The Big Disruption

I’m delighted today to tell you about a fascinating new release, THE BIG DISRUPTION: A Totally Fictional But Essentially True Silicon Valley Story by Jessica Powell.

This rip-roaring comedy is about big plans and bigger egos at the world's largest tech company. THE BIG DISRUPTION will have you clutching your stomach in laughter while thinking twice about the world our tech overlords are building.

Medium, the online publishing platform, published a simultaneous print and e-book edition of THE BIG DISRUPTION, a satirical novel written by former Google VP of Communications Jessica Powell. THE BIG DISRUPTION made news in the fall when Medium published it online as their first full-length book.

With over 175k readers, the book has been praised by The New York Times as “a zany satire [whose] diagnosis of Silicon Valley’s cultural stagnancy is so spot on that it’s barely contestable.” It was such a success that Medium has decided to take the unprecedented step of publishing it as their first ever print book. THE BIG DISRUPTION is a timely and important peek inside the money, power, and insanity of modern-day tech and the author is donating 100% of her share of the print proceeds to the Book Industry Charitable Foundation to support indie booksellers.

Something is fishy at Anahata—Silicon Valley’s premiere tech company, and it’s not just the giant squid that serves as its mascot. An exiled prince with janitorial expertise is working as a product manager. The sales guys are battling with the engineers. The women employees are the unwitting subjects of a wild social experiment. The VPs are plotting against each other.

The yoga-loving, sex-obsessed CEO is rumored to be planning a moon colony, sending his investors into a tizzy, and everyone is obsessed with Galt, their fiercest industry rival. Is it all downhill from here for the world’s largest tech company? Or is this just the beginning of a bold new phase in Anahata’s quest for global domination?

For those who aren’t familiar with the author, here’s a bit of background on her.

Author Jessica Powell

JESSICA POWELL is the author of The Big Disruption: A Totally Fictional but Essentially True Silicon Valley Story. The first novel ever published by the digital platform Medium, The Big Disruption has been read by over 175,000 readers.

Jessica is the former Vice President of Communications for Google and served on the company's management team. She is the author of Literary Paris, and her fiction and non-fiction has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, WIRED, and Medium magazine. She is also the co-founder and CEO of a startup that builds software for musicians. You can find her @themoko on Twitter.

Here’s what others are saying about the book.

“A zany satire. her diagnosis of Silicon Valley’s cultural stagnancy is so spot on that it’s barely contestable.” — Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times

“[Powell] wields Bonfire of the Vanities levels of absurdity and social observation to chronicle this particular northern Californian strain of masters of the universe” — Lauren Smiley, The Guardian

“Jessica Powell is everything you want in a writer about power and money and lunacy in modern day Silicon Valley. She is an insider who has come outside, an insightful chronicler of the ridonkulous foibles of the digital overlords and a deft teller of tales. She was in the room and has managed to gleefully open its doors and let us see the antic circus inside. Such a view has never been more important as tech’s damage becomes more and more clear.” — Kara Swisher, New York Times Contributing Opinion Writer and Co-founder of Recode

“The best books typically prompt us to laugh or think or learn something about the world that we might not have otherwise known. You will do all these things while reading this book, and more. This is a wild, incisive, and incredibly necessary look at the way that Silicon Valley works, and a wonderfully good read as well. The Big Disruption is a book that explains and defines this moment—the kind of book many of us have been waiting for.” — Tope Folarin, Caine Prize winner and author, A Particular Kind Of Black Man

“From years of dealing with Jessica Powell during her time at Google, I knew she was witty. But I am sitting at a Starbucks laughing out loud like an idiot at her very smart new book The Big Disruption, a brilliant and funny satire of the male, engineer-driven culture of Silicon Valley where the leaders are cryptic and obtuse to reality.” —Walt Mossberg, former Wall Street Journal columnist and Co-founder of Recode

Thanks for stopping by today. Have you ever wondered what all really goes on in a tech company?