Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley - Softcover

Garcia Martinez, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062458205 ISBN 13: 9780062458209

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2018

Synopsis

The instant New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback and featuring a new afterword from the author--the insider's guide to the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, the inner workings of the tech world, and who really runs Silicon Valley

“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

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. 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. 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. In Chaos Monkeys, 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. 

About this title

From the Back Cover

Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a data center 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 provocative 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 “Zuck” 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, brewed illegal beer on the Facebook campus (accidentally
flooding Zuckerberg’s desk), lived on a sailboat, raced sports cars on the 101, and enthusiastically pursued the life of an overpaid Silicon Valley cad.

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, how will we survive?

About the Author

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 an Ideas Contributor for WIRED and lives on a forty-foot sailboat on the San Francisco Bay.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0062458205
• ISBN 13: 9780062458209
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 544