Early in The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson points out that there is no one landmark at which TV crews can point their cameras to represent Silicon Valley. Instead, they have to resort to a montage of images; the billboards along 101 advertising job openings, the unusual architecture of Silicon Graphics' campus, the dentist-in-a-trailer who drove to Netscape to service the employees' teeth, the washer-and-dryer facility that used to be at Excite's facility. This book takes the same about people in Silicon Valley, including the entrepreneurs, the programmers, the venture capitalists, the sales people, the business people, the futurists, and others.
I found this book to be a very effective description of life here in Silicon Valley (where I live). It was also very well-written, entertaining, and thought-provoking. Bronson, contrary to the quick-turnaround approach of this culture, takes his time with the people he interviews. You get to hear their stories as they tell them, but then you learn what happens to those people over time, when things don't turn out as they'd expected (for better or worse). You get the sense that these people came to know and trust Bronson, and so told them a more well-rounded version of their stories, not the 3-second sound bite version you get in the papers and trade magazines. I liked that he profiled a range of people, not just the 20-year-old dropouts-turned-millionaires, but also the hangers on who keep trying to make it but don't. Also appearing is the CEO who juggles all the unpredictable factors that go into the timing of an IPO, the Big Thinker who tries to make meaning of all this technological wizardry, the Sales Person who uses his understanding of the engineer's mindset to gracefully steer them toward the sale, the programmer who takes off to go squirrel hunting days before a critical deadline, because he can and because if he doesn't, there will always be a critical deadline to meet.
I also thought his analyses were fair, sometimes complementary, sometimes critical. He even managed to cover George Gilder, a conservative futurist, without the smug condescension most journalists can't hide when describing conservative points of view. Even though I didn't find anyone in the book who specifically captured my own experience with Silicon Valley culture, I still found all the people he did profile fully believable - I certainly know people like these. On the other hand, I was introduced to other people I know about but haven't met, and I enjoyed getting a first-hand view of their world. I think this book has a lot to offer to people who are curious about what it's like in Silicon Valley as well as to those of us who are living it.
