Silicon Follies: A dot.comedy

by Thomas Scoville

Book Overview

Welcome to Silicon Valley -- where fortunes are fast, dating's dysfunctional, and computer geeks rule. Meet Paul Armstrong, a late-twenties computer consultant who sits in his cubicle at TeraMemory... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743411218
• ISBN13: 9780743411219
• Release Date: February 2001
• Publisher: Washington Square Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Extremely funny and well-observed novel

Silicon Follies is an extremely funny and well-observed novel that, in the wake of the [...] meltdown, reads like prophecy. This is the book Michael Lewis and Po Bronson wanted to write. But as a longtime Silicon Valley software engineer turned author, Scoville has the real goods. While this could have been one more screed against those naughty dot.coms, Scoville writes about the Valley with a manifest good humor and wit reminiscent of Tom Wolfe in his "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" period. Scoville does an excellent job of capturing the messianic, "we-can-do-no-wrong" attitude that pervaded the Silicon Valley during the go-go 1990s. The book provides a timely answer to the question posed by a recent New York Times article on the deflation of the dot.com boom: "How Did So Many Get It So Wrong?" By putting you inside the heads of characters like corporate CEO Barry Dominic, Scoville shows how intelligent people get trapped by their own hype and by a tight-knit social environment built around work, in which no can seem to think "outside the box" of their business models. The book is particularly funny and accurate in describing what it's really like to be a programmer; the episode "Programming in Vampire Mode" garnered rave reviews from programmers when it was released on Salon.com. Programmers are the heroes of the book, and Scoville gives them the best lines--many of them had me laughing so hard I was gasping for breath. Scoville manages to flesh out and humanize programmers in a way that I've never seen in any medium. But while the novel focuses on a software company, it also provides a much broader picture of the Silicon Valley, including the many nearly-forgotten people who are either not involved in computing, or refuse to go corporate. For example, Scoville offers excellent and amusing portraits of the plight of liberal arts majors in the Valley--doomed to low-paying, low-autonomy jobs in marketing, if they make it onto the corporate bandwagon at all. Scoville is perhaps most effective in portraying the talented hackers who populate the Valley and who attempt to keep the original spirit of creativity and craft alive in software, despite the dumbing-down influence of corporations. Like a heat-seeking missile, Silicon Follies locates the most satire-worthy aspects of life in the Valley--crazy corporate behavior, megalomaniac "visionaries," the devaluation of anyone and anything not involved in producing or selling computer products, and the generally inhumane environment. But the large dose of expertly-deployed humor Scoville employs means his message goes down sweet rather than bitter.

Source document for Silicon Valley culture

Say what you want about the prose, plot, or author's intentions. Fact is, this book has been used in a number of business school curricula, cited in Andrew Ross' book, _No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Discontents_, made into a television pilot by Ron Howard's Imagine Television (starred Judy Greer in the role of Liz), and discussed widely in academic circles. Surely it touched some kind of nerve -- whether you agree with it or not.

Brilliant, well-rounded sendup of Silicon Valley!

What a book!We hear about the trends, the business, the management fads that come and go like each season's fashions. But in the end, it comes down to the people, and what we do in our day to day lives, and the peculiarities that make life interesting. And this book captures it all.Corporations vs. creative, free-thinking individuals, and the individuals winning out. We hear it all the time, but Silicon Follies puts us inside the mind of both as we follow a typical dotcom's lifecycle through the eyes of its engineers, CEO, salescritters, and marketroids. We also see the people on the outside, the liberal arts graduates doubting if they are doing the right thing, and the people trying to save what hasn't been overrun by the dotcoms, keeping the artistic spirit alive.And the technology, the quirks, the tradeshow panic, it's all sent up in a brilliant, hysterically funny book. The best part of the book is that it's all accurate, down to the hardware that only responds to stuffed animals and the packed Chinese restaurants.But it's more than a dot.comedy. The book has wonderfully poignant moments which make it that much more real. There's a hint of sadness behind the humor, the touch of what has been lost, that makes us appreciate what we do have, and tells us to enjoy it while we can.I'm waiting for the sequel!

Comedy and Literature in a Happy Merger

I picked up this book on a whim, since I am not a Silicon Valley type by any stretch of meaning (I live in the Atlanta area, which is a whole 'nother ballpark.) Even so, this book had me falling over myself, laughing. The story is just surreal and witty enough to transcend pop fiction and overlap into the new, techno literature that is emerging -- and it does so with grace and aplomb. The story is not so much about the technology itself powering Silicon Valley, but the people, and people are always the heart of literature.

A Real Silicon Peel!

Word of mouth recommendations from my in-the-know Silicon Valley connections drove me to this book with the question burning in my mind: How can anyone take such an intense, highly technical industry and deconstruct it enough to make it understandable, much less funny? Well, Mr. Scoville has done it, and done it well. His sharp tongue and scathing wit serve as a scythe to the greed, self-importance and misdirected goals of characters eerily similar to those we've seen splashed across hi-tech headlines of the last few years. His insights are so accurate that only a real insider could have written them, but presenting them with belly-aching humor is a true gift! Thank you for peeling back the silicon to reveal a dot.comedy this reader will never forget!