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Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Harper
July 2016
On Sale: June 28, 2016
528 pages ISBN: 0062458191 EAN: 9780062458193 Kindle: B019MMUAAQ Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
Liarβs Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent exposΓ© of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio GarcΓa MartΓnez, 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 βchaos monkeyβ to test online servicesβ robustnessβtheir ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are societyβs 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 Valleyβs most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio GarcΓa MartΓnez. After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, GarcΓa MartΓnez joined Facebookβs nascent advertising team, turning its usersβ data into profit for COO Sheryl Sandberg and chairman and CEO Mark βZuckβ Zuckerberg. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the companyβs monetization strategy, GarcΓa MartΓnez 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 βprivacy,β GarcΓa MartΓnez 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?
 Media BuzzCBS This Morning - June 28, 2016
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