Dan Lyons is 51 years old and the technology editor at Newsweek. In 2012 his twins are turning 7-years-old, his wife has just quit her teaching job, and the family is preparing for a three-week trip to Austria. Then he loses his job.
This book is about his employment at Hubspot, a company (used by several of my friends) that creates and sells marketing software. Lyons is hired as a “Marketing Fellow,” a position that never quite materializes. Instead he ends up writing blog posts with “eager beaver young white people.”
As you’d expect for someone used to the rigor of journalism, the cult-like atmosphere of Hubspot —combined with the dumbed-down articles he was writing – made the experience rather challenging. To make the job palatable, Lyons pretends he’s an anthropologist and records the behavior of his fellow Hubspotters.
This was an interesting look into youth-based company culture from the view of an “elderly” outsider. If firing Nerf guns and dressing up for Halloween at work don’t appeal to you, you’ll probably find Disrupted to be an enjoyable read.