|
I have finished Disupted by Dan Lyons.
Dan Lyons sets out the parameters of his memoir in the prologue.
“This is a story about what it’s like to try to reinvent yourself and start a new career in your fifties, particularly in an industry that is by and large hostile to older workers. It’s a story about how work itself has changed, and how some companies that claim to be “making the world a better place” are in fact doing the opposite.”
So far as Dan’s experience of ageism and the confusion he feels at being plunged into a world in which he seems to have no specific task and must learn a language of acronyms and codes, I believe he certainly must elicit some sympathy. There is compassion in his portrayal of a world which cruelly fires (“graduates”) workers for no reason—though this is undercut somewhat by his own seemingly unawareness of another kind of cruelty in his own profession as a journalist. In general, however, this is the best part of the book and is laced with considerable humour.
In dealing with the companies and their manipulation of revenue to create false profits for a few directors Lyons tends to harangue the reader. Worse, he engages in crude locker room sexism and certainly hasn’t seemed to have gained much self-knowledge or developed any profound ethical awareness from his experience at HubSpot.
I liked the author of the first half of the book but found myself less and less tolerant of him as the story developed. It is worth reading as a portrayal of life in tech hubs but is uneven as a memoir which the author claims is meant to entertain.
|