21 Dog Years

Doing Time @ Amazon.com

De: Mike Daisey

Narrado por: Mike Daisey

In 1998, when Amazon.com began to recruit employees, they gave temp agencies a simple directive: send us your freaks. Mike Daisey -- slacker, onetime aesthetics major -- fit the bill. His subsequent ascension, over the course of twenty-one dog years, from lowly temp to customer service representative to business development hustler is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares. Here, with lunatic precision, Daisey describes lightless cube farms in which book orders were scrawled on Post-its while technicians struggled to bring computers back online, as well as fourteen-hour days fueled by caffeine, fanaticism, and illicit day-trading from office desks made out of doors.

You'll meet Warren, the cowboy of customer service, capable of verbally hog-tying even the most abusive customer; Amazon employee #5, a computer gamer who spends at least six hours a day locked in his office killing goblins but is worth a cool $300 million; and Jean-Michele, Daisey's girlfriend and sparring partner, who tries to keep him grounded, even as dot-com mania seduces them both.

Read by the author and punctuated by Daisey's hysterically honest fictional missives to CEO Jeff Bezos, 21 Dog Years is an epic story of greed, self-deception, and heartbreak -- a wickedly funny anthem to an era of bounteous stock options and boundless insanity.Executive Producer: Laura Wilson
Original Jacket Design: High Design
Original Jacket Art: Joyn Tynes
©2002 Mike Daisey
(P)2002 Random House, Inc.

More! More! I want more!

This book is incredibly funny and extremely well narrated by mdaisey. I wasn't ready for this one to end. You don't have to have participated in the dot com boom to appreciate 21 Dog Years.

Hilarious

One of the funniest audiobooks I've ever heard. Could not listen to it while eating for fear of choking.

At the same time it's uncannily insightful, both into the world of customer service and Amazon.com. If you are looking for a traditional business book about Amazon.com, this is not it. If you want to be thoroughly entertained as well as enlighted about what it was like to be in the maelstrom of dot-com frenzy, click here.

If You Were a Call Center Slave....

...you will love this book. It talks about the office politics and structure of today's businesses. The best thing about this is that it does not take it serious. It paralleled my business life to perfection.

I recommended this to book to my coworkers and they loved it. One said she had to pull over in the car she was laughing too much to drive with it on. It is a definite read.

Very Funny Book its a Joy to Read

Where does 21 Dog Years rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?
I would say it ranks in the top 10 books I have read

Who was your favorite character and why?
Mike was the main character

Which character – as performed by Mike Daisey – was your favorite?
Himself

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The training portion

Any additional comments?
Great book a must read!!!

Best when he focuses on Amazon

When he focuses on Amazon, this is a very informative, gossipy book. His analysis of the failure of Pets.com and how the seat-of-the-pants shell game he plays with his employers parallels what Bezos is doing with Wall Street are too scarily accurate for words. The descriptions of how Amazon toyed with its employees (as it toyed with investors and analysts) sounds depressingly true.

I give this 3 stars because it does go on way too long and I find his humor more often forced than bubbling up naturally from his personality. (You can hear in his voice when a joke is coming.) A good editor would have advised him to tighten up his anecdotes and keep the story moving, for God's sake.

There's also the regrettable fact that, as an actor, Daisy doesn't provide the different characters in his book with enough vocal variety so you can tell who's talking when he recounts a conversation. They all sound like him, and that just isn't good enough when the writer is an actor.