Journalist turned marketer bursts tech start-up model

Lyons was recruited by a new tech start up called HubSpot during the period of its preparation for floating as a listed company. A victim of the imploding world of traditional mainstream journalism, the 50 years old Lyons found himself in a surreal world after being hired by the start-up company in Boston. It was a world of hype and self congratulation all centred around getting the Initial Public Offering share price as high as possible to make the founders and investors in the company incredibly wealthy before the true value became apparent.

If the book had been fiction it would have been entertaining enough but the fact that it was based on an actual company and real people (with a few names changed) gave it a frightening edge and insight into how many pre-2008 global financial crisis behaviours are alive and well in reinvented form in this current decade.

As a 50+ employee, Dan Lyons thought he was signing up for a real job communicating the HubSpot company’s “inbound” marketing product. It took him quite some time to figure out that there was no real job for him and that his value to the company rested almost entirely on the lustre and mystique attaching to HubSpot by having a former award winning technology journalist on staff. His best ideas were enthusiastically endorsed but went nowhere or worse, they seemed to threaten other managers in influential positions who used every trick in the pay-book to undermine and stop their implementation.

Lyons’ experiences dealing with jargon, highly ridiculous and pointless workforce development sessions, excessive perks and parties to keep the young staff members committed and engaged and highly manipulative sexist and ageist behaviour at all levels makes this a highly intriguing page turner. I rate it five stars out of five.

Don’t read this book if you want to continue believing Silicon Valley type companies are leading the way in the modern economy. Do read the book if you want an insider’s view through the lens of a talented and mature baby boomer – of which there are still many around, thank goodness….

“Disrupted”, by Dan Lyons was published by www.atlantic-books.co.uk in 2016. It is a New York Times bestseller.