Counterfeit: A Novel

Ava Wong, a Stanford educated Chinese-American lawyer finds herself in a pickle. Her husband has required both of them to authorize expenditures on their account. She is on a trip to China and doesn't want to have her dirty laundry aired. She contacts an old roommate and finds some quick money by helping out with a counterfeit ring. This gives her money of her own. The two women become more and more involved. They import counterfeit luxury bags from China to the US. They will buy the "real" bag from a retail store, then return the fake for a refund. Then they can sell the real one online. They end up getting a number of others to help them with the operation. However, it starts to unravel. Stores identify the fakes and a detective infiltrates the operation.

Ava also has troubles at home. She is struggling to get her child into a nursery school. (And struggles more when he gets expelled for crying.) The marriage is on the rocks. She feels that she has not accomplished what others have.

She eventually confesses her role in the operation in order to get a lighter sentence. (She made a convincing case with a strong alabi, but was not 100% truthful.) The kingpin ends up taking the fall. He was arrested when flying to the US. At first, he and his influencer daughter were seen by the Chinese public as "victims". But when their luxurious lifestyles are exposed and companies cut off contracts in China, the tides turn. Ava, on the other hand got a taste of counterfeiting and started a different operation.

The business/crime operation is set in a realistic California Asian-American culture. The differences between "mainland Chinese" and "American Chinese" are called out. The SFO Asiana plane crash and college admission and SAT scandals play a role. We also get an interesting twist on the "beneficiaries" of the SAT cheating rings.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

A liberal arts graduate is working at a New York City publishing company. She ends up stumbling into a tech startup that is trying to disrupt the book industry. The company is much less regimented than publishing and is more focussed on "tech" than books. (Other employees are not very interested in her "book club".) Things don't work out for her there. However, she does catch the tech bug and ends up moving to San Francisco to take a new job. She bombs the interview, but ends up acing a practice LSAT to get the job.

At her new job, she is at the bottom of the hierarchy in support. She is also one of the few women women there. She eventually adapts to the culture, enjoying the millennial perks, but struggling as somebody different. She gets a nice job at github, explores various hedonistic San Francisco activities and eventually leaves the bay area.

The book is an interesting view into the techy world and the "mono-cultural" that exists. The author differentiates herself as being a non-techy female in a world of white techy males. However, she does seem to fit right in with the culture. The focus on the surface hides many other aspects that are excluded. There are plenty of white males that are not present in the culture. There is a great challenge in bringing them in also.

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

Silicon Valley is both a place and an ideal. What was once a sleepy agricultural region south of San Francisco became the world's hub of innovation. Initially this was in the area of silicon-based microchips. Since then, the Valley has reinvented itself to innovate in many different waves. From chip manufacturing to computers to dot coms to social media, with trips to many others. Hewlett Packard. Intel. Apple. Google. Facebook. Those are just some of the big names that were started there. There have been many other big companies that started there. Even more have long since disappeared. Seattle is the "northern outpost" of Silicon Valley. It has a slightly slower pace, put shares much of the mentality and origins. Of the top 10 most valuable companies, only Berkshire Hathaway and United Healthcare were not from the two west coast areas.

Why does so much innovation happen in the same area? Why is there so much money to be made. The Code traces the history from Hewlett Packard's founding in Palo Alto during the depression to defense technology in World War 2 until today. As the cold war heated up, the government was pumping money into science and technology. Stanford University had valuable expertise in key areas. Many people came out west to study and stayed. Companies such as Lockheed Martin got into the action with a facility in Sunnyvale. At the time, Boston was seen as the more likely hub for innovation. But California had better weather. After coming out for across the country, engineers liked to stay.

Things started to really get going when Shockley Semiconductor was started in Mountain View. Silicon semiconductors ended up being the future. Shockley himself alienated many of the engineers, leading to an exodus and the launch of other semiconductor companies. Thus spawned Fairchild and then Intel and AMD and many other companies. The engineer presence contributed to the homebrew computer culture. Atari in Sunnyvale dominated video games. Apple in Cupertino arose up and helped in the growth of microcomputers. Silicon Graphics provided the tech for Hollywood. Boston gradually became irrelevant.

The internet started out as a defense and academic communication tool. Netscape helped to make it easily accessible to the world. This began the next big wave of tech companies. It seemed all one needed was a heartbeat and some Valley office space to get millions in venture capital. Alas, there was a bust in 2000, followed by the rise of new companies such as Google and Facebook. 

Silicon Valley thinks of itself as the young underdog battling big corporate America. However, the young companies end up either dying or growing up to become the big companies. The ethos was originally very conservative, but gradually shifted to a much more liberal side, reflecting the shift in youth. Today, there is a split personality. There are huge amounts of money, yet a very liberal outlook. Throughout history, the culture was dominated by young white males working crazy hours. There is a desire to be more diverse, but startups tend to focus on people they know with skills they need.

The book helps mix the stories of the "big" leaders as well as lesser known figures. It makes it easy to feel like you could be right there. Luck and timing can play as big a role as skill in differentiating the winners and also-rans.

Impostor Syndrome: A Novel

Imposter Syndrome seems really dialed into Silicon Valley, but "the 101"? The book centers on a company (Tangerine) that feels like Facebook with a dash of Google and Yahoo. The founder/CEO is mentioned, but has a very minor role in the story. The focus is instead on the COO, a Russian immigrant woman who is the perfect strong female executive. Oh, and it just so happens she is also a spy, part of an elaborate espionage scheme. She utilizes her special access to anybody's account to pass off information to the Russians. A low-level female Chinese engineer at the company discovers suspicious activity and eventually discovers who it was. She ends up getting connected with the feds and helps implicate the COO, but loses her job in the process. In the end, she gets a job at a startup, while the COO takes a "leave" only to come back (and offer the Chinese engineer her job back if she wants it.)

As a spy novel, this story feels fairly contrived. (However, after the spying going on at the Russian consulate in San Francisco, who knows. Infiltrating big tech may actually be much more valuable than typical espionage.) Where the novel best succeeds is in detailing the culture and power dynamics in technology. The engineers are those that do the work. However, they "controlled" by the business culture that is filled with a multitude of conflicts. Security is an area where companies love to skimp on, devoting resources, yet in an incomplete manner. The culture is also filled with many ethnic subgroups, each with their own stereotypes and challenges. The spy story serves as a nice vehicle for documenting the culture.

Chaos Monkeys - Revised Edition: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley

I was drawn to this book after hearing that it was so controversial that it got the author fired from Apple. That situation seemed to be a case of wokeness gone amok. Apparently, the company had already vetted him and the contents of the book. However, a few weeks after he started, some other Apple employees became offended and he got the kibosh.

The book does complain plenty of things that can be offensive. However, the official line was that it was misogyny that got him fired. The portrayal of woman is generally what you would expect to hear from a frat boy. They are primarily an outlet for sexual urges. However, the book also describes powerful women. It seems more balanced than a simple misogynistic rant.

The main theme of the book is that "work" is everything in the Silicon Valley startup culture. Family and long term relationships are sacrificed at the the startup altar. However, just working hard does not guarantee success. There is a huge amount of luck and manipulation involved. 

In the story, he started out working on his doctorate at Berkeley. He then jumped at the chance of making huge amounts of money as a quant on Wall Street. He tired of that and went to work in Silicon Valley. He realized that his company was going nowhere, so he got together with a few friends to create a start up. They had moderate traction, but were looking for an exit. They got interest from both Twitter and Facebook. The company sold to Twitter. He went to Facebook. At pre-IPO Facebook, work was an all-encompassing affair that required long hours, relationship building and partying. He was on the ground as they were trying hard to monetize facebook. There were plenty of mistakes made, but luck ended up interceding. He managed to cash his options at the worst time and somehow ended up at Twitter.

On advertising, he has some interesting insights on privacy. People are concerned about companies knowing their "dirty little secrets". However, these tend to be of minimal value to advertisers. What the companies carry most about is the general persona that will spend money. There is still a long ways to go before internet advertising reaches its full potential.

For start-up cultures, he recognizes that there are people with a lot of money and little time, partnering with people with little money and a lot of time. If all goes well, everyone will get rich. However, often things don't go well. There are many start ups that burn through a lot of money and go nowhere. There are a few that do well.

The author mentions multiple times that the focus is on the overall big picture. He claims the "book persona" is different from his actual persona. Perhaps Apple could just not get that. Or perhaps they finally got cold feet after seeing all the bridges that the author did burn.

Family Trust

Family Trust seemed so familiar, yet so different. Taiwanese families in Silicon Valley have their unique culture. This is very well portrayed and familiar in the book. The book does take things to a soap opera extreme. I guess that is needed to make a good story. 

A family is in a messy situation. Grandpa is nearing the end of his life. He has been divorced and married to a younger "gold digger" wife. The family thinks he has a few millions and want to make sure they get their share. Meanwhile, other marriages are breaking apart with affairs. Work is unfulfilling. Many of the family members have well paid jobs, but feel like they have not managed to come close to the fortune that they were expecting. 

The characters are well developed. Just when you are ready to toss out one as pure evil, you get their side of the story. Suddenly, you discover that they have good motives and are in fact protecting people from others. The portrayal of the South Bay is spot on. There is a lot of money sloshing around. It often ends up with those that are lucky (or corrupt) rather than those that most deserve it.