Behind the Cloud… By Marc Benioff & Carlye Adler, Narraged by Ax Norman (Read via Audible.com)
This is the book about the people behind Salesforce, mainly Marc Benioff’s journey combined with his over a hundred specific points he makes. What I liked was you got to peak inside how this company came up from nothing. The balance of New Concept, Technology, and great marketing is what made the company.
The two tidbits I remember the most was the brilliant little move of spinning the protestors that were outside of a Salesforce conference. He managed to convince a bunch of attendees that those people were paid by him. Also I loved the part about when the site first started having massive uptime issues. Benioff talked about how saying nothing is actually many times worse then being out in the open about major things. (I guess BP still has to learn that lesson)
I am not saying you can’t have secrets. Only that once a major problem directly affects a large number of people dramatically, its better to be honest and open then try to pull a fast one.
The book reads well, however it did feel a tad like propaganda to believe everything too blindly. But since Benioff has such great character, I can’t fault the book too much.
For that
8/10
Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell, Narrated by Malcolm Gladwell (Read via Audible.com)
It was an impulse buy, and ironically saw it on the bookshelf of a friends house months after I read it.
The basic synopsis of the book is that Gladwell gives another perspective on very successfully people. He raises a few points that in addition to mental capacity that, there are valid external factors that dramatically influenced many famous people. He gives good examples of Bill Gates having surreal access to a computer terminal in high school before most colleges had them. Canadian ice hockey players age cutoff in youth hockey leagues and how that has influenced what time of the year talent comes from.
He also gives good thought to the ‘10,000 Hour Rule.’ The Beatles were a case example. I didn’t know the band’s history at all. Especially how they were able to play gigs more than a thousand times in just a mere few years. And that more than anything, made the group.
This read definitely is one to have on the shelf. Gladwell actually does a good job reading his own book. I can see why he is one of the most popular speakers on the speaking circuit.
8/10
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine By Michael Lewis, Narrated by Jesse Boggs (Read via Audible.com)
I have to say this book was great read. I picked up the book after caching a piece on 60 minutes about the book.
Lewis gives another perspective of the financial industry during its large meltdown caused by the moronic mortgage crisis (Among other things). It was about the people who saw what was coming and bet against the market. They literally cashed in on the ticking bomb of what the market was. Both Greg Lippmann and Michael Burry’s stories were great. How both of them go into the market and figured out a way to buy insurance on these packaged securities. The epic fail at AIG was even better. I couldn’t believe that Joe Cassano managed to burn through 99 billion dollars at AIG over the stuff he was insuring.
I do have to say that Lewis exactly writes the kind of story based non-fiction books that I like. I found it very easy to understand why this big crash happened, and was even more riveted when some of these characters were figuring out what really was going on before everyone else.
This book reminded me that the market is not some machine, but just bunch of people that some are leaders, others are followers both trying to dominate any way they can.
9/10
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, Narrated by John Farrell (Read via Audible.com)
After reflecting on this book for a few weeks, I am unsure of how I view this book.
Farrell presents the idea of Myelin, and how it antidotally relates to mini mecca’s of talent all over the world at different times throughout history. This book feel like Ken Robinson’s book ‘The Element’ in many ways. Just replace the term element with myelin, and things line up very closely in many ways (but far from exact). That is however why I am on the fence on this book. This book did not present a solid scientific background to the claims that he made in relation to these nerve walls. At least Robinson didn’t try to explain his finding scientifically, but as a interesting point that cannot be ruled out when studying the connections to science from the complex social roll of the dice that happens.
With that, this book does have something to say about skills, and how people learn. That I did find really fascinating and a great read. Especially as he explains the patterns that he has observed and how we can take that information and apply it to real life.
Unfortunately due to the amount sudo-science in this book is the reason why I cannot give this book more that a 6/10 because half of the dam time, he is blabbing on without solid footing for his argument. However I would still recommend the person interested in this subject to read purely due to the case studies of the people he has investigated and his findings (minus the science). He could be right, but I need proof before I will rubber stamp this book.
The Kid Stays in the Picture By Robert Evans, Narrated by Robert Evans (Read via Audible.com)
I picked up this book after an off hand remark by Alex Lindsay on MBW and boy I was not disappointed. This book is definatly one you have to listen to, because boy its good. Robert Evans does a great job narrating his own book. You can just absorb the stories, and his passion for his work. Throughout the book, I could just picture myself being at the meetings, reworking the godfather so it doesn’t suck.
Now this is the kind of hollywood book you just can’t make up. I know we fret about this industry way to much. But unlike most pieces of crap auto-biographies, this one really reads well. You really get a picture of what was going on at paramount studios at the time he ran it.
10/10
Rework by Jason Fried & David Hansson (Read via Physical Book)
I picked up this book as it just came out and I just loved the layout of the book. All of the chapters a series of 2-3 pages at most with pictures illustrating the point that they were trying to make. I loved that there was no business jargon BS in it, where an author spends 600 pages just trying to make one point. These guys, make a number of points based on their own experience. Don’t get me wrong it did have that Tim Ferriss 4 hour workweek feel to it, but I did not find that detracting.
I was more just relieved that this book did not blab on about something useless or worse, some VC’s point of view.
A great quick read, and keep with the physical/pdf version of the book. Believe me I love audible, but the illustrations are just great.
10/10
Marco.org: More ideas than time: Last week's news -
Most news outlets, including TV news shows and networks, newspapers, news websites, and blogs are targeted at news junkies: they never want to miss a story, and they want to be the first to report it to you.
If you look back on these stories even one week later, the majority of them seem…
This is exactly why I watch Frontline on PBS - its the best!.
Tog on Interface by Bruce Tognazzini (Read via Physical Book)
This book is an extended publication of the early mac developer mailing lists around the mac os 5-6 timeframe. It is just great to read all of the testing and discovering what worked and what didn’t with the creation of the modern user interface.
A few pages just opened my eyes to the way people think. They wanted to ask a user if the screen they were looking at was a color display. You think that would be a straight forward question but it wasn’t. They actually had to go through 5 different iterations of that question to get it right. Just wording a sentence makes all the difference.
Overall what made this book over the top for me was the point of view TOG takes for designing interfaces. Even though this book is 15 years old, most all of the same design principals procedures, to rephrase, how you work to end up with a what we call a intuitive/simple design still matters.
What a fascinating gem, especially so early on in the development of computers. I just love when you just read the excitement and drive these people had over these little periods of time where tons of innovation happened.
9/10
The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About it, By Marcia Angell, Narrated by Kate Reading. (Read via Audible.com)
This book was a real eye opener was cutting through how the drug companies work. I did not realize how blatant the lack of early innovation comes from these large corporations. Most of the new products that we see today come from original research done by university sponsored by tax dollars.
I find it very odd that these people sponsored by pubic money can sell these patents, then the companies can charge top dollar for them, even though their costs don’t relate at all to the price of the drug. Take the triple-hit aids drug (forget the name) that was released. Its just ‘shocking’, to take a page out of Sean Connery’s book of how much money they made off it.
This book actually goes very well with the fiction book: Chemistry for beginners by Anthony Strong. The reason why is the book presents the story of a Chemist/doctor actually developing a drug (albeit fictional). I can imagine how similar that book to relate to real life.
A thing I found really revealing is the way these people do a minor change to the compound then they get another patent on it, then have another 7-10 years of exclusively market it. I found this especially with anti-depressents. Most SSRI’s are essentially the same, where the placebo effect can be extremely high.
Finally what is most depressing in this book of how doctors get so deeply influenced by the marketing of these drugs, and how selective studies that are done. In more ways we all like to admit. The current drug study system works just as much as people running polls for political campaigns and trying to swing the information either way.
I love this book just for the fact that it forces you to think about the medical system differently. Yes, I do care about people. But I also care about efficiency, and quality.
10/10
The Waxman Report: How Congress Really Works by Henry Waxman with Joshua Green. (Read via Physical Book)
This is not your typical political rhetoric book which I rather enjoyed.
The book is about Waxman’s history of being in congress. Most notably his achievements of some great policy he help put through. Like food labeling, the famous 7 tobacco goons, and many other things.
I could really sense his distain for the number of lobbyists that have invaded the United States political systems. It also showed how the media today does a very poor job of covering what is going on. But then again John Stewart presents that point beautifully on the daily show every day.
The only thing missing from the book was Waman’s honnest opinion of the state of the political system, and giving his opinion where it should progress to, or what the American Public needs to do.
7/10