21 Dog Years: doing time @ amazon.com - Doors for Desks
Written: Sep 11 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Funny stories. Great if you wanted to see the innards of amazon.com customer service.
Cons: Author fails at giving a vivid picture of life at amazon.com
The Bottom Line: Good for a few laughs but falls short in many ways.
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| rice75's Full Review: Mike Daisey - 21 Dog Years: A Cube Dweller's Tale |
"Who here was part of the internet boom four years ago? Come on, raise those hands. No, being one of the first Epinions.com members or selling your G.I.Joe® collection on eBay.com does not count. No one? Okay, me neither."
"Who wanted to be part of the internet boom? Everyone, right?" Of course everyone wanted to be part of it, I know I did. I wanted to suffer from the newest psychological disorder: instant wealth syndrome. But alas, I live in Columbus, OH, not San Jose, California. I soaked up all the attention the internet age was getting but I received no love in return. I considered myself a internet veteran, having used email long before most people knew what the internet was, so I felt I deserved to be part of the gold rush of the late nineties.
I did get to live vicariously for a while a last summer when I was in San Jose, visiting family. I was talking to my cousin who was in the middle of the craziness. He told me of countless 18+ hour days, not seeing daylight for days at a time. All because they believed. They believed they were changing the world. He also told me what it felt like to be a paper millionaire. With thousands of stock options, had the bubble lasted a few months longer, he would be my favorite (and obscenely rich) cousin.
The "New Economy" was a religion, zealously practiced and vigorously proselyted by geeks and business suits alike. CNBC began calling prophets and missionaries to the ministry to spread the good word to all. And we all wanted to be baptized. Was it greed? For some of us, maybe. But for the converted, it was more than money. They had seen the Messiah and he was Jeff Bezos. What he said was gospel. He led the way, by example. He could do no wrong. And Mike Daisey was Bezos’ Mary Magdalene.
Summary
In Mike Daisey’s 21 Dog Years - doing time @ amazon.com Daisey attempts to give us a glimpse into the life of a Customer Service representative working during the infancy of Amazon.com. In the process we see how things worked on the inside and the madness that surrounded the first years of Amazon.com.
The book begins with Mike describing his life before he head out to Seattle. He majored in aesthetics at an unnamed school before moving to Seattle to join the legions of hippies, artists and disaffected slackers. After failed attempts at temp jobs, he is approached by an Amazon.com recruiter. With his life going nowhere he decided to go along.
This is where the transformation begins. During the three weeks of training (brain washing?) he slowly begins a true believer in the New Economy. In Amazon.com. But most of all, Jeff Bezos. He begins of in Customer Service, slaving with the other phone monkeys until he makes his way up to BizDev (Business Development). Here things are great. He has his own desk and a real job title. Problem is, he doesn’t know what he does or what he is supposed to do. There’s a passage that succinctly describes the madness of being part of the dot.com whirlwind:
We were all doing a great deal of work and moving very quickly—I just don’t know what it was that we were actually doing, moment to moment, day to day. You could walk into a colleague’s office and say, "Hey, do you have a minute?" And he’d be sitting there, waving his hands in the air very quickly back and forth and he’d say, "Can’t talk now-very, very busy." You’d ask slowly, "Ah… what are you busy doing?" To which he would naturally respond, "Moving my arms, like this, back and forth, all day long, very, very busy, good-bye."
Everyone was supposed to be doing something. It just that no one knew what. Then the proverbial hammer comes down after Christmas, people start getting laid off and BizDev is dissolved and Mike is back in Customer Service.
Then one day he has an epiphany. He is no longer blinded by Bezos’ smile or what the stock is (over)valued at. He realizes he is in the wrong place. He leaves Amazon.com and slides into a lazy, do nothing at all funk. It takes a trip with his girlfriend far from Seattle to get things back on track. And everyone lives somewhat happily ever after.
My Thoughts
I didn’t think I'd ever do book reviews here, but after reading this book I had a strong desire to do just that. It wasn’t because I wanted to warn everyone about how bad this book was. I'll be the first to admit I enjoyed 21 Dog Years - doing time @ amazon.com. I often found myself laughing out loud. Daisey's humor is witty and he speaks on my level. I can be a slacker, too, so I empathize with his life experiences. But something was missing.
He tries very hard to describe the pace at Amazon.com as frantic. His description of the Customer Service area gave it a gloomy, dungeon-like setting, but the was no activity. I wasn’t convinced that people worked that hard at Amazon.com.
He tries and succeeds at giving Jeff Bezos immortal status. To all at Amazon.com, a smile, a nod, a touch on the arm from Jeff was life-altering. All were under his charismatic spell. “Who cares how we are going to make a profit? Jeff we lead us to the promised land.” Daisey was no exception. He talks about rumors going around the Jeff actually responded to email addressed to him at jeff@amazon.com. Interspersed throughout the book are emails that Daisey wrote Bezos. They begin harmless enough, but they track Daisey’s descent into insanity and his climb back out. I enjoyed the emails.
21 Dog Years - doing time @ amazon.com was a love story. A two-part love story. Daisey’s infatuation with Bezos and his real-life love story with his girlfriend/fiancée/wife Jean-Michele. She was his anchor in reality. She had to fight Bezos for Mike’s love. And she won. Unfortunately, both love stories lacked passion. I realize this wasn’t supposed to be a love story, but it really is. Daisey was in love with Bezos. He admitted to it. But there just wasn’t any pop to the romance.
21 Dog Years - doing time @ amazon.com was a good book. It was an easy read and I would recommend it if you wanted glimpses into the dot com era. It is funny. Gut-busting funny at times. But it lacks a lot of depth. Where this book could have shone with activity and action, it falls flat. It’s a good book to get from the library but I would pass it up at the book store.
Recommended:
Yes
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rice75
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Member: Tony Rice
Location: Columbus, OH
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Resident Evil 4 will own your soul. Do not resist.
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