Chaos Monkey (Martinez)

Chaos Monkey:  Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Antonio Garcia Martinez, 2016
HarperCollins
528 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062458193


Summary
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 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? (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1978-79 (?)
• Raised—Miami, Florida, USA
• Education—B.S., University of California-Berkeley
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay


Antonio García Martínez has been an advisor to Twitter, a product manager for Facebook, the CEO/founder of AdGrok (a venture-backed startup acquired by Twitter), and a strategist for Goldman Sachs. He is still officially on leave from his Berkeley PhD program, and lives on a forty-foot sailboat on the San Francisco Bay. (From the publisher.)

Martinez's profile on his website.

Book Reviews
Chaos Monkeys aims to do...for Silicon Valley [what Michael Lewis's Liars Poker did for Wall Street] and bracingly succeeds. Nothing I’ve ever read conveys better what it actually is like to be in the engine room of the start-up economy. There were moments I laughed out loud, something I never recall doing while reading about Steve Jobs.... There are a few problems with Chaos Monkeys. García Martínez likes footnotes way too much (on one page there are four) and the epigraphs to each chapter are numbingly heavy-handed.... More problematically, there is much more about digital ad technology here than most readers could possibly want.
David Streitfeld - New york Times Book Review


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


An irresistible and indispensable 360-degree guide to the new technology establishment.... A must-read.
Jonathan A. Knee - New York Times


There are some books that are just too good to miss.... In his insider-tells-all book, Garcia Martinez discusses everything from goofy stories to cultural secrets about some of the country's most powerful and influential businesses.
Atlantic


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.... [García] can be rude, but he’s shrewd, too.
Bloomberg - Businessweek


An unvarnished account…of Silicon Valley.
CBS This Morning


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

Discussion Questions
The publisher has yet to issue discussion questions, so use these LitLovers talking points to help kick-off a discussion for Chaos Monkeys...then take off on your own:

1. Are the denizens of Silicon Valley doing God's work as some of them claim? If they're not in the tech industry for the money, what are they in it for?

2. After reading Chaos Monkeys, how do you feel about those who work in the Valley? Even the author reflects on his own behavior as caddish: "I was wholly devoid of most human boundaries or morality." Is that hyperbole? Does that descirption apply to others in the industry, especially in the start-up business?

3. Talk about life in the big tech companies. Martinez compares it to life in Cuba or Communist China in 1965. He writes of the "endless toil motivated by lapidary ideas handed down by a revered and unquestioned leader." As you read his account, does his comparison hold up?

4. Talk about Martinez's time at Y Combinator, the industry's start-up accelerator.

5. Is Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, according to the author?

6. What does Martinez suggest are the implications of all the new technology? How is it...and how will it impact our culture? What do you think?

7. Is the book too heavy on technology? Or are Martinez's footnotes and explanations helpful. In other words, do they add to or detract from your enjoyment of the book.

8. What have you come away with after reading Chaos Monkeys? Does the author make you feel as if you're on inside of a start-up? Do you have a greater understanding or appreciation of the industry than you had before?

(Questions by LitLovers. Feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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