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The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley
 
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The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley [Paperback]

Po Bronson (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (75 customer reviews)

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Perhaps more than anywhere else, Silicon Valley in the latter part of the 20th century has come to represent the essence of the American dream. Its economy has resembled the various rushes and booms of the 1800s. The Valley is a unique place in a unique time, where just about anyone with a good idea, an aptitude for hard work, and a boatload of luck has a chance to make it big--really big. In The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson intends to capture the spirit of the Valley, leading us through a series of vignettes that takes us from a "near brush with sudden wealth" to a $400 million buyout; from life on the edge with a group of Java programmers to the plight of a futurist writer with the looming deadline for a 9,000-word article. For Bronson, the appeal of the Valley is this:
Every generation that came before us had to make a choice in life between pursuing a steady career and pursuing wild adventures. In Silicon Valley, that trade-off has been recircuited. By injecting mind-boggling risk into the once stodgy domain of gray-suited business, young people no longer have to choose. It's a two-for-one deal: the career path has become an adventure into the unknown.
Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, what makes Bronson's book work is a talent for narrative. He presents compelling stories about those who make it--for example, Ben Chiu (Killerapp.com, C/NET) and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail)--as well as those whom we'll never hear of again: the database salesman working on the "hockey stick" at the close of the quarter and the "kiss-ass entrepreneur" who's taken up COBOL programming to make ends meet. The Nudist on the Late Shift is for anyone who has wondered what life on the modern frontier is like--and for those who are already there, the reflection might be revealing. --Harry C. Edwards --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Having satirized Silicon Valley in his novel The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, Bronson now turns a much rosier eye on the pulsing heart of the information age. As Bronson examines the pursuit of high-tech entrepreneurial glory, his method recalls the way Robert Altman's Nashville gave moviegoers a sense of the chase for country music stardomAexcept there's very little pathos here and a lot of blue sky. Though he dutifully presents the long odds facing the would-be founders of the next Yahoo!, Bronson thrills to the culture of the Valley because he believes it fuses the often contradictory desires for security and adventure. "By injecting mind-boggling amounts of risk into the once stodgy domain of gray-suited business, young people no longer have to choose. It's a two-for-one deal: the career path has become the adventure into the unknown." Bronson clearly likes the wild-eyed optimists and masters of uncertainty he profiles. There's Sabeer Bhatia, the Indian-born founder of Hotmail, who established a company and, against the advice of more experienced heads, rejected several buyout offers from Bill Gates until Microsoft paid $400 million for Hotmail. There's the exec who let Bronson be a fly on the wall during the ulcer-inducing process of steering a company through an IPO. And there are the talented programmers, many of whom, though not yet 30, have Ancient Mariner-like tales of rejecting stock optionsAand thus forfeiting millionsAin companies that were bought or went public. Bronson is tuned in to the quirks of both personality and culture. His prose, often funny, maintains impressive velocity and is well suited to the manic life of the Valley and its colorful menagerie of characters. (July)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews

75 Reviews
5 star:
 (32)
4 star:
 (17)
3 star:
 (12)
2 star:
 (7)
1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (75 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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2.0 out of 5 stars Not terribly interesting, Mar 17 2004
This review is from: The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley (Paperback)
The first few chapters were compelling, humorous and downright thoughtful. After that, the format became a bit tired. The characters portrayed here are homogenized to the point that you find the same story repeating itself, over and over. It just became boring after a while. Read the first two or three chapters and enjoy. From there, proceed with caution.
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3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insight into the Business side of Silicon Valley, Oct 30 2003
By 
Keith Appleyard "kapple999" (Brighton, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley (Paperback)
I enjoyed this book; I liked the way Bronson chose the themes for each Chapter, such as The Enterpreneurs, The Programmers, The Salespeople etc. It did show both how many of the people in Silicon Valley 'live on another planet', and it also showed how they've transformed this planet for many of the rest of us.
I particularly enjoyed the Chapter dedicated to the IPO of Actuate, not just because I'm an Actuate customer, but because until now I hadn't fully understood how IPO's happen, and now I feel I do (that Chapter in isolation would have rated a 5 from me).
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4.0 out of 5 stars Now a Good Historical Account, May 1 2003
By 
James Kasprzak (Darkest New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley (Paperback)
The economic and cultural situation in the San Francisco area around the turn of the 21st century has been described as being similar to that of the 1850's gold rush in the same area. Now that the boom is over, Po Bronson's book is just as entertaining as Mark Twain's tales of the gold rush days. As another "one who was there", I recognize the heady atmosphere, the excesses that seemed reasonable at the time, the temerity with which a bold few reached out to grab everything they could.

One anecdote early in the book really hits home with me. Bronson mentions an article about Siebel Systems, one of the darling stocks of the 1999-2000 boom. He relates how, after the article first appeared, he received an e-mail from a Siebel employee about how working for the company was ruining his life. When I read the book, I was working for Siebel Systems and its stock was flying high. I laughed at Bronson's story. A year later, working for Siebel had ruined my life, and I left the company in early 2001...

That's just the perspective of one disillusioned employee of one company, but the same story was repeated all throughout Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, and the rest of the dot-com universe. This book gives you a great picture of life during the boom. For the "after" picture, just look at today's headlines.

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