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21 dog years : doing time @ Amazon.com / Mike Daisey.
Van Pelt Library Z473.A485 D35 2002
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Daisey, Mike, 1973-
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Daisey, Mike, 1973-.
- Amazon.com (Firm)--History.
- Amazon.com (Firm).
- History.
- Amazon.com (Firm)--Biography.
- Electronic commerce.
- Internet bookstores.
- United States.
- Internet bookstores--United States--History--20th century.
- Electronic commerce--United States--History--20th century.
- Genre:
- Biographies.
- Physical Description:
- 222 pages ; 23 cm
- Other Title:
- Twenty-one dog years : doing time @ Amazon.com
- Doing time @ Amazon.com
- Doing time at Amazon.com
- Place of Publication:
- New York : Free Press, [2002]
- Summary:
- Boy meets dot-com, boy falls for dot-com, boy flees dot-com in horror. So goes one of the most perversely hilarious love stories you will ever read, one that blends tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, Albanian economics, venture capitalism, and free bagels into a surreal cocktail of delusion. In 1998, when Amazon.com went to temp agencies to recruit people, they gave them a simple directive: send us your freaks. Mike Daisey -- slacker, onetime aesthetics major, dilettante -- seemed perfect for the job. His ascension from lowly temp to customer service representative to business development hustler over the course of twenty-one dog years is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares. With lunatic precision, Daisey describes the lightless cube farms in which book orders were scrawled on Post-its while technicians struggled to bring computers back online; the fourteen-hour days fueled by caffeine, fanaticism, and illicit day-trading from office desks made from doors; his strange compulsion to send free books to Norwegians; and the fevered insistence of BizDev higher-ups that the perfect business partner was Pets.com -- the now-extinct company that spent all its assets on a sock puppet.
- In these pages, you'll meet Warren, the cowboy of customer service, capable of verbally hog-tying even the most abusive customer; Amazon employee #5, a reclusive computer gamer worth a cool $300 million, who spends at least six hours a day locked in his office killing goblins; and Jean-Michele, Mike's girlfriend and sparring partner, who tries to keep him grounded, even as dot-com mania seduces them both. At strategic intervals, the narrative is punctuated by hysterically honest letters to CEO Jeff Bezos -- missives that seem ripped from the collective unconscious of dot-com disciples the world over. 21 DogYears is an epic story of greed, self-deception, and heartbreak, a wickedly funny anthem to an era of bounteous stock options and boundless insanity.
- Contents:
- 1 Dilettante 1
- 2 Freak Parade 15
- 3 Doors for Desks 25
- 4 Geek Messiah 39
- Subject: introductions 55
- 5 Our Physics 59
- 6 College Years 73
- Subject: transformers, dreams 86
- 7 Gorillas vs. Bears 89
- 8 1-Click Christmas 99
- Subject: oompa-loompa 109
- 9 Mission Statements 113
- 10 Interviews 125
- Subject: to tell you 134
- 11 Supervillain Lair 137
- 12 Pornsniffing 147
- Subject: accident 161
- 13 Fiscal Wonderland 165
- 14 Exit Interview 177
- Subject: au revoir 192
- 15 Museum of Ham 195
- Subject: laugh with me 207
- 16 Field Trip 211.
- ISBN:
- 0743225805
- OCLC:
- 49352204
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