Why Working Sucks These Days: My Review of Lab Rats

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us is an engaging and informative book that dives into the madness of working culture today. The core idea of the book is that many of the management ideals lauded by Silicon Valley are making workers miserable across the country and are not particularly effective to begin with. The media spends a lot of time focusing on high-value, high-tech companies like Facebook and Uber. But are these really companies we should be trying to model or aspire to? The author, Dan Lyons, makes a compelling case that we should not.

I loved Dan's frank way of writing. One of my favorite passages from the book: "Silicon Valley has no fountain of youth. Unicorns do not possess any secret management wisdom. Most start-ups are terribly managed, half-assed outfits run by buffoons and bozos and frat boys, and funded by amoral investors who are only hoping to flip the company into the public markets and make a quick buck. They have no operations expertise, no special insight into organizational behavior." You can really feel his sense of indignation at how these snake oil salesmen have made our lives miserable.

The bulk of the book focuses on the four factors that contribute to worker unhappiness:

• Money

• Insecurity

• Change

• Dehumanization

Dan goes in depth on how each of these factors has shifted over the years to be more favorable to executives and shareholders and less favorable to your average worker. These factors are the pillars of the increased stress that workers feel.

The book does end on a happy note - Dan spends some time looking at businesses that reject the notion that focusing on shareholders is the only way to run a business. For example, he talks to the founders of Basecamp, a company that offers many generous perks to its employees and truly focuses on employee happiness. He also looks at investment firms like Kapor Capital that focus on investing in businesses that help serve low-income communities or communities of color. 

I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about where today's common management ideas really come from and why we should be wary of them.