Chaos Monkeys

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Synopsis

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 

“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

“Eye-popping.”
— Vanity Fair

Liar’s Poker meets The Social Network in an irreverent exposé of life inside the tech bubble, from industry provocateur Antonio García Martínez, 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 “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 “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, 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?

BONUS CONTENT: An exclusive interview featuring Antonio Garcia Martinez in conversation with journalist and author, Steven Levy.

Chapters

  • 021 Getting Liked

    Duration: 12min
  • 022 Getting Poked

    Duration: 15min
  • 023 The Various Futures of The Forking Paths

    Duration: 20min
  • 024 Retweets Are Not Endorsements

    Duration: 07min
  • 025 The Dotted Line

    Duration: 17min
  • 026 Endgame

    Duration: 10min
  • 027 Boot Camp

    Duration: 21min
  • 028 Product Masseur

    Duration: 20min
  • 029 Google Delenda Est

    Duration: 17min
  • 030 Leaping Headlong

    Duration: 11min
  • 031 One Shot One Kill

    Duration: 09min
  • 032 Twice Bitten Thrice Shy

    Duration: 08min
  • 033 Ads Five-Oh

    Duration: 15min
  • 034 The Narcissism of Privacy

    Duration: 25min
  • 035 Are We Savage or What

    Duration: 11min
  • 036 O Death

    Duration: 14min
  • 037 The Barbaric Yawn

    Duration: 15min
  • 038 Going Public

    Duration: 13min
  • 039 When The Flying Saucers Fail to Appear

    Duration: 24min
  • 040 Monetizing The Tumor

    Duration: 11min
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