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Summary: This book made me laugh!
Review: As a cust service rep, I could relate to the stories of Mike Daisey. I mentioned a few times to my husband that I knew exactly what Mike was talking about.
This was a good book and a fast read!
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Summary: it's not a documentary, it's just a good laugh!
Review: I don't know about the rest of these guys, but I just picked up it because it looked funny and it was on sale. I loved it! I laughed out loud at least once every chapter and blew thru the book in 2 days. If you're not looking for anything deep and just want a quick, fun read, I highly recommend it. You probably won't learn anything, but then again, I don't think that was the point of this book!
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Summary: OK, but hardly an expose of Amazon.Com
Review: I thought this might be a fascinating insight into our favourite online bookstore. Unfortunately, that's just not the case.Mike Daisey is entertaining, and this is an interesting and easily-read book, but it's just not the great hard-hitting expose I had been led to believe. While reading, I just never, ever get the impression that Daisey's problems with life at Amazon are a consequence of anything Amazon-esque itself, as opposed to the general horribleness of a call-centre job and the fact Daisey self-admits he doesn't really have a penchant for working! Don't get me wrong; there are some interesting sections on how Amazon developed - and even some entertaining stories about bizarre plans that Amazon conceived - but to my mind, for the most part, this is really just a story about Daisey lambasting the nature of call-centre and customer service representative positions. Anyone who reads this book will undoubtedly enjoy it - but be clear as to just what type of story to expect.
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Summary: Work habits of the underachieved.
Review: This is a not only a fantastic memoir, but a very insightful social commentary. Think Microserfs meets A Confederacy of Dunces, with a happy ending. The leap into Industry is a choice that most of us have to make, though only a few approach it with trepidation. Daisey is one of the few. A critical performance worthy of its subject.
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Summary: It's not I'm anti-social, I'm only anti-work.
Review: This light and breezy tome about the author's time at Amazon.com works best when he tells funny anecdotes about his job and his life. This self-described dilettante seems to never take too much too seriously. Working his first 'real' job in a company that is THE model for the dot com industry, Daisey has a ringside seat in the new economy. It is only a few years ago now but so many of the ideas and ideals that held the early Amazon.com together look quaint and old-fashioned. Daisey doesn't spare himself how he talks about people working towards getting the product out the door as losses mount and stock options grow. The old adage of 'sell at a loss and make it up in volume' seems to have been invented for firms like Amazon.com, Pets.com In the enthusiasm of the moment they all bought into the dream of riches flowing from the red ink. The author was never close to the heart of the company and his tenure there was brief indeed but while it lasted it was intense. As much as Daisey loved the place and the idea of working with internet icon 'Jeff Bezos' he freely admits that his work was not going to get him to the top of the corporate ladder. He hangs up on the clients when he answers the phone, he accepts products to review and then skips the reviews, and the pinnacle of his time with the firm is days spent looking for porn websites that link to Amazon. Why the magic failed to stay with him for long is not a tough question to answer. Daisey tells a great story and many anecdotes are side splitting. His diagnosing the failure behind so many of the early dot coms is less insightful and filled with the same commonsense that the rest of the world woke up to a couple of years back. The fictional letters he keeps writing to Jeff Bezos but never sends could be entirely dispensed with and the book would be funnier for it. High marks for humor but lower scores for any insights into the world of the internet economy.
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Summary: The Ultimate Slacker and his Obssesion with Amazon
Review: This is a very funny book about the author's career with Amazon. But if you are reading this to learn about Amazon, that's only part of the story. Mike Daisey is the ultimate slacker and proud of it. Raised in rural Maine, Daisy migrates to Seattle after a liberal arts degree specializing in acting. This is not the type guy who ends up as the next Mel Gibson but rather he's working his acting gig in garages in Seattle. Obviously this type career will require money from natural sources, real jobs. After a distinguished career in the temporary services industry, Daisey latches on to the Customer Service dept. at Amazon.com. Keep in mind this is the early stages of the company with massive software problems. This required lying and tap-dancing by the Customer Service representatives. While some may be uniquely qualified for this job, Daisey was not and during this frustrating period was rescued with a job in business development, clearly a step up. While this job put him closer to the heat of Jeff Bezos, the Amazon icon, the Internet hype days were quickly ending. Daisey was caught in the trap and lost his job. How he describes this wild ride from slacker, to Amazon brainwashed devotee, back to normal slacker is a humorous story of our times. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Amazon, the Internet culture or youngsters coming of age in the 90's.
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Summary: Very funny, if overly sarcastic, take on life at a dot-com
Review: Mike Daisey's witty account of his "21 dog years" at Amazon.com brought back memories of my own career at an Internet company, and in several places made me laugh out loud. I believe readers will enjoy his dead-on descriptions of the quirky characters he faced on a daily basis: the bizarre uber-freak in customer service; the Earth momma whose tough management belied her Birkenstocks; "Employee Number 5," who stayed in his lair playing a Dungeons and Dragons-type game and rarely spoke to his employees, etc. Daisey is surprisingly honest in his account of his initial love affair with the company, how it seemed to rescue him from slackerdom; and uniformly self-deprecating about his own abilities. (It seems clear from his writing that he is actually quite talented, at least in that department). He captures well other traits of the Internet-mania years: employees' obsessions with stock options, their strike prices and maturations; all the trite "buzzwords"; biz plans that made no sense but people were afraid to question. If I have any "bone to pick" (little pun there) with the book, it is that Daisey's sarcasm doesn't lighten up much, if at all, even when aimed at himself, throughout the book. I also could do without those many e-mails to Jeff Bezos, which I think would have been good to include only if he had actually sent them (and especially if he had gotten a reply). I think he has valid criticisms of the company, but I don't think it or Jeff Bezos deserve the Evil people-tricker rep Daisey seems to pin on it. But overall, the book is a very funny, and I imagine true-to-life, snapshot of what it was like to work there. I'd recommend it to anyone who lived through anything like it, or who was just curious about the company behind all that stuff they buy online. Julia Wilkinson, author, My Life at AOL
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Summary: The hilarious truth
Review: Mike Daisey is a gifted storyteller and comedian. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, because it says something about our generation -- no, it's not a bunch of whinning ...Daisey's work tells the tale of a dream for something more than just a cubicle and a cog in corporate mechanics. It also tells the tale of a highly intelligent and skeptical indivudal searching for something greater-than-self to believe in. ... Daisey's work is both silly and profound.
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Summary: Bighearted, disarming take on e-crap; a *lambent* debut
Review: Daisey's light touch and relentlessly honest self-examination make what could have been a ho-hum account of some privileged white postcollegiate slackerdude's Net years into a touching odyssey of obsession, courage, and hope. Self-actualization has never been so interesting. The book has lots of stuff Daisey didn't have time to get to in his live solo show. Get it, read it.
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Summary: Witty and funny!
Review: There is no way that Daisey made up all of the stories in the book. He maybe exaggerated some of them, but I'm convinced that this guy did his time at Amazon's customer service department. Daisey describes a time when working for a dot-com was very hip, and being with Amazon was being inside of the Olymp of the "new economy". There are 2 things that you can expect from this product: First of all a "fun to read" book (an exception are the 6 or 7 pages where the author makes up weird emails to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos). And if this is not enough, some insight information about the world of dotComs (including stock option mentality and marketing tricks) and customer service departments (this might change your view about these people). BTW: The information that he provides is not always flattering for the company whos website your are visiting right now.
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