Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

I went back and forth on 4/5 stars on this one. The description of advertising technology could be more lucid, the portion on Facebook seemed a tad long, and the romantic intrigues were pretty tame to be mentioned. Still, there's alot to like: I enjoyed the autobiographical tour from quant to startup employee to startup founder to grown-up startup employee to unemployed, particularly the description of the AdGrok acquisition talks. It's always difficult to ascertain what might or might not be true in these kinds of books, but I was left feeling like a friend of Martinez, him pulling back the curtain a bit and letting slip a few secrets, me discovering cracks in the Silicon Valley blend of meritocracy and 'we're changing the world' companies.

Recommended read, though the meat of the book is in the first 1/2 to 2/3. Tone is pretty polarizing, though clearly I was a fan. ( )

It's a shitty auto-biography, but a decent and mildly-accurate overview of how Silicon Valley works. ( )

A well-written book by a player, not just an observer. It is a real-world equivalent of the TV comedic mockumentary, "Silicon Valley" . There are a few tinges of self-aggrandisement, but this does not detract from a compelling and timely story well told. ( )

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-monkeys/) ( )

A rambling bore of a book written by someone who comes across at best, an egomaniac and at worst, a downright fool.
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