Review: The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest

I recently read Po Bronson's sophomore effort, The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest (TF20MIATH), and had a few gripes about it. Click below to read mine, and to share your own critiques - compliments - comments - ramblings about the book. The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest author Po Bronson pages 237 publisher Random House rating 4/10 reviewer Jeff "hemos" Bates ISBN summary An attempt at writing a fictional Silicon Valley Story

Several months ago I read Bronson's latest book, The Nudist on the Late Shift . It was good - not quite Microserfs , but definitely worth the time I spent reading it.

So, with that in mind, and having heard a little bit about his other material, I kept an eye open for Bombardiers or TF20MIATH, and eagerly fell upon the first of the two that came to me.

Most of TF20MIATH's main characters are engineers, "iron-men" in the parlance of the book, who work for a research facility that's supposed to attract only the best and brightest. You aren't paid a lot of money to work there. You do it for the love of the work, and to prove you're an Iron Man, or "uber-mann." However, the work done at the lab does have commercial properties, and the lab is funded by commercial companies. The largest sponsoring company, much like AMD, is trying to compete with Intel. This fact creates some of the book's conflict.

The lead character, Andy, joins the lab after quitting his job at that psuedo-AMD company, but his desires to work at The Lab are (major summarization here) soon quenched by the other main character, Francis Benoit, who is constantly seeking to prove that he is the Super-Iron-Man of them all.

One of the ongoing battles of the book is between the powerful "big iron machines" the lab is known for developing and the evolving world of thin client, networked machines. Bronson's treatment of this conflict, coupled with the somewhat Messianic light that these cheap Internetworked computers will bring to the world writ large, is the books's central thought. It's a good thought, and I think it's one that has some validity. That is, as the world's population gets more education, and computers spread, I think things will get better. So does Bronson. And he says this again and again, in slightly different words each time.

The story itself, which in a way is a story about the world of the suits meeting the world of engineers, with the obvious party losing, falls short. The introduction of a female bit player who becomes Andy's girlfriend is contrived. Problems develop in the relationship, and we never hear if they are resolved or not. The disapperance of a fairly major character (Salman) is explained poorly, and is never mentioned again in any fashion.

Summary time: The story involves jealousy and politicking amongst the Iron Men Engineers while they as a caste also do battle with the Universe of the Suits. The main character must resolve issues with his girlfriend. All characters wrestle with problems, includings things like whether or not they will be fired, whether or not they can code something, and whether or not they can afford to buy better food.

It's not a bad book, it's just that unless this type of writing is your favorite, there are better books to read. There's a good book inside this one, but the problem is that the good book is only about one-third the length of the published version. Bronson is an author who seems to constantly be trying to figure out how to best tell a Silicon Valley story. In Nudist he did it succesfully, but in TF20MIATH he didn't. My recommendation: You won't regret reading this, but there's better stuff around..

You can buy TF20MIATH at Amazon.