21 Dog Years: A Cube Dweller's Tale

by Mike Daisey

Boy meets dot-com, boy falls for dot-com, boy flees dot-com in horror. So goes one of the most perversely hilarious love stories you will ever read, one that blends tech culture, hero worship, cat litter, Albanian economics, venture capitalism, and free bagels into a surreal cocktail of delusion.

In 1998, when Amazon.com went to temp agencies to recruit people, they gave them a simple directive: send us your freaks. Mike Daisey -- slacker, onetime aesthetics major, dilettante -- seemed perfect for the job. His ascension from lowly temp to customer service representative to business development hustler over the course of twenty-one dog years is the stuff of both dreams and nightmares.

With lunatic precision, Daisey describes the lightless cube farms in which book orders were scrawled on Post-its while technicians struggled to bring computers back online; the fourteen-hour days fueled by caffeine, fanaticism, and illicit day-trading from office desks made from doors; his strange compulsion to send free books to Norwegians; and the fevered insistence of BizDev higher-ups that the perfect business partner was Pets.com -- the now-extinct company that spent all its assets on a sock puppet.

In these pages, you'll meet Warren, the cowboy of customer service, capable of verbally hog-tying even the most abusive customer; Amazon employee #5, a reclusive computer gamer worth a cool $300 million, who spends at least six hours a day locked in his office killing goblins; and Jean-Michele, Mike's girlfriend and sparring partner, who tries to keep him grounded, even as dot-com mania seduces them both. At strategic intervals, the narrative is punctuated by hysterically honest letters to CEO Jeff Bezos -- missives that seem ripped from the collective unconscious of dot-com disciples the world over.

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Humor, Business, Computers, Biography Memoir

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 4, 2002

About the author

Mike Daisey is an American monologist, author, and actor best known for his full-length extemporaneous monologues, particularly The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which aired on This American Life. The story was subsequently retracted following allegations that many of the events in the story were fabricated. When confronted with evidence that much of what he reported as truth (both on stage and in interviews) was in fact fabricated, Mike Daisy admitted to lying about details of his trip to China.

Reviews

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a little tricky because (if I understand correctly), it originated as a one-man show, and he then lengthened the work to turn it into memoir/book form. Because it wasn't originally intended as a book, I do think it can be a little rough around the edges.

Primarily for the above reason, I'm giving it four stars. Nevertheless, I am interested in Daisey as a performer, and I wanted to get a feel for his work. As this is his only published (sort of) play (and because I don't live anywhere near where he is currently performing "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs"), I plunged into this, and I wasn't disappointed. According to Amazon, some of his earlier plays are set to be published in May of 2012, which, since my birthday is also in May, I consider to be a birthday present from Mike Daisey himself.

In short, if you're interested in Daisey, this is worth a read (I imagine this is small percentage of the population). If you're interested in knowing what the early days of working at Amazon.com were like, this is worth a read. And if you, like me (and Daisey), consider yourself something of a dilettante, this is definitely worth a read.

[Punk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non-fiction. Mike Daisey is the epitome of Gen X: bachelor's degree in aesthetics, background as a professional temp, and a hundred casual Superman references tossed into his speech. It's 1998 and Seattle is churning out disaffection and coffee like it's the new world order, and Daisey has just gotten hired as a customer service representative for Amazon.com.

The day of his first interview with Amazon, Daisey walked out of the building and was confronted with a Seattle Weekly newspaper box on the sidewalk. The headline was How I "escaped" from Amazon.cult by Richard Howard. That should have been Daisey's first sign that something stank in the city of Seattle, but he ignored it.

Daisey's story makes Amazon.com into a religion and its founder Jeff Bezos the charismatic leader they'd all willingly, happily, drink poisoned Kool-Aid for. I felt sorry for Daisey, for his earnest stupidity and his bare desire to believe in something, while at the same time I could understand how glamorous and seductive Amazon must have been back in the late nineties.

The book is easy and uncomfortable to read. Daisey has a sense of humor about his experience and he's willing to laugh at himself, but there's also a genuine sense of confusion and disappointment in the company. Daisey had fallen in love with Amazon.com, but Amazon was merely toying with his feelings. Their breakup isn't pretty.

Three stars for a look at Amazon from a guy who loved it, hated it, and stole office supplies from it.

[Tania · Rating 2 out of 5]

quotes#346980 from my notebook

In some ways it was the curse of talent; there was a whole list of things in which I showed great promise. But there is a hell of a gap between "talented" and "successful," and to bridge it you need something called "will." My teachers begged me to dedicate myself - just a little - and said I would really blossom. I dug in my heels and refused. I feigned scorn and indignation but really I was just too scared to apply myself. I was afraid I would discover my limitations. Better not to know. Better to be free and easy and cultivate an air of smug accomplishment. Nurture my talent. Read another book. Play some more Nintendo.
But I miscalculated. p4
[chosen for its philosophical bent:]

But "beat" in what context? B&N still has all its physical stores, and even if the website isn't growing at a staggering rate it's not as if B&N's physical store sales have been crippled by Amazon. People still like going to bookstores, which strangely is considered more romantic than spending an evening alone in your underwear staring at a website. p67
[hubby and I often frequented a B&N after a meal out - alas we no longer have that luxury:]

[Brett Nordquist · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just don’t. I’d rather watch Carrot Top than read this book again.

[Peter Geyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a curious mixture of observations and experiences associated with Amazon.com, its compulsions and work practices and the author's personal relationships and quasi-religious experiences associated with the early days of this company, its working methods, reward systems and compulsions (read into the latter what you will).

Mike Daisey characterises himself as a kind of misfit, with the wrong academic degree and interests, both immersed in the culture of Amazon and struggling with it. Every so often he produces a fantasy missive directed at Jeff Bezos, essentially a cultic figure. The paradox here is that the staff are apparently selected on the basis of IQ or a similar idea of intelligence, even for his initial customer service role answering phone enquiries/complaints (or not) in the dark.

Publicly available sources support Daisey's description of the work environment, including the provision of food etc that encourages people to work long hours etc. in what is really an updated version of a Taylorist approach to management, albeit with a cultic feel. Part of the relationship oriented parts of the book have to do with the author's struggle with maintaining a personal identity or self and in many respects he seems lucky to have his partner.

One of the interesting things, if not confounding about the content is that at this point Amazon hasn't gone into profit, yet a number of the staff are very wealthy, particularly Bezos, probably via stock options or a variant of that process. One wouldn't have to go far to find critiques of this reward system elsewhere where the main aim of working is to gain wealth in this fashion.

As a person who began organisational consulting around the start of this kind of process in Australia and the related iniquities that followed e.g. executives remunerated according to a particular job classification system entangled with a cult of comparison so that you could all of a sudden be paid lots more for being accountable for the same thing you were doing anyway. I watched this kind of thing happen with incredulity.

If you're wanting to discover some of the origins of the current practices in Amazon and elsewhere, and parallel issues like wages, leave of any kind and so forth (Daisey concludes that even with the sale of stock he was overall paid under $7 an hour) then this might be useful. I found it useful in that sense, but struggled with the way Daisey went about his story, and there are several reasons for that and I left it half read for a while until recently.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy, enjoyable read. This book gives an insider view from the trenches of customer service back in the day phone support for taking credit card info and looking up order details was common. From temp to overworked peon, it's a common life experience made unusual by the dotcom boom era stock growth and related madness as well as the unique Seattle underclass from which such peons was drawn.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a former Amazonian from back in the day, I found myself smiling at identifiable quirks and personalities from back in the day. However, as a whole the narrative tying together the various anecdotes and vignettes had a hard time holding my attention.

I understand this is supposed to be an adaptation of a stage show, and perhaps the delivery would have landed better seeing and hearing it being performed rather than reading it on a page.

[Austin Pierce · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the better Silicon Valley memoirs I’ve read (and I’ve read a dozen now).

[Ranga B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked his narrative style and fun way of looking into IT world and work life

[Angie Miller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I thought it would be funnier, but it really wasn't. It had its moments, but I just didn't care that much for the writing. It seemed to lack flow. I almost quit reading it a few times.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first saw Mike Daisey in 2005 at the Portland Center Stage performing 21 Dog Years, or Doing Time @ Amazon.com as a one man show. The performance was excellent and I still remember him using the analogy of a three legged dog. (a dog with its leg in a trap chews it off and lives to escape but it still loved because who doesn't like dogs even if they have only three legs). He made me realize that I too could escape a job that I truly hated and I also did a geographic cure. I have a photo of a one legged dog in my wallet to remind me of my escape. The book elaborates on his skit and provided a look into the run up of the 90s and dot com's behaving badly and the greed of the time on both sides of the employment desk (door ala deck top). Living in Portland at the time we heard about the travails up in Seattle at Amazon all the time but did not really know what was going on inside. This spells it out with all the warts. The writing is a bit juvenile but I gather that Mike Daisey is a bit juvenile as well. The one man show was much better but I highly recommend the book even though it is getting a little out of date as the years go by.

[Maddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

21 Dog Years is the chronicle of author Mike Daisey's brief time at start-up Amazon.com

21 Dog Years because like dogs, the years (especially the earlier ones) seem to age you faster at Amazon than in the real world.

Daisey details how he was a shiftless "dilettante" few ties before he broke down and joined the freak show of the customer service team. The Amazon.com he describes is like a cult - and was apparently covered so in some of the media at the time - with a message and figurehead that was meant to inspire and completely absorb the drones.

Daisey drank the Kool-Aid to the very end in love with the company and the found, the amazing Jeff. However, eventually the dilettante (with a major in aesthetics) wins out.

Discussing this book with my friend who lent it to me, he revealed that recently Daisey came under fire when a report he did for NPR's This American Life on FoxConn was discovered to be "partially fabricated." At the end of the story he states that some facts were harmed but the truth remained whole - but it does cause one to wonder. I read the book as creative non-fiction taking a grain of salt with each story but wondering where the kernel of truth lay.

[MattA · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an adaptation and expansion of Mike Daisey's original one-man show. It increased my appreciation of the book to imagine Mike delivering it as a monolouge. I've heard several other pieces by Mike, and he's a great story teller. A decent author, too.

The book covers Mike's years working at Amazon.com, his years as a cubicle dweller. Reading it now -- ten years after publication -- it serves as a bit of nostalgia, looking back on the dot-com era of the late 90's. Mike almost seems to stumble through his time at Amazon, sometimes loving the company, sometimes hating it. As someone who has spent most of his own working life in cubes, I can appreciate his struggles to live within that environment, and admire him for his ability to finally break free.

I can see how his style might not appeal to some people. Give it a chapter and see how you like it.

P.S. I found it amusing that later editions of the book changed the sub-title from "Doing Time @ Amazon.com" to "A Cube Dweller's Tale". I wonder if that was required in order to get the book listed on Amazon.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provided a kind of quick detour from the heavy stuff I've been concentrating on lately (including "A People's History of the United States). It's a good, quick, funny read about one of Seattle's best-known (and quite cultish) companies: Amazon.com.

The upshot? Joining Amazon is like joining a cult - only the members quote "Star Wars," sport college degrees in subjects like "aesthetics" and basically trade their souls for the enormous wealth promised by stock options. The book also provides a nice recap of the craziness of the dot.com years.

In a sense, the book also afforded me a look at how one might approach writing about a particular experience with corporate America. I've been thinking about writing about my experience in corporate journalism, and the structure of this book provides one possible path to follow.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a sarcastic, funny and caustic account of the author's stint as a customer service representative at Amazon.com. He worked there in 1998 so I'm assuming a lot has changed in that time. However, it is a pretty biting view of what it was like inside Amazon during the beginning years. I read it quite a while ago but remember enjoying it and feeling like the author was probably violating some kind of workplace confidentiality agreement. Perhaps his former employee agrees because, although you can buy this book on Amazon, you'll find that the subtitle is changed to "A Cube Dweller's Tale." Kind of funny.

[Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

After seeing Mike Daisey's monologue about his travels to Vanuatu at the Woolly Mammoth theater, I was really excited about this book. In the show he presents a very nuanced view of capitalism and western culture, raising provocative questions about "value" and why we behave the way we do.

Unfortunately the book doesn't extend the ideas or offer anything close to the same level of analysis. Though it explores the connection between capitalism, society and wellbeing, it feels like a juvenile first draft of what he ended up writing for his performance.

Recommendation: Go see Mike Daisey in person as soon as you can. Think twice before reading this book.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went to see Mike Daisey perform a one man show at a local theater a few months ago, and it was terrific, so I looked forward to reading this book about his years working at Amazon.com in the late 90s. Maybe my expectations were too high, but this wasn't the funny and poignant portrayal I thought it would be. Instead, it dragged on and focused more on the author's own self-deprecation than real insight into working at dot-coms in that period before the bubble burst. I did enjoy the mock email messages to Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com's founder) scattered throughout the book, however, so I'm giving it three stars instead of two.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, really three-and-a-half.

The book certainly gives you a sense of why working at Amazon was a very crazy prospect in the late '90s. I grew up in Silicon Valley during the tech boom, but I never really understood what it was like from the inside, certainly not in the way Mike Daisey saw it.
On the other hand, our narrator is a bit too sarcastic in his views of everything to be entirely believable, and sometimes the humor can wear a little thin.
Definitely worth a read; shouldn't take more than a few hours. Light fare.

[C · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed the beginning of the book. The opening chapters were filled with humor. I enjoyed the bits about school, moving to Seattle, Nintendo, and coffee.

As the story continued, I found myself being reminded that often in life, people are searching for an identity, a place to make a difference. In other cases, we are often motivated to amass stockpiles of green. In reading this work of non-fiction, I see how people can get caught up in the emotion and losing a bit of "themselves".

Despite these "realities", I found the book to be a bit scattered.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Mike Daisey, and if you've ever seen one of his shows, they're great. I found myself reading aloud several parts of this book to my fiance, and we'd chuckle along. However, I found the book to have a very quick drop-off at the end, and less of a lead-up to his final days than I would have liked. Additionally, I would have loved to have had a (even if it were fictional) Amazon-sidekick to compare the two lifestyles in order to glean from the text what was making Mike unhappy during these times. It was definitely worth the read.

[Sarah Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned two things from this book.

1: Amazon.com is fascinating, in that it was a disaster of a company yet a miracle of a business. requesting SAT scores for applicants to the customer service department? crazy.

2: a person can go a little bit corporate, work for an organization that maybe sucks the soul a tad, and still come out alright. not immediately, perhaps, but eventually.

I may have known #2 already, but it's good to hear it again.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started out really great--about a guy's inside experience as one of the first (300 or so) employees of Amazon.com
But, as the story went on, I started to....not care.

I've spent the last few days with only 4 pages left to read because I just felt so blah toward the whole thing.

This guy was a major slacker, stealer of office supplies, etc. I didn't find one quality about him that I liked (well, maybe his humor), not enough to save this.

Meh.

[Karen Germain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very lucky to see Mike Daisey perform two monologues at the Kirk Douglas Theater this past Spring. This book was just as wonderful as his live performances. Simply put, Daisey is a gifted story-teller and I would highly recommend him to anyone.

Besides all of the great things about Daisey, this book is also interesting for the insight that it gives with regard to the birth of Amazon.com. I really got a kick out of the emails!

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ordinary to the verge of boring. I thought I'd get an inside look at how Amazon.com works, how it started, or how it has continued to be a great company despite the critics. I got none of that. It was more of a short-term diary of one person's work day. My work day is bad enough, I like books to allow me an escape, and I don't like to escape to a different work day...

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

sense of deja vue was strong with this insight into life in a dot.bomb company with the euphoria and dubious practices that went with it. Although Amazon has survivied the period covered by this book was definitely in an era when the emphasis was on adding customers regardless of the cost. Otherwise some good chortles to be had but I'd say this stuff will date quickly enough.

[CountZeroOr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is amusing, certainly, but I wouldn't exactly call it a great work of computer history. It's basically the story of a humorist working for a corporation, sitting in the cogs. It's inoffensive and worth checking out from the library, but I wouldn't call this a must-have book about the history of the computer industry.

[Martha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite what he says I found the author so pleased with himself and his eventual choice to leave Amazon that it annoyed me. Yet I also agreed with much of what he said, having been an founding member in the cult of McAfee and watching that company grow and change into a cube-dwellers worst nightmare after John left.

I also opted out.

[Tamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more really funny humor...but then it became really vengeful humor. Still somewhat interesting because we all(well some) become occasionally disillusioned with our jobs. Is what we're thinking really true? I'm always glad when we can find something that suits us better.

[Tracee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Mike Daisey is a great monologuist. His wit is priceless. Let's see if me loves his narrative in my own reading voice.

Seriously though- go see him live if you ever get the chance.


This book is ok. Go see him perform instead.

[Holly Booms Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amusing tale of the dot com boom as seem through one slacker's eyes during his entertaining and exasperating time at Amazon.com while it was a startup. Those of us that have had a taste of corporate will appreciate the humor and the lengths we go tto sell ourselves to the company line.