Overview

Liar's Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent expose of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio Garcia Martinez, a former Twitter adviser, Facebook product manager, and start-up 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 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 Garcia Martinez. After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own start-up, Garcia Martinez joined Facebook's nascent advertising team, turning its users' data into profit for COO Sheryl Sandberg and chairman and CEO Mark Zuck Zuckerberg. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company's monetization strategy, Garcia Martinez 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 start-ups and credit derivatives to Big Brother and data tracking, social media monetization and digital privacy, Garcia Martinez 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? BONUS CONTENT: An exclusive interview featuring Antonio Garcia Martinez in conversation with journalist and author Steven Levy.

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9781504733786

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Reviews

Narrator Dan John Miller plays [Martinez] as brash and cocky, which suits Martinez to a tee. On the basis of this performance, Miller can most assuredly add 'humble brag' to his resume of mastered deliveries. -- AudioFile This gossipy insider account...dishes dirt while also explaining the ins and outs of Silicon Valley. -- Library Journal This year's best non-business book about business...A classic tale, well told. -- Techcrunch 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 Reckless and rollicking...The resulting view of the Valley's craziness, self-importance and greed isn't pretty. But it's one that most of us have never seen before and aren't likely to forget. -- Washington Post Dives into the unburnished, day-to-day realities: the frantic pivots, the enthusiastic ass-kissing, the excruciating internal politics...[Garcia] can be rude, but he's shrewd, too. -- Bloomberg BusinessWeek 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. -- New York Times Martinez is brilliant at describing the relaxed yet self-centered attitudes of high-powered Californians. -- Financial Times

Author Information

Antonio Garcia Martinez has been an adviser to Twitter, a product manager for Facebook, the CEO/founder of AdGrok (a venture-backed start-up acquired by Twitter), and a strategist for Goldman Sachs. He lives on a forty-foot sailboat on the San Francisco Bay. Dan John Miller is an American actor and musician. In the Oscar-winning Walk the Line, he starred as Johnny Cash's guitarist and best friend, Luther Perkins, and has also appeared in George Clooney's Leatherheads and My One and Only, with Renee Zellweger. An award-winning audiobook narrator, he has garnered multiple Audie Award nominations, has twice been named a Best Voice by AudioFile magazine, and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards and a Listen-Up Award from Publishers Weekly.

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