Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac (4 stars)

This is a fascinating insight into one of Silicon Valley's unicorns. Uber was so successful it became a way for dozens of other startups to describe themselves: "Uber for ...".

Even though I read all of the NY Times articles as they unfolded at the time, this was a good read, and I learned some things. My two main takeaways were:

1. Toxic culture that starts at the top will infest every part of the organization.

2. Kalanick was really good at pitching VCs, raising money, and keeping complete control over the company despite enormous outside investment.

Of these, I knew there was going to be a lot in here about the toxic culture, and I was mostly surprised by how far and deep it seemed to run. The second was new to me. 

As more and more problems emerged with Uber I kept asking why the board hadn't kicked Kalanick out of the CEO role, and the answer is in this book. He had been through the fire with many VCs and previous companies, and by the time he founded Uber he knew all the tricks for how to lock out the investors from wresting control of the company, even if the CEO was driving it into the ground.

Here's my highlighted phrases.

Toxicity

More than most other tech companies, Uber prized the almighty Masters of Business Administration, a degree that signaled business acumen and, often, an alpha male mindset. Not every MBA grad was an asshole, by any means. It just seemed that many of the ones who were assholes tended to feel at home joining Uber.

At Uber, being cutthroat and competitive was considered an asset, not a liability.

Mohrer thought he was empowering his staff, and felt like his high expectations were a good management strategy. But around the office, according to two employees, he seemed like a shorter version of Biff Tannen, the high school bully antagonist from Back to the Future.

Some women at the Chelsea office felt alienated by management. To some staff, Mohrer appeared more comfortable with his “bros,” other alpha-male types who shared his frat-like mentality, and the office culture reflected as much.

Employee treatment

Have a free meal, you only have to work 12 hour days to get it:

Though employees were fed for free at work, Mohrer followed Travis’s lead and delayed dinner until 8:15 p.m.

Even during recruiting, prospective employees were treated poorly. The company had designed an algorithm that determined the lowest possible salary a candidate might accept before making an offer to them, a ruthlessly efficient technique that saved Uber millions of dollars in equity grants.

Do anything to win

The reality was much less noble. As Uber’s insurance costs grew exponentially, the “Safe Rides Fee” was devised to add $1 of pure margin to each trip, according to employees who worked on the addition.

After the money was collected it was never earmarked specifically for improving safety. “Driver safety education” consisted of little more than a short, online video course. In-app safety features weren’t a priority until years later. “We boosted our margins saying our rides were safer,” one former employee said. “It was obscene.”

Silicon Valley excess

Kalanick had paid Beyoncé $6 million in Uber restricted stock units for her performance.

4 stars

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach (4 stars)

This is very unusual sci-fi. It's told in a series of short stories, each zooming out from a culture built entirely around making carpets out of human hair. The whole novel is a pursuit of the question: why? Where do they go? Who started this? Subsequent stories unveil the sheer scale of the production and it is astonishing.

The characters are almost non-existent, change every chapter, and a bunch of them die. It's one of the most plot-driven books I've ever read. Every character and previous chapter is just background to understand the implications of the next chapter. I think this structure of disconnection made the scope of the story easier to tell (no need to invent ways for the initial characters to cross the galaxy), but also harmed any possibility for character development.

The structure is actually quite clever to motivate the reader to search for answers: gradually giving us who, what, how, when but holding back "why" until the last page.

The vignettes are brutal, more than one ended with me exclaiming "daaaaaamn!". Usually when a book does that to me, it's a very good sign. It's very short, and I read it in about a day. I was completely consumed with finding out why these hair carpets were being made. On this fact alone it deserves 4 stars.

SPOILERS

But I'm not sure how to feel about the ending. Was it good? Kinda? I certainly didn't want it to be happy, or unexplained, and it delivers in those dimensions.

This story feels like a thought experiment for what would happen if a ruler has almost infinite power, but is also a narcissist and easily provoked into petty revenge. What would the petty revenge of an infinitely powerful being look like? This: destroying and reforming an entire galaxy of people and planets into a machine to demonstrate your own personal superiority over someone else.

I'm not sure what the "point" was. Perhaps it's a demonstration of what can happen with too much power and too little empathy?

4 stars.

Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb (4 stars)

This is an excellent piece of non-fiction that has me convinced that we need the help of beavers to rescue North American ecology. I came to this book after listening to a fascinating interview with Ben by Chris Morgan on KUOW's podcast The Wild.

the geological mass we call North America might, as Frances Backhouse put it, more accurately be termed Beaverland

Ben Goldfarb tells the story of beavers using a cast of interesting characters and anecdotes that makes it very easy reading. I think the only downside of the novel is that I was fairly convinced about how important beavers are early on, and things started to feel a little repetitive by the end.

I find myself looking at streams and rivers in a whole new light: have they been eroded down to bedrock, do they meander? What do the banks look like. And I'm now super curious about every piece of possible beaver infrastructure I come across.

Beavers, the animal that doubles as an ecosystem, are ecological and hydrological Swiss Army knives, capable, in the right circumstances, of tackling just about any landscape-scale problem you might confront. Trying to mitigate floods or improve water quality? There’s a beaver for that. Hoping to capture more water for agriculture in the face of climate change? Add a beaver. Concerned about sedimentation, salmon populations, wildfire? Take two families of beaver and check back in a year.

Here's to nature's hydrological engineers!

4 stars.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (4 stars)

Every Seattle resident should read this one. I'm giving it 4 stars because of all the great Seattle tidbits it dropped, if I lived somewhere else, it would be a 3.5.

I had no idea who Cliff was until my wife started talking about him one day shortly after we moved here and referring to him as "my weather guy". I've since read many an excited blog post by Cliff about various storm events. I agree with the sentiment.

We sat in silence. Then, at ten of four, we had to turn the radio back on because Fridays at ten of four is when we listen to our favorite person ever, Cliff Mass. If you don’t know who Cliff Mass is, well, he’s this thing me and Mom have, this awesome weather geek who loves weather so much you have no choice but to love him in return.

Yes. Two opposing grids have not been kind to intersection sanity in this city:

Take five-way intersections. The first time Bernadette commented on the abundance of five-way intersections in Seattle, it seemed perfectly relevant.

Favourite quote:

Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They’re everywhere, and even if they don’t get in your way, you can’t help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them.

Very entertaining. I actually quite enjoyed the descriptions of the husband geek-rockstar on the Microsoft connector and the over eager admin.

4 stars.

The Alienist by Caleb Carr (3 stars)

It's essentially a Sherlock Holmes novel narrated by the Watson-equivalent, in this case a journalist with a bizarre amount of free time and complete lack of any need to earn a living.

The interesting pieces are the historical setting, that also involves Theodore Roosevelt and J.P Morgan, as well as the early attempt at criminal profiling and psychology.

Prior to the twentieth century, persons suffering from mental illness were thought to be “alienated,” not only from the rest of society but from their own true natures. Those experts who studied mental pathologies were therefore known as alienists.

It's fairly standard Sherlock Holmes fare. God I wish they would eat at a different restaurant, I got so sick of hearing about Charlie Delmonico.

3 stars.

The Shadowglass by Rin Chupeco (3 stars)

Too far behind on reviews. I left myself two notes: "Luggage on azi is ridiculous" and this quote:

“But we have been conditioned to obey authority in subtle manners, Zoya. You would be surprised at how very few actually speak up in the face of injustice.”

But have literally forgotten the entire plot. That usually means it was a solid 3.

3 stars.

The Heart Forger by Rin Chupeco (3.5 stars)

I left it too long to write this review and I didn't take many notes. Usually that means it's pretty good and I don't have complaints. I did get really sick of horses apparently being able to ride on dragons. Just picture that, it's ridiculous.

Also, WTF is the point of Tea learning sword skills, she'd be far better off using that time to practice magic. I feel like Chupeco is overdoing the set up for a "and that's why she needed sword skills" gotcha plot point in the future.

3.5 stars.