At the height of the startup boom, journalist Corey Pein set out for Silicon Valley with little more than a smartphone and his wits. His goal: to learn how such an overhyped industry could possibly sustain itself as long as it has. Determined to cut through the cliches of big tech-the relentless optimism, the incessant repetition of vacuous buzzwords-Pein decided that he would need to take an approach as unorthodox as the companies he would soon be covering. To truly understand the delirious reality of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, he knew, he would have to inhabit that perspective-he would have to become an entrepreneur. Thus he begins his journey-skulking through gimmicky tech conferences, pitching his over-the-top business ideas to investors, and interviewing a cast of outrageous characters: cyborgs and con artists, Teamsters and transhumanists, jittery hackers and naive upstart programmers whose entire lives are managed by their employers-who work endlessly and obediently, never thinking to question their place in the system. In showing us this frantic world, Pein challenges the positive self-image that the tech tycoons have crafted-as benevolent creators of wealth and opportunity-to reveal their self-justifying views and their insidious visions for the future. Vivid and incisive, Live Work Work Work Die is a troubling portrait of a self-obsessed industry bent on imposing its disturbing visions on the rest of us.

Author Biography

Corey Pein is a regular contributor to The Baffler, where he writes a column and hosts the podcast "News from Nowhere." A longtime investigative reporter and former staff writer for the Willamette Week, he has also written for Slate, Salon, Foreign Policy, The American Prospect, and the Columbia Journalism Review, among other publications. He lives in Portland, Oregon.