- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: McGraw-Hill Inc.,US (1 Oct 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0071352430
- ISBN-13: 978-0071352437
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,720,519 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The operating principle behind NetSlaves is neatly summed up when authors Bill Lessard and Steve Baldwin write, "People are nuts, no matter what profession they're in, but people forced to work like dogs with the carrot stick of stock options and 'untold' wealth dangling under their noses are especially nuts."
If all you know about the Internet business is what you've read in the financial press, then Net Slaves provides a cold slap of reality. For every headline-making company like Yahoo! or Amazon, there are hundreds or perhaps even thousands more like the ones Net vets Lessard and Baldwin have worked for. These are the start-ups that never finish up, companies that hire hundreds of programmers and Web site designers and techies of all stripes, then merge or downsize or go out of business before anyone can cash in. The authors take the reader on an anthropological expedition through what they call the New Media Caste System. At the bottom rung are the "garbagemen", the guys who have to get the server up and running when it crashes, who have to rush to help the digital morons who can't figure out how to open their e-mail. At the top, of course, are the "robber barons," the guys who really do get mind-blowing wealth and profiles in Wired magazine. For each level, the authors tell an instructive, cautionary tale of life in the new economy.
Although the authors clearly set out to create revenge journalism, enjoyed by all those who've lived on pizza and Mountain Dew for months on end only to end up with a pink slip, those outside the tech universe should enjoy it, too. Revenge may be best served cold but it's easy to warm up to Net Slaves. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com
Product Description
This volume offers eyewitness accounts of how self-destructive the Internet business can be is based upon net slaves.com, which Wired sited as "the only site where the 'web working poor' can air their feelings". This collection of horror stories, both amusing and not so amusing, documents the real-life stories of those who work the Web, in their own words.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an easy to read book written for people who feel they need some insight into the lives and minds of those who are crafting out IT futures. The style of writing of this book is best described as a compromise between wacky dude and deadly serious. There are lots of references to the way that people in the Net industry dress (skateboard attire, baseball caps on back to front), the way they talk (hey, man!), the way they think (there are many variations here, ranging from 'this time next year Rodney, we'll be millionaires' to '________' ie complete silence).
Overall, the message of the book is a serious one: that people working in the Internet Business are overworked, often under trained, likely to have a crack at anything and then sign off as if the whole thing works when patently it doesn't.
There are some rip off merchants described in this book: for example, the couple who steal an entire idea as their own and make some serious money out of it only to let the idea fail through their own incompetence.
There are people described here who enter the business with vigour, they love life and they want to become surgically attached to their monitor and keyboard, their HTML code and their desks ... within a relatively short space of time they are burned out, they are disaffected and they quit only to live the rest of their lives in purgatory ... or bliss.
Of all the characters that walk Lessard and Baldwin's cat walk (or should it be net walk?), this is the description that made me laugh out loud:
"Short and paunchy, Mencken had muttonchop sideburns, which he often topped off with a big cowboy hat. His intent was to look like a badass, but given his physical limitations, he came off more like a troll with attitude." Page 51
This one appealed to me most of all because it epitomises the character of someone who I was working with at the time I read that..
Given the style of the book: take a topic, introduce it, paint a picture of the average character within that topic and then tell one person's story as they were affected by the topic, it's not fair to try to summarise what Lessard and Baldwin have done. However, they have a serious message that I interpret as:
The internet is a serious business and there are some serious people in it. Nevertheless, there are opportunities for people to be exploited (eg Green Card holders working for peanuts who are aspiring to US citizenship), there are people with ideas being ripped off, there are managers who aren't fit to manage their own toilet habits let alone departments and projects.
Secondly, I confirmed the idea that I have had for a while now: the internet is not a free form of business or communication as many would have us believe. There are those that believe that the internet is different because it's of, for and by the people. Unfortunately, that's only true to an extent The internet is being driven by business towards becoming another standard business model that can be used and manipulated in the way that the standard business model can. What this means is that the average person who wants to be free to do his thing on the internet, to find his level, can do so but only to an extent.
Here's an example of what I mean: in the early days of the world wide web, it seemed possible to find just about any page that was up there by going to a search engine and doing a search. 6 or 7 years later, do a search on a search engine and pages that I know to be there are sometimes impossible to find. I think it's business has taken over the free flow of information and ideas by this mechanism: what they've done is to refine the search process so that it only finds specific information in specific parts of any web page rather than the whole web page.
Finally, the book has been written with the help of real net slaves: people working in the industry in exactly the way the stories are written. However, the companies reported on are given fictitious names, presumably in an attempt to protect the innocent. Nevertheless, it is possible to recognise most of them if you remember the stories that Lessard and Baldwin throw out from time to time. Since it is relatively easy to spot the companies, I wonder in the end whether it was worth trying to disguise them!
One of those books that can be read on a train, a boat or a plane. I wouldn't necessarily rush out to buy a copy; but if it's left lying around anywhere, pick it up and give it the once over!
Format:Paperback
As always in books like these it's a pity that names and places have to be changed but after reading this you can see why they had to! Nicely written and a real eye-opener, especially as I'm in the same business they're talking about.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
64 reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
From the snivleing-techie-department.
8 Dec 1999
Format:Paperback
There will be people that write reviews... saying that this book is a whiner's book or that the writers are techie axe grinders. They may say 'name changing is not warranted'. They'll feel smug with these criticisms. But the reality is that the technical world is burning hot which truly proves that technical work is hell. There is a great push to 'become' more efficient. What this really means is 80 hour work weeks or more. This means exploiting the talent of your employees and reorging them often. When you are done with them, you toss them to the side. People become a commodity. Behind all the free soda, snacks, air conditioned rooms, there is a real abuse and exploitation. Sure leave your job for another one. That job will be the same thing. I remember when I liked using computers, now I feel they are a social black hole that slowly sucks the life out of you. If this was a book about artists creating work and them having it ripped from them by corporate goons there would be more sympathy to the writers, but most people don't see that technologists are in fact artists. They create. Welcome to commercialism. But if you can't beat them, join them... This book has finally convinced me to go get that MBA and strive to become one of the last 3 chapters of this book.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
X-treme net disasters sad...but true
5 Nov 1999
Format:Paperback
Netslaves without a doubt is X-treme, with the capital 'X'. The stories you read within are disturbing. The insiders view of some large hardware, software, and Internet companies makes you wanna run out and Sell, Sell, Sell any and all stock you may have in them.
In fact, some of the stories got so bizarre, that I started reacting negatively to the book. Sword-wielding censors? Company heads fleeing justice in Mexico? OJ's guilty?
Come on. That, coupled with the mangled corporate names (though anyone with a brain can guess who NetScathe et al really are) seemed to seriously impact the power of the book. My credibility was stretched, and I thought to myself, "Self, this is just another one of those sensationalism books out to shock you out of your money".
But I was wrong. By the the time I finished the book, I poked my nose around and found out it was true. All of its true. And then I re-read it, and the realism and bluntness of the writing sucked me in.
Netslaves is a great book, because it deals with real people honestly. Real people under enormous (and occasionally bizarre) stress do whacko things, and these guys are there to show you the damage. The world wide web is built on the broken remains of Netslaves, and Bill and Steve give you the view from the coroners office. I'd give it two thumbs up if it weren't for the damn carpal tunnel....
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Blood, Sweat, and Sore Butts
24 Nov 1999
Format:Paperback
I don't think I've ever read a book like this before - it's sort of like "Pulp Fiction Meets The Net" with shades of "True Confessions" mixed in. This is a quick read, and I've already passed it on to a family member who still harbors the belief that working in the "dot.com" field is a good career choice. I don't know if I'd go quite so far as to say that most Net careers "nasty, brutish, and short", as the authors do, but I do think it's about time that people start looking beyond the hype toward what life in the info-trenches actually entails, and this book is an excellent alternative to all the dot-com glamorizing and boosterism that's out there. Very funny, too - it helps the bitter cautionary medicine go down.
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