Jean Tessier’s Reviews > How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps > Status Update

I've been saying that a lot during my career: "the thing about reality is that it always wins in the end." (p. 143)

Throughout the book, whenever I read "Milburn", I kept visualizing the character fo Milton in the movie "Office Space". In the last section of the book, "Responses to Others", the author refers to Milburn as "Milton".

Milburn finally reveals his sociopathy when his character enters the story proper. This is when the author finally becomes analytical when he breaks down the psychological manipulation tactics from Milburn. "it would be a mistake to respond as if we were having a good faith conversation, eagerly trying to discover the real facts of the situation" (p. 130)

I think the core of the story is the mismatch and miscommunication between Sales and Devs. Sales wants everything positive; Devs want everything accurate.

The cat is out of the bag: the CEO really works for the lead investor. He's a yes-man who never really tells the truth, either up or down. He's always telling everyone that everything is fine and everything is under control, even though it's not and he doesn't have a clue. And they're doing conversations as FSMs, now.

Long nights trying to ramp up Sital. I like the tech jargon: named pipes, websockets, Redis, Twilio. I'm my element. The CEO appears unstable. Pivoting away from iPhone and fully into NLP. Sital is useless. I like the Manhattan geography.

The narrator has over 10 years of experience and joins a bunch of students fresh out of college in an NYU incubator. Things look shaky as they get started. If three founders, two left before the start of the story to do internships at Facebook and Google. I suspect we'll never see them again. The CEO is "faking it'til he makes it;" he's not being transparent with mounting problems and focusing on distractions.