21 Dog Years

Doing Time @ Amazon.com

By: Mike Daisey

Narrated by: Mike Daisey

Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Mike Daisey worked at Amazon.com for nearly two years during the dot-com frenzy of the late nineties. Now that his nondisclosure agreement has expired, he can tell the real story - one that blends tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, Albanian economics, and venture capitalism into a surreal cocktail of delusion.

In 1998, when Amazon.com went to temp agencies to recruit people, they gave them a simple directive: send us your freaks. Thus began Mike Daisey's love affair with this quintessential dot-com. His ascent from lowly temp to customer service representative to business development hustler is the stuff of dreams - and nightmares. Daisey takes us from Amazon's high point, when the stock traded at $361, to well into its rollercoaster plunge to today's humble two-digit price, all the while reflecting on the very nature of the new economy and the darkly humorous compromises made every day to survive in corporate America. At strategic intervals, the narrative is punctuated by hysterical (in every sense of the word) letters to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos - missives that seem ripped from the collective unconscious of dot-com disciples the world over. No wonder Newsweek has dubbed Daisey the "oracle of the bust."

With a hugely popular Web site and a hit one-man show that has received phenomenal coverage (with stories in Wired, Newsweek, Salon, and elsewhere), Daisey has become the bard of the dot-com boom-and-bust - a smart, imaginative, and acutely perceptive chronicler of our times.

The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, is the original publisher of 21 Dog Years in hardcover.

©2002 Mike Daisey
(P)2002 Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A modern Dickensian fable of pointless toil inside an industrial madhouse. Too funny not to be accurate, too heartbreaking not to be true. If you are wondering where all the time and money went, this book has the answers." (Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air)

A Dog of an Audiobook

I am a avid listener to audiobooks and this one is one of the worst I have heard. I concur with the other reviewers who gave it 1 star. I was looking for an insight to the company and their rise to success, like the book The Facebook Effect. But this one was simply about the author, who is really a bit wack. So much that I couldn't even get through the first 21 minutes of this thing. I wasted a credit on this book. Buyer beware! Take a listen first and read all of the reviews before you think about downloading (which is what I should have done).

49 Dog Hours - At least that is what it feels like

I've listened to hundreds of audiobooks on all sorts of topics, but this one deserves special mention. It is the second worst audiobook I've ever listened to. I could only take about two hours of the nonstop, self-obsessed whining before I had to turn it off.

The whole point? Life is hard at a flashy startup and the company is run by a charismatic leader. Imagine that! Struggles and confusion in a rapidly growing company? And how strange to find a charismatic leader ... uh ... leading the company.

Like the author, I am an actor as well and am also a huge fan of satire, but even professional curiosity could not keep me interested in this work!

Oh, and don't let the kiddies hear this one unless you plan on explaining to them why a grown man fondling himself on a stage is considered 'art'. What's that you say? What does that have to do with Amazon.com? I have absolutely no idea, but it's in there nonetheless.

All in all, there are a few interesting moments, but they are certainly not worth the time it takes to get there. This is a book in desperate need of a serious editor with a great big ax.

7 hours of wasted human time

All I can say is that I learned a little bit about the life of customer support person. It really was a waste of my time. I think the author was just trying to justify his pathic life!

Boring...

I was part of the 'dot-com' era, and I just did not find anything interesting about this book. I did not laugh once. Also, I could not stand how the author spoke.

Can't stand the negativity

Would you try another book from Mike Daisey and/or Mike Daisey?

No.

Would you recommend 21 Dog Years to your friends? Why or why not?

No.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

I liked the honesty and humor, but they couldn't keep me interested to hear this story out. About halfway through, I gave up because of the negativity, smugness - he's so proud to be a slacker and petty thief - and naivete of someone who doesn't expect colleagues to do their job and companies to act as corporations.

Leader of the Dot-Com Cry Babies

It's unfortunate this sometimes anecdotally amusing tome is so riddled with the author’s self-indulgent whining. A clever writer, Daisey comes off as a smartass yuppie version of Jean Shepherd and the listener leaves with the feeling that the wine upon which the author got drunk in the final chapter was clearly one distilled of sour grapes.

I'm sorry I wasted my book choice on this junk!

This book is nothing but whining and babbling by a self-proclaimed (and justly so) pathetic excuse for an employee that any company in their right mind would terminate with cause.

It is nothing but his twisted, self-absorbed whining. I am two thirds of the way through the book and the only reason I am going to continue is to see how he leaves Amazon. How in the hell he stayed as long as he did is beneath me. He would be anyone's nightmare employee.

Put me in a room with this annoying cry-baby and I would rather hang myself.

This dog should be put to sleep

I thought this would be an entertaining book, but I found it to be incredibly annoying. After listening to the second CD, I threw the rest away not wanting to subject myself to any more of it.

Ha-ha

If you want a mildly entertaining sophomoric anti-corporate rant, buy this book. If you want to learn anything meaningful about how Amazon works, don't.