Live Work Work Work Die

February 26, 2018
Journalist Pein travels to San Francisco to expose the seedy underbelly of Silicon Valley culture with its overworked and underpaid drones toiling in a gig-based economy, nightmarish Airbnb rentals, and false narrative of meritocracy. His hunt for affordable housing provokes a discussion of gentrification and exorbitant rents (Pein ends up paying $35/night to sleep in a tent in someone’s yard). For employment, he experiments with Fiverr, a directory platform where freelancers offer up their services at $5 per task, before attempting to sell his doomed start-up idea, an app for organizing labor unions. Along the way, Pein examines the unethical and often illegal practices of tech industry giants, from Yelp extorting cash from businesses in exchange for the removal of bad reviews to Groupon’s “dubious” accounting practices in the weeks leading up to its IPO. He also directs his ire at the tech press, referring to it as “an interchangeable assortment of sycophantic blogs, gee-whiz podcasts, and thinly veiled advertising supplements.” Pein’s analysis of this toxic culture culminates in a trip to Holland for a conference on technological singularity, the “physical and metaphysical merger of humanity and computers” believed by many to be in the near future, which, by this point in the book, will strike many readers as a terrifying prospect. Both entertaining and damning, Pein’s book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be.

May 1, 2018

Investigative reporter Pein recounts his firsthand experiences in the volatile, unpredictable world of Silicon Valley. In 2015, Pein flew to San Francisco and hoped to "have as authentic an entrepreneurial experience as possible without the phony pretense of going 'undercover.'" He takes readers through a journey involving finding a place a live and ending up in a location he called Hacker Condo and rooming with others interested in making it big in Silicon Valley. Pein moved to various other dwellings, most notably renting an Airbnb tent in someone's backyard. He recounts pitching ideas to investors, attending conferences such as DeveloperWeek, and participating in "Startup Weekend" to join in a competition of "startups conceived designed and pitched to a panel of judges." However, his quest for success was not to be, and he concludes that he did not gain "character or status," as it seemed to him "the only winning move in the startup game was not to play." VERDICT Pein's vivid account makes for fascinating reading about Silicon Valley and the tech industry and the often heartbreaking experiences of would-be entrepreneurs/techies struggling to achieve success.--Lucy Heckman, St. John's Univ. Lib., Queens, NY

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018
Investigative reporter and Baffler contributor Pein's first book should terrify you. What starts out as an attempt to join the ranks of successful tech entrepreneurs (and write about it) turns into an expos� of Silicon Valley, where investors put millions of dollars into disruptive technology, often with little else than a marketing plan for an undefined product. Pein moves to the West Coast, starts pitching his own ludicrous start-up idea, and begins to uncover the industry's dark underbelly, starting with the insane housing market, which lands him sleeping in a tent for $35 a night. But things take a much darker turn. Pein dedicates a good chunk of the book to a small but vocal faction bent on government destruction and dabbling in alt-right politics and even eugenics. Even scarier, they face little resistance from the larger tech world. Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humor and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)