Books › I'm feeling lucky
I'm feeling lucky
the confessions of Google employee number 59
416 pages
A wry, front-row ticket to the chaotic, data-obsessed birth of the modern internet.
What it feels like
Reading this memoir feels like grabbing a beer with the one normal guy trapped inside a spaceship built by brilliant, data-obsessed aliens. The pace is brisk, mirroring the dizzying hyper-growth of the late-nineties tech boom, while the mood hums with an energetic, slightly chaotic nostalgia. It captures the specific friction of human intuition colliding with cold, hard algorithms, wrapped in a wry and self-deprecating tone. You are plunged into an intellectually buzzing atmosphere where imposter syndrome and camaraderie go hand in hand. It is less a corporate history and more a deeply personal, candid exploration of what it feels like to hold on for dear life as a scrappy startup morphs into a global behemoth. It will delight tech enthusiasts and anyone fascinated by the messy, human reality behind our digital lives.
- Mood
- energetic
- chaotic
- nostalgic
- intellectually buzzing
- Tone
- wry
- candid
- self-deprecating
- observant
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- hyper-growth chaos · data versus intuition · startup culture · imposter syndrome · the evolution of the internet
- The writing
- The prose is conversational, witty, and sharply observant, reading like a late-night confession from a seasoned colleague.
- The arc
- The journey shifts from the dizzying, bewildered excitement of joining a chaotic startup to a bittersweet reflection on the inevitable corporatization of a world-changing idea.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave the unvarnished, human stories behind massive technological shifts and the messy reality of startup culture will devour this.
Content notes
- workplace stress
- burnout
About the book
Comparing Google to an ordinary business is like comparing a rocket to an Edsel. Edwards, Employee Number 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers a chance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie and competition at this phenomenal company. Edwards, Google's first director of marketing and brand management, describes it as it happened. We see the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company's young, idiosyncratic partners; the evolution of the company's famously nonhierarchical structure (where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feature to create and works independently); the development of brand identity; the races to develop and implement each new feature; and the many ideas that never came to pass.
Description from Open Library.
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