of our selves, the economy, our communities? Though it’s often dressed up in the language of liberation, is this approach actually disempowering workers at the expense of corporations? Rich in the voices of people deeply involved with all parts of the employment process, Down and Out in the New Economy offers a snapshot of the quest for work today—and a pointed analysis of its larger meaning.

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley PDF Author: Cary McClelland
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393608808
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
An intimate, eye-opening portrait of San Francisco transformed by the tech boom. San Francisco is changing at warp speed. Famously home to artists and activists, and known as the birthplace of the Beats, the Black Panthers, and the LGBTQ movement, in recent decades the Bay Area has been reshaped by Silicon Valley, the engine of the new American economy. The richer the region gets, the more unequal and less diverse it becomes, and cracks in the city’s facade—rapid gentrification, an epidemic of evictions, rising crime, atrophied public institutions—have started to show. Inspired by Studs Terkel’s classic works of oral history, writer and filmmaker Cary McClelland spent several years interviewing people at the epicenter of the recent change, from venture capitalists and coders to politicians and protesters, from native sons and daughters to the city’s newest arrivals. The crisp and vivid stories of Silicon City’s diverse cast capture San Francisco as never before. The book opens with a longtime tour guide recounting the history of the original Gold Rush and observing how little the people of his city pay attention to its history; it ends on Fisherman’s Wharf, with the proprietor of an arcade game museum reminding us that even today’s technology will become relics of the past. In between we hear from people who have passed through Apple, Google, eBay, Intel, and the other big tech companies of our time. And we meet those who are experiencing the changes at the grassroots level: a homeless advocate in Haight-Ashbury, an Oakland rapper, a pawnbroker in the Mission, a man who helped dismantle and rebuild the Bay Bridge, and a woman who runs a tattoo parlor in the Castro. Silicon City masterfully weaves together a candid conversation across a divided community to create a dynamic portrait of a beloved city—and a cautionary tale for the entire country.

The Psychology of Silicon Valley

The Psychology of Silicon Valley PDF Author: Katy Cook
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030273644
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Misinformation. Job displacement. Information overload. Economic inequality. Digital addiction. The breakdown of democracy, civility, and truth itself. This open access book explores the conscious and unconscious norms, values, and characteristics that drive behaviors within the high-tech capital of the world, Silicon Valley, and the sector it represents. In an era where the reach and influence of a single industry has the potential to define the future of our world, it has become apparent just how little we know about the organizations driving these changes. The Psychology of Silicon Valley offers a revealing look inside the mind of world’s most influential industry and how the identity, culture, myths, and motivations of Big Tech are harming society. The book argues that the bad values and lack of emotional intelligence borne in the vacuum of Silicon Valley will have lasting consequences on everything from social equality to the future of work to our collective mental health. Katy Cook expertly walks us through the psychological landscape of Silicon Valley, including its leadership, ethical, and cultural problems, and artfully explains why we cannot afford to ignore the psychology and values that are behind our technology any longer.