Chaos Monkeys - Revised Edition

By: Antonio Garcia Martinez

Narrated by: Dan John Miller

Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

The instant New York Times best seller, now featuring a new afterword from the author - the insider's guide to the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, the inner workings of the tech world, and who really runs Silicon Valley.

Imagine a chimpanzee rampaging through a datacenter powering everything from Google to Facebook. Infrastructure engineers use a software version of this “chaos monkey” to test Online services’ robustness - their ability to survive random failure and correct mistakes before they actually occur. Tech entrepreneurs are society’s chaos monkeys. One of Silicon Valley’s most audacious chaos monkeys is Antonio García Martínez.

After stints on Wall Street and as CEO of his own startup, García Martínez joined Facebook’s nascent advertising team. Forced out in the wake of an internal product war over the future of the company’s monetization strategy, García Martínez eventually landed at rival Twitter. In Chaos Monkeys, this gleeful contrarian unravels the chaotic evolution of social media and online marketing and reveals how it is invading our lives and shaping our future.  

©2016, 2018 Antonio Garcia Martinez (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic Reviews

“Incisive... The most fun business book I have read this year... Clearly there will be people who hate this book - which is probably one of the things that makes it such a great read.” (Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times) 

Best audio book I’ve listened to in a while!

Really loved the book. Narration was great, loved the unflinching honesty. Really recommend it . Probably will listen to again !

Entertaining and informative

Keep in mind that the author has his right to subjectivity.
AGM delivered a deftly written dissection of the life of a tech scene officionado that was easy to digest and highly informative.

“Liar’s Poker” version of “HP Way”

Quibble with Antonio claim(?) that SiliconValley does not write its own history - HP co-founder Dave Packard wrote the autobiography of HP “The HP Way”; albeit without the sex drugs and alcohol described in “Chaos Monkeys”. Likewise Andy Grove wrote two books about SiliconValley - “High Output Management” and “Only the Paranoid Survive” (again without sex drugs and alcohol ☹️☹️☹️). Otherwise, an Antonio has written an outstanding autobiography of his hero’s journey from the mortgage meltdown wreckage of GoldmanSachs to the post-Election2016 myth busting of Facebook specifically and social media generally swinging the Election. Along the way, you will learn that Internet advertising is still in the shadow of direct Mail advertisers (eg crawl-space attic clean out contractors keep advertising and I keep saving their inserts ?!?!). Strongly recommend reading/listening if you have the startup, entrepreneur, venture capital, Angel investor, advertising, SaaS itch.

Best Non-fiction (and entertaining frolic) I’ve listened to in years!

Like others have already said, AGM’s candidness (including his unabashed criticism of himself) is a breath of fresh air and his ability to explain things with fabulous metaphors makes it even that much better.

Very interesting book by a surprisingly super-smart author

I am adding this book to must-reads along with “Hard thing about hard things” and others. It fills the gap in guidance for mid-career periods of life without bullshit and with a lot of truth and thought provoking.

Must read/listen - Absolutely engrossing

Antonio writes a compelling narrative to give readers a first-hand account of Silicon Valley, Startups, the tech industry, and life at Facebook - without leaving out the hilarious debauchery that took place in between. Read it now! It made my morning commute way more entertaining and I literally laughed out loud a few times.

The ‘Bad Santa’ of Silicon Valley

I felt compelled to knock a star for the overall pessimistic views and spiteful portrayals expressed in the book (think Bad Santa movie). That being said, the extremely witty, intelligent, and entertaining writing style covering everything from stock trading, investing, the corporate battlefield of the business, and the current reality of online / social media advertising is impossible to deny.

Audible is perfect for a book like this with the many included footnotes, since they tend to interrupt the overall flow of reading a traditional book. There's also a great Q and A at the end with the author.

Must Read

it was a great book, especially if your in the startup world either past, present or future. Loved the authors prospective and humor

The book is awesome however ...

I really like the ability in audible to increase the speed of the narration, however as I learned from this audio book it doesn’t work for all narraters. Wish there were different narraters to select from.

A broad overview of a bro's Silicon Valley exp

This memoir follows a Wall Street quantitive analyst's journey into Silicon Valley as a modern ad man. It's bite, angsty, and aggressive.
I could see this as a good intro to Silicon Valley and the world of startup tech in the 10s for the non-technical reader, but for anyone with any experience in the field it's just a brogrammer's rant.

Interesting worth a listen

Good personal account based insight into silicon valley, startup culture and the inner workings of Facebook a few years back.