Still spectacular!

La novela trata sobre un grupo de empleados de Microsoft que deciden darle un giro a su vida abriendo su propia compañía de tecnología. Si bien el argumento puede parecer el de un relato aburrido, las descripciones del autor hacen que cada párrafo valga la pena.

A través de los personajes el autor plantea temas importantes para la sociedad, como la adoración a falsos ídolos, el deseo de pertenecer, la superficialidad y la necesidad de sobresalir. Es cómico y desgarrador a la vez, con una idea muy inteligente.

En mi opinión, Microsiervos es el libro de ficción que mejor explica el cambio global de la década de los 90s.

Mi risulta veramente difficile capire il perchè Feltrinelli si rifiuti di ristampare questo libro che non si trova più nè economico nè costoso. Romanzo su una gerazione di geek (i nerd più cool) che lascia la microsoft per seguire un loro amico che farà un gioco virtuale sulla base del Lego, le loro paranoie e la visione dell'amore ai tempi in cui la rete era poco conosciuta/frequentata e i cellulari ancora meno.
Imperdibile per alcune considerazioni, anche se a volte un po' troppo difficile per tutti i riferimenti agli Stati Uniti del tempo (1993/1995) questo libro è secondo me il passaggio ideale di Coupland da "Girlfriend in a coma" a "JPod" (IMHO il suo capolavoro),perchè non è profondo come il primo e non fa ridere come il secondo, ma ci sono parti di entrambi e cronologicamente ci siamo.

I was left with the feeling that nothing actually happened until the last ten pages of this book, and I never connected with any of these characters.

For Microserfs, I am straddling these two reader-type extremes: those who know nothing about geektech culture, and those who 100% techie, geeky nerds. I am in between. I feel this is the right place to be, because the book evoked lots of "Yeah...it really IS that way, isn't it?" and "Oh those geeks!" Yet I'm not so into the culture that I feel it was misrepresented.

I can't ever seem to attempt to write an approximation of some sort of "objective" review (lulz) so I'll just leave you with my idiosyncratic impressions: 1) I felt computer programmers in Silicon Valley in the 90's were really like how they were portrayed in the novel, and that made me happy and a little bit jealous that I was born in 1988, because the culture was presented so well. Almost like an ethnography. 2) Character Michael's short monologues were my favorite part, but looking back they were just simple summaries of theories I'm reading about all the time. I guess I liked ID-ing with someone so much. My other favorite moments were catching obscure references, though I know I didn't understand about 66 percent of them. 3) It may just be that I read this in San Diego, but this is what I would define as my perfect beach book. Juuuust the right about of thinking required.

I also met a 30ish security guard who had just worked ComicCon, who showed me his 3-foot animatronic Lego robot, pictures of the garage he lives in (at his parents'), drawings of his comic/future videogame storyboard, etc. etc. etc. and I mentioned this book and he FLIPPED OUT. I had just started the book, so our conversation was a total emotional and contextual amplifier for my Microserfs experience. I'd pay for that kind of thing to happen during every book I'm reading.

3.5

Edited to include more flat foods at the request of an obsessive nerdy friend.

Highly amusing little book of coders all aged 32, mentally if not in years, being obsessed with programming and living their messy student-type lives shaped by this consuming passion.

The idea of flat foods that can be slipped under a door for their more Asperger's type friend who cannot leave his room until all the code is written is funny.
Kraft cheese slices
Fruit leather
Melted icecream (does this count?)
Melba toast
Saltines
Cucumber slices
Pastrami slices
Pizza triangles
Pumpernickel bread
Ok bored now... I'm sure there are a lot more that would be quite sustaining for any obsessive AS coder!

This is the story of a group of Microsoft employees in the early 90s who leave the company and go to silicon valley to go to video game software startup company. The book is mostly about the lives and the trials and tribulations of these programmers as they try to figure out their personal lives while working all the time.

The writing style of this book is very interesting. The story is told from the perspective of one of the characters from his diary that he writes in because he can't sleep. It is an effective way of telling the story. I was really interested in this book, it was very interesting to compare and contrast how things are the same and different at Microsoft than they were 15 years ago. Granted, that is something that only Microsoft employees can think about while they read this book. In general it seems like a fairly good and accurate fictional account of what it is like to work in the software industry.

I read this book because I am a microserf, and I wanted to see what it was like for the microserfs 10-15 years ago.

1995 02/01

I don't think this was the first book I read and felt myself to be the target demographic (that would have been Less Than Zero), but it may have been the first book I read where I felt like the author was really thinking about people like me. As a member of the baby bust, there haven't been as many of those moments as I might like.

Even though he's not relevant anymore and hasn't been for a long time, I´m done for good with Coupland: second book read, second one I really disliked. This book has been sitting in my bookshelf for too long, and since it has always been sort of a cult-book about the tech-industry, and since I needed some light reading not too deep, I decided to give it a try.

Douglas Coupland is a talented writer, he knows how to write a book, no doubt about it; why he decided to use his talents to write these lame novels is beyond my understanding.

As with Generation X, this book is really much about nothing; in Generation X it was all about a bunch of shallow anecdotic stories of a group of clichéd twentysomethings living together in the early nineties, which is supposed to be a somewhat satirical portrait of the GenX youth of the times. In Microserfs it is all about a bunch of shallow anecdotic stories of a group of clichéd "code monkey" twentysomethings living together in the mid nineties, which is supposed to be a somewhat satirical portrait of the high-tech culture in the pre-bubble days.

The story is very outdated, and the characters and humour sometimes are somewhat geeky, but those are not the sins of the book. There's nothing wrong with geeky inside jokes and stereotypes --as Gordon Gecko might say "geek is good"--, but the humour on this book and the dialogues/stories/situations of the characters are not geeky, they're plainly dumb and stupid.

Came closer to tech culture verisimilitude than any other book I can think of. Feels interesting and prescient early on, like a more culture focused William Gibson, then in the end devolves a little bit into lazy navel gazing. Ending feels abrupt and unearned. Enjoyable read tho.

2024 reads, 8/22

“The stock closed up $1.75 on Friday. Bill has 78,000,000 shares, so that means he’s now $136.5 million richer. I have almost no stock, and this means I am a loser.”

The title of this book tells you all you really need to know – Microserfs, a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and the feudal “serfs,” is about a group of programmers working at Microsoft who take the risk and start their own software company. Really, it’s a nineties version of HBO’s Silicon Valley.

This is an epistolary novel, but instead of a diary or letters, narrator Dan Underwood types all his thoughts in a “PowerBook entry,” filled not just with his day-to-day life, but with random notes and emails, complete with typos and grammatical errors to really give it that “draft word document” feel.

“Note: I think Starbucks has patented a new configuration of the water molecule, like in a Kurt Vonnegut novel, or something. This molecule allows their coffee to remain liquid at temperatures over 212° Fahrenheit. How do they get their coffee so hot? It takes hours to cool off—it’s so hot it’s undrinkable—and by the time it’s cool, you’re sick of waiting for it to cool and that ‘coffee moment’ has passed.”

I was born in 1995, so while I obviously cannot relate to these characters, Coupland does an excellent job of immersing you in this era of young programmers through his skillful incorporation of pop culture references. It’s a nice little slice of the nineties, infused with humor, quirkiness, and heartwarming moments.

“Checked the WinQuote: The stock was down 86 cents over the day. That means Bill lost $70 million today, whereas I only lost fuck all. But guess who’ll sleep better?”