In an Ex-Googler's Novel, Silicon Valley Runs on Male Ego

In an Ex-Googler's Novel, Silicon Valley Runs on Male Ego

5 years ago
Anonymous $fWzGa1uP8i

https://www.wired.com/story/ex-googlers-novel-silicon-valley-runs-male-ego/

The Big Disruption, a satirical novel written by Jessica Powell, Google’s former head of communications, is set inside the lush and bountiful Silicon Valley headquarters of Anahata, a massive 10-year-old tech giant in love its own mythology about open-door board meetings and profound yet “napkin-able” ideas. Visionary CEO Bobby Bonilo deploys the company’s vast resources and intellectual firepower mainly to play catch up with Galt, the hottest startup in the Valley, famous for creating apps and tools capable of “reducing all thought and opinion to easily shareable, bite-sized chunks.”

The parallel to Powell’s real life is obvious. Anahata began as a search engine that can’t seem to get social networking right. The company takes a literal shot at the moon. But even though Bonilo seems like an easy match to either Sergey Brin or Larry Page, Powell says she was based in Europe when she wrote the book in 2012 and hadn’t yet met Google’s cofounders in person.