Company

Nov 30, 2007 Trevor rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: economics, literature, history

This book could have been so good - but wasn't.

Anyone who has worked anywhere in the last 20 years will recognise, with some pain, stuff written here - the nightmares of quality improvement plans, the language mangling this is ‘mission statements’ and the feeling that work has become an experiment performed on us by our less than benevolent overlords – all of this ought to have made for a very funny book. You know, in the all-too-uncomfortable sense that we laugh and cry about the same things....more This book could have been so good - but wasn't.

Anyone who has worked anywhere in the last 20 years will recognise, with some pain, stuff written here - the nightmares of quality improvement plans, the language mangling this is ‘mission statements’ and the feeling that work has become an experiment performed on us by our less than benevolent overlords – all of this ought to have made for a very funny book. You know, in the all-too-uncomfortable sense that we laugh and cry about the same things.

That it so comprehensively failed to even raise a smile I can only put down to it being written with too close an eye on the American market. It is completely lacking in subtlety – so much so that I forgot halfway through that it was written by an Australian. It was like watching a slapstick comedy starring Adam Sandler, with the jokes telegraphed sometimes pages ahead. In fact, if it is made into a film Sandler could play the lead role. Either way, I won’t be watching it.

That the book gains praise from The Economist and Forbes probably says more than enough. This is not a book that subverts the existing order, but one that seeks to reinforce the futility of attempting to subvert it. People wonder why the best comics are almost always leftwing – it is because comedy is fundamentally subversive. If you have written a book that seeks to make fun of capitalism, it probably shows you have failed if The Economist is quoted on the cover saying anything but DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.

I have advice to anyone wanting to write a book on this theme – you don’t need to go over the top. Modern corporate culture is so fundamentally stuffed, so lacking in human decency or human feeling, so incapable of justification, that to exaggerate only makes it less degrading than it actually is. Exaggerating for the sake of a few laughs is fine – as long as the laughs finally come. That they didn’t in this case is just too sad for words.

The inescapable conclusion this book makes is that modern companies are so fundamentally evil that there is no alternative but nihilism. I think this is going too far, as this would be only one of my suggested options. Giving people some say in their workplace, some form of industrial democracy, may not be the most popular idea among the management gurus, but it would seem much more interesting than destroying the livelihoods of all those around you and then going off on the speaking tour circuit, the remarkably unfunny conclusion to this book’s little jaunt of folly.

This is a book that seems to be screaming out for a ‘solution’ to the modern dilemmas that corporations pose to society – that the author has no solution other than nihilism diminishes the book. I was left much as Aristotle said I would after a ‘comedy’ – feeling worse about the world than when I started.

Given what this book was about, the wealth of material it could have exploited, it is tragic that it is as dull and unfunny a book as it turned out to be. All I can say is, if only…
(less)

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Mar 12, 2013 Christopher Litsinger rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2011

Anyone who has worked in corporate bureaucracy would find something to laugh about in this book; which tells the story of a company that exists only as a research lab for the authors of the "Omega Management System". This should give you a good idea of the book's tone:

There are stories — legends, really — of the “steady job.” Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for th

...more Anyone who has worked in corporate bureaucracy would find something to laugh about in this book; which tells the story of a company that exists only as a research lab for the authors of the "Omega Management System". This should give you a good idea of the book's tone:

There are stories — legends, really — of the “steady job.” Old-timers gather graduates around the flickering light of a computer monitor and tell stories of how the company used to be, back when a job was for life, not just for the business cycle. In those days, there were dinners for employees who racked up twenty-five years — don’t laugh, you, yes, twenty-five years! — of service. In those days, a man didn’t change jobs every five minutes. When you walked down the corridors, you recognized everyone you met; hell, you knew the names of their kids.
The graduates snicker. A steady job! They’ve never heard of such a thing. What they know is the flexible job. It’s what they were raised on in business school; it’s what they experienced, too, as they drove a cash register or stacked shelves between classes. Flexibility is where it’s at, not dull, rigid, monotonous steadiness. Flexible jobs allow employees to share in the company’s ups and downs; well, not so much the ups. But when times get tough, it’s the flexible company that thrives. By comparison, a company with steady jobs hobbles along with a ball and chain. The graduates have read the management textbooks and they know the truth: long-term employees are so last century.
The problem with employees, you see, is everything. You have to pay to hire them and pay to fire them, and, in between, you have to pay them. They need business cards. They need computers. They need ID tags and security clearances and phones and air-conditioning and somewhere to sit. You have to ferry them to off-site team meetings. You have to ferry them home again. They get pregnant. They injure themselves. They steal. They join religions with firm views on when it’s permissible to work. When they read their e-mail they open every attachment they get, and when they write it they expose the company to enormous legal liabilities. They arrive with no useful skills, and once you’ve trained them, they leave. And don’t expect gratitude! If they’re not taking sick days, they’re requesting compassionate leave. If they’re not gossiping with co-workers, they’re complaining about them. They consider it their inalienable right to wear body ornamentation that scares customers. They talk about (dear God) unionizing. They want raises. They want management to notice when they do a good job. They want to know what’s going to happen in the next corporate reorganization. And lawsuits! The lawsuits! They sue for sexual harassment, for an unsafe workplace, for discrimination in thirty-two different flavors. For — get this — wrongful termination. Wrongful termination! These people are only here because you brought them into the corporate world! Suddenly you’re responsible for them for life?
The truly flexible company — and the textbooks don’t come right out and say it, but the graduates can tell that they want to — doesn’t employ people at all. This is the siren song of outsourcing. The seductiveness of the subcontract. Just try out the words: no employees. Feels good, doesn’t it? Strong. Healthy. Supple. Oh yes, a company without employees would be a wondrous thing. Let the workers suck up a little competitive pressure. Let them get a taste of the free market.
The old-timers’ stories are fairy tales, dreams of a world that no longer exists. They rest on the bizarre assumption that people somehow deserve a job. The graduates know better; they’ve been taught that they don’t.

The book makes me laugh, when it's not busy scaring the crap out of me because it is a little too real.(less)

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Jun 22, 2007 Grumpus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, audiobook

This is based upon the audio download from [http://www.Audible.com]

Narrated by: William Dufris

There have been various comments about this reader…either love him or hate him. I happily align with the former.

Since there are many other sources for a review of the book, I’ll comment only what makes this different, the reader. With so many characters in the story, I found different voices the reader used for each helpful and delightful in the reading of this very clever story.

I rate William Dufris...more

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May 18, 2013 Claire Sgyreju rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: will-not-reread, satire

Company was clearly written to be a satire of the corporate world. Unfortunately, it fails to be funny and ends up being depressing. I don't recommend it and to be honest I wish I hadn't wasted a whole Saturday afternoon reading it.

I didn't mind that the events and management strategies described in the novel were so over-the-top - that kind of writing can work very well in satire (see Neal Stephenson's The Big U as an example - indeed, I expected Company to be very much like The Big U, but of c...more Company was clearly written to be a satire of the corporate world. Unfortunately, it fails to be funny and ends up being depressing. I don't recommend it and to be honest I wish I hadn't wasted a whole Saturday afternoon reading it.

I didn't mind that the events and management strategies described in the novel were so over-the-top - that kind of writing can work very well in satire (see Neal Stephenson's The Big U as an example - indeed, I expected Company to be very much like The Big U, but of course set in the corporate world rather than a university campus). It was funny in places, but unfortunately very soon I got the impression that the author was trying too hard. It reminded me of someone I knew who tried so hard to make himself interesting (by making jokes, quoting movies and comedians all the time, and being mysterious about himself) that he felt completely fake and talking to him became an unpleasant experience because I felt I was talking to a character behind which he was hiding and not to the real person. The book felt like this - of course it is not an autobiography, but I felt the author was trying too much, as though he wasn't confident that his "normal" writing style would work, or that his characters would be interesting, so instead of telling the story of those people, he kept on showing off and therefore keeping the characters and what was happening to them at a distance, thus making it impossible for me to become attached to them. I couldn't relate to the characters or care about them, not even Jones, who is supposed to be the main character. They all seemed flat and uninteresting to me. I didn't care whether they would get fired or promoted or get the girl or whatever they wanted.

The other problem is that the book was depressing to read. There seems to be no hope, no way out of the horrible management strategies and unbearable office life that are described - the book, in fact, seems to suggest that we, in real life, are doomed to become as unhappy at work as the characters in the novel. Even when certain characters won small or big victories, I couldn't rejoice because it felt pointless in such a depressing context. And the characters themselves were depressing - none of them, not even the "good guys" were particularly likeable, probably because they were rather uni-dimensional to begin with (giving a character a hobby isn't enough to make them feel like a real person).

I wanted to like it. I have worked in a large insurance company, and even though it was a very nice place to work compared to the one described in the book, many elements of management and office life described in the book reminded me of my time there. The book is built around a very clever idea and it could have been a great read if only the characters had been more developed, more interesting, basically better written, and if the author hadn't tried so hard all the time to do more than simply tell the story of those people.(less)

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Dec 25, 2012 Evan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought this succeeded for the same basic reason that Barry's previous novel, "Jennifer Government," failed: In "Government," he was so busy sketching a macro-world with broad strokes that he didn't have any creative energy left over for the actual characters, and so nearly all of them came off as wooden and unidimensional (none more so than the five stock villains with the same last name, as part of the book's central conceit). With "Company," by sticking closer to what he knows (he worked at...more

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Sep 06, 2011 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

With Company, author Max Barry, writes a fine entry in contemporary satirical business writing. As silly a genre as that sounds like it is a well populated one, with The Office (both versions) and Parks and Recreation and even The Crimson Permanent Assurance (the short film in front of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life about a company in the middle of a takeover which suddenly turns into a pirate ship/building and assaults their new bosses with the weapons available to any average office worker...more

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Jun 29, 2010 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: humour, mainstream

Max Barry’s Company is his third novel, and it’s one that helps position him as one of the more prominent Australian satirists working today. Barry is known for his previous books Syrup and Jennifer Government, both touching on themes of consumerism and corporate greed, and Company continues in this vein.

The context of Company should be instantly recognisable to virtually anyone who’s ever, well, been employed. Barry’s insider research was apparently conducted whilst working at global computer c...more Max Barry’s Company is his third novel, and it’s one that helps position him as one of the more prominent Australian satirists working today. Barry is known for his previous books Syrup and Jennifer Government, both touching on themes of consumerism and corporate greed, and Company continues in this vein.

The context of Company should be instantly recognisable to virtually anyone who’s ever, well, been employed. Barry’s insider research was apparently conducted whilst working at global computer company Hewlett Packard, while my own painful and extended brushes with bureaucracy were courtesy of a global publishing company that will remain nameless. The book is absurd, of course, and it relishes in its over-the-top depiction of company culture, but perhaps the most disturbing thing about it is that it’s so easily recognisable. The drawn-out battles and line-drawing over a missing doughnut, whose numbers are carefully rationed by catering; the rabid attention to which coat hook or car parking space belongs to whom purely out of convention and I-was-there-firstness; the complete bewilderment of the employees when asked to explain exactly what their role is without relying on a tautology or circular logic; the ‘just because’ acceptance of bizarre and ever-changing policies from above. I’ve been there. We all have.

Company follows the stellar rise of new graduate Jones, Zephyr Inc’s newest staff member. Jones is not especially slow off the mark, and it doesn’t take him long to realise that things at Zephyr are atypical even for a large business. The always-absent receptionist drives a sports car that seems well beyond her salary range; the lift buttons are numbered in reverse order to encourage staff to aspire towards a position on level 1; and due to some creative accounting, Jones’s salary has been written off as a stationery purchase. However, unlike most employees at Zephyr (as well as those in the real world), rather than accepting the status quo, Jones is determined to find out exactly what’s going on at the company, and while he’s at it, find out exactly what it is that the company does.

Barry is most at home when he’s digging his claws into corporate life and sending up much-ridiculed IT and HR personnel, and readers will find that it’s these areas of the book that are strongest. Characterisation is generally pretty weak, with most characters existing largely to be tormented and mocked, and even main character Jones being fairly flat and having, it should be said, a fairly easy time of it in terms of the plot challenges thrown at him. However, if you can forgive this, and the somewhat weak conclusion to the book, you’ll find that there’s much in Company to love—or at least with which you can identify. I’m tempted to leave a copy at reception, myself!(less)

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Mar 16, 2010 Bill Eberle rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to like this book, just like I wanted to like Jennifer Government but ultimately it fails and for the same reasons. There's just no depth here. Maybe I shouldn't look for any, just accept it as light-hearted satire. Still, the entire story line feels contrived, existing only to point out truths that we all know anyway: big corporations don't care about their employees. Maybe if just one senior manager was given a small amount of depth, rising above the expensive suit-wearing, golf-playi...more

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Oct 19, 2009 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2006

For want of a doughnut, a company is reorganized pretty much sums up Max Barry’s latest novel Company.

If the premise sounds absurd, you’re right. But just like the corporate world, a single dougnut brings about the decline and fall of a company. It serves as a catalyst for the absurdity that can be and is corporate life.

What Jennifer Government did for the advertising industry, Company does for corporate life. But where Company trumps Jennifer is that the story follows a single protagonist in th...more

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Jul 24, 2010 Greg rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, cleaning-house

Max Barry's Company is a corporate satire for those that might find Douglas Coupland a bit too challenging.

One of the many problems with humorous satires (oh there are many, the number one problem being tied between them not being very astute and not being funny) is that once the premise (joke, social observation) is set up then the author has to make a book out of it. Like just about every movie made that is based on a Saturday Night Live skit, there is painful a realization, which comes about...more Max Barry's Company is a corporate satire for those that might find Douglas Coupland a bit too challenging.

One of the many problems with humorous satires (oh there are many, the number one problem being tied between them not being very astute and not being funny) is that once the premise (joke, social observation) is set up then the author has to make a book out of it. Like just about every movie made that is based on a Saturday Night Live skit, there is painful a realization, which comes about a third of the way through the work, that there has to be something more to justify this being a major motion picture as opposed to a skit you put on at 12:45 in the morning when only the nerdiest of comedy geeks are still watching.

The last sentence collapsed somewhere during its second clause. Oh well. The premise of this book could have been handled really well in an Onion news story (no, I will not write out the story, I realize I'm not actually funny and besides I think goodreads.com may collapse under the weight of too many parodies, spoofs and awkward (I mean absurd) juxtapositions between dissimilar things in culturally familiar mediums).

Passive-aggressive critiques of other reviews aside, I should focus on the book at hand. Company is ok. It is not as funny as Office Space, it's not as clever or smart as either versions of The Office. It is vastly inferior to Microserfs. The book is (purposefully?) alienating in its characters, not that I'm complaining that alienation in a book is a bad thing. I'm all for alienation. It's just that the book may have been more effective if I cared about any of the characters. Or about corporations. Ok, there I said it. This book portrays corporations as evil and money hungry and I agree with that take of corporations but I don't buy into the 'we are innocents being manipulated unknowingly by our corporate masters.' I have ideological problems with the premises of this novel, call it the myth of Shiny Happy Capitalism. This is a satire for people who want to feel awesome about the potential of their soul-sucking jobs / corporations and live in a state of strict denial, or want to live in denial or something. I don't know actually. I just know that the book is kind of amusing, but it runs out of steam and it's the satirical equivalent of 1984 but where the conflicts of 1984 resolve themselves by creating a friendly panopticon that is always watching out for your best interests.(less)

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Mar 24, 2013 Jason Moss rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For the first 100 pages, I was thinking to myself, "Genius! This is a rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud (in the literal sense of the phrase), spot-on scalding satire of corporate culture. Each of author Max Barry's initial poison-tipped arrows hit the corporate bulls-eye...the use of the elevator buttons to visualize the corporate hierarchy; the inanity of corporate voice-mail; the over-confidence of MBAs; the invisibility of the CEO; the meaninglessness of the company mission statement; or the aimles...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Jason Edwards rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoy corporate cubicle fiction, for some reason. Books like Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, and I’ll even include Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball by Scott Spencer. Company is sort of a mix of these, in as much as there’s the petty politics of working in a cube farm, and a deeper conspiracy fueling the intrigue. Don’t read Company if you feel good about the corporation you work for and don’t want that feeling challenged. Calling Max Barry "cynical" is like calling Microso...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Art rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: donuts, office-politics

Not just another post-Gervais office politics novel, not some bullshit Nick Hornby light-reading, summer-holiday, man-with-a-heart-of-gold-finds-love-in-a-world-he-never-made thing.. well maybe it's a little like that, but it's more about wondering what exactly the company you work for actually does, what lays beyond the board meeting door, and what dividing people into increasingly meaningless departments does to them as companies get bigger and bigger and more ambiguous.

Company is funny, rela...more

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Feb 14, 2012 SandHouse rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You may remember when I read Machine Man by Max Barry and I remember it being enjoyable. I decided I need something lighthearted to read right now and what better than some crafty satire.

This is the story of a strange Company in which nobody really knows what the company does and everyone’s job sort of folds back into the company. The sales reps sell training packages to the rest of the departments. Infrastructure management charges everyone for management in the building, charging departments f...more You may remember when I read Machine Man by Max Barry and I remember it being enjoyable. I decided I need something lighthearted to read right now and what better than some crafty satire.

This is the story of a strange Company in which nobody really knows what the company does and everyone’s job sort of folds back into the company. The sales reps sell training packages to the rest of the departments. Infrastructure management charges everyone for management in the building, charging departments for the use of windows and computers and phone lines.

Since there is a pay freeze Jones gets hired on in Sales but on paper it says that he is, well, paper. A purchase of paper.

Jones gets curious about the oddities of the company and starts to seek answers but he is told a parable about monkey’s in a lab that is meant to discourage his curiosity.

A large part of the beginning of the book focuses not on Jones but on the other characters in the sales office. A man who won’t stop obsessing over who took his doughnut, a woman who falls in love with her customers up until the deal is done, another woman who works out in the gym all day, a man who is secretly in love with the beautiful receptionist on the ground floor, etc. etc.

It isn’t until Jones finally figures out whats really going on in the company that his story becomes central to the book.

It’s a light and easy read, fun for anybody who has ever suffered in a cubicle farm in a windowless room all day. It’s a satirical examination of how evil big companies can be to their employees and why having one of these jobs really sucks the soul out of you.

I really enjoyed reading Company but the ending was a little lacking. It built up to a huge shit-hits-the-fan, let’s-start-a-riot moment and then just cut off and went to a One-Year-Later situation. Not the worst way to write an ending and I know its really hard to write endings but I felt like it was a bit of a cop-out.

Still glad I read it and it’s still a four star rating from me. I like this author a lot and will probably read another of his before long.(less)

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Dec 20, 2011 Derek Cook rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like "The Office" tv series...maybe

Shelves: business, satire, humorous

NOTE: This review pertains to the Audible.com audiobook version.

I had high hopes for this one. I somehow missed out that this book was satirical, but, even in that context, the plot of "Company" was inane and meandered through 80% of the book until it rapidly came together in a slightly satisfying finish. Even for satire, the themes were so implausible and the characters so barely interesting that even proceeding with the book at times was a chore. (Had I not had just given up on my last book fo...more

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Nov 18, 2012 Jenny rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have read this book a number of times. I enjoy it, each and every time. I love the incisive satire of modern businesses and the ridiculous business models and practices companies embrace to be "better." I love the characters, who are swept up into the madness and yet smart enough to know that they are being swept into madness and that they are someone else outside of work. I love the character of Eve, a true sociopath, and yet the author makes you care about her. I love that there aren't easy...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Bunnita (Worth Reading It?) rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am torn. I really liked Jennifer Government. Many people did not and I could see why they didn't. Many people like this book and I can see why they did. However, for me this book was lacking. So let's break it down like this.
What did I like?
I like that the company turn out to be an experiment. Even though it's to the extreme I have worked places where people are too afraid to speak. Managers who don't do anything. Managers who don't even know how to do the job of the people they are managing....more

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Feb 06, 2010 Merrill rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 14, 2011 John rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Barry, an Australian writer, cut his teeth at Hewlett-Packard, and he's never been the same since. As Entertainment Weekly points out, his third novel owes a debt to The Office, The Truman Show, Animal Farm, and The Fountainhead, among others. Yet Company is truly Barry's own absurd satire on office politics__HR and outsourcing and all. Critics overlooked some of the flimsier premises, such as repeated discussion about the missing donut, because they found the novel so terrifyingly real. Its gen

...more

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Feb 23, 2009 Kristin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, scifi-bkgrp-selection

This is March's Book Group selection

From the jacket blurb: Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones orig...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Nate's Bookgroup rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a great way for closure after leaving a terrible job...write a satirical novel, allow it to percolate a while, and then start naming names! I enjoyed this tale of corporate contempt in an overly-identifying way and not so much as a story that expanded my horizons.

Interesting look at Corporate America as seen through the eyes of a Sci Fi writer and former Hewlitt Packard employee. Identifying with my own corporate career, I found this book scathing, poignant and hilarious. I can't wait to t...more

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Jul 14, 2012 Jo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: corporate-satire

I read this novel in a single sitting. Seriously. There wasn’t a single part of the book that I didn’t enjoy. The characters are realistic, the plot is eerily plausible, and the twist is unexpected enough to be entertaining, without coming completely out of left field. But I still felt strangely… unfulfilled.

It took me quite a while to figure out why. It's interesting, it's well written, and the premise is great. But...

I think, in the end, it felt somewhat claustrophobic (which may have been the...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ah, office life. So rife for parody. So fertile with corporate absurdity. Where mankind's unique lunacies are simultaneously coddled and dismissed. The things that make us uncomfortable and disgruntled are handled with pig-skin gloves and ice tongs, and the things that make us excited and content are considered extraneous to the bottom line. Where back sides are so well-covered that they're almost impossible to kiss. Is there any better fodder for literature, television, or movies?

Joshua Ferris'...more Ah, office life. So rife for parody. So fertile with corporate absurdity. Where mankind's unique lunacies are simultaneously coddled and dismissed. The things that make us uncomfortable and disgruntled are handled with pig-skin gloves and ice tongs, and the things that make us excited and content are considered extraneous to the bottom line. Where back sides are so well-covered that they're almost impossible to kiss. Is there any better fodder for literature, television, or movies?

Joshua Ferris' debut novel, "Then We Came to the End," comes along at a time when the corporate zeitgeist is experiencing a resurgance in parody and satire, and some would say he joins the ranks of those who get it right, who manage to sock the nail squarely on the head. I won't go that far.

I give the guy props for aiming high. His book, written in the first-person plural, is told from the view of over half a dozen different characters. The effect is more than a little dizzying, although it does give the book the sense of collective panic and confusion that seems to pervade the cloth-lined cubicles of most white-collar rat mazes. His quirky characters -- Tom Mota (unhinged idealist), Chris Yop (office supply thief), Carl Garbedian (emasculated pill popper) -- they all sing and dance like very real people, and their interactions are well-played and telling, even if they aren't also very interesting.

What would've made them interesting would've been some sort of coherent story line, a plot hub around which they all could've spun. Instead, the most consistent thread to the tale is the overarching dread each of them has about being fired, the final notice when their lives' greatest suspicions are confirmed: you are not necessary or important. The only real antagonist in this book is the Almighty Pink Slip, it's an idea, and (even more so) it's the uncertainty and chaos that hides behind the idea. As far as Ferris' drones are concerned, Life After Layoffs is just as sticky a wicket as Life After Death.

It's not a bad premise, and Ferris' decision to deliver it from the perspective of the collective lends the story a lot more weight than it might otherwise have. After all, equating the loss of a job with the loss of a life is the bailiwick of all good office parody; have we become so disconnected from our souls that our identity is tied up in pay grades and job labels? (Ever heard this exchange before? "After all, I'm Assistant Regional Manager." "No, you're Assistant TO the Regional Manager.")

Unfortunately, Ferris' book, in spite of its clever rambling, in spite of how deftly the protagonists pass of the narration without missing a stride, in spite of how nimbly office politics are parlayed into things like emails, office chairs, and cubicle knick-knacks -- in spite of all of this, it doesn't really pack much punch until the last few pages, when the real humanity of the characters is finally allowed to stand out. The final lines of the novel are really just very, very good stuff, but it comes at the tail end of a lot of ham-fisted meandering, and it makes you wonder just how good the book could've been had Ferris not tried so hard to be funny, and had instead tried harder to be real.

He could've taken a lesson from Max Barry's "Company," another book about office politics, but one that goes more whole-hog with its satire. The slim tome starts with the theft of a donut and swiftly crumbles in on itself in a deliciously over-done send-up of every element of office life, from the dark overlords at Human Resources, to the pale, squinting I.T. guys. The novel follows the trail of Stephen Jones, the new guy at a corporate behemoth called Zephyr Holdings. Jones barely has enough time to warm the seat of his chair before consolidations and lay-offs rock the business. Inter-office politics lock down all progress, salespeople are ordered to REDUCE productivity, the buttons in the elevator are all backwards, and no one -- absolutely no one -- can even tell Jones just what the company does, anyway. Also, there's still a donut thief on the loose.

Although Barry's book is a bit more juvenile than Ferris', that also means it's having a lot more fun. Jones goes on a quest to untangle the quagmire of memos and inter-departmental backstabbing that seems to be the lifeblood of Zephyr, and along the way he uncovers a dark, fundamental truth behind the way all businesses are run: employees are unnecessary. Ferris spends over half of his novel asking the old "Am I really significant?" question, while Barry jumps straight into explaining the answer.

"Company" gets a little kooky near the end, and in that way, it's sort of the anti-thesis of "Then We Came to the End." The body of one wants the conclusion of the other. But, even if "Company" takes to fantastical lengths the Swiftean logic of big business, it still comes out ahead in terms of sheer entertainment and thought-cud. Barry doesn't have the literary grace of Ferris, but he does manage to put together a more revealing, a more pertinent, and a funnier story.

I guess it boils down to what kind of boss you are: do you like clever busy work, or do you want results at all costs? Ferris gives you one, and Barry gives you the other. Either way, it beats actually working.(less)

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Oct 05, 2009 Benjamin Solah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Company by Max Barry is set in a milieu that I love to explore, the corporate office world. It’s full of office politics; the mundane and the ambiguous. I’ve often been fascinated with the world. And this novel explores it in hilarious and thought provoking fashion.

The story is about Jones, a new employee at Zephr Holdings who cannot work out exactly what the company does other than the deals and interactions between of the various departments. The question is what Zephr really does and Jones go...more

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Dec 31, 2008 Christine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed it. It falls into my Fun/ Fluff/ Vacation read category. I found it very entertaining and perhaps in part since I work for a STATE Government...
Part of me frankly wondered if I in fact actually do have a real job. Reorganizations are par for the course as are unexplained and bizarre mandates for no apparent rational reason (in the book, as at my job). Management is removed and out of touch with the peons...
Is this what people with "real jobs" experience?

Portions of the book a...more

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Jul 21, 2011 Brad rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, funny

Jones is a new hire at Zephyr Holdings, and he has trouble actually figuring out what the company does. As he pokes around, he discovers that things are not what they seem--(view spoiler) Jones gets involved and then faces some tough decisions.

This book was like Dilbert in the form of a novel. There is some pretty strong mockery of common co...more

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Jul 20, 2012 Amblingbooks.com marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, humorous

Nestled among Seattle's skyscrapers, The Zephyr Holdings Building is a bleak rectangle topped by an orange-and-black logo that gives no hint of Zephyr's business. Lack of clarity, it turns out, is Zephyr's defining characteristic. The floors are numbered in reverse. No one has ever seen the CEO or glimpsed his office on the first (i.e., top) floor. Yet every day people clip on their ID tags, file into the building, sit at their desks, and hope that they're not about to be outsourced.

Listen to Co ...more

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Jun 23, 2011 neko cam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: humor

Let me get this out of the way: I loved ‘Company’. I think that everyone in the corporate world should read it, and that they would find it not only immensely relatable and entertaining, but also incredibly insightful; it is obvious that Max Barry writes from his own personal experiences.

I’ve recently landed a graduate position at a rather large company myself, and figured that this was as good a time as any to finally get around to reading ‘Company’, after having vowed to do so years ago once I...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Noah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A thoroughly enjoyable satire about the corporate world, which will resonate with anyone who's ever spent time under fluorescent lights in a cubicle. Starting with the standard tropes of under-appreciated workers being made to suffer more and more, the ridiculous situations build one on top of the other until it seems like there's no where to go and then the story takes a deliciously clever turn. Fans of The Office & Office Space will definitely appreciate this story, which happily is still...more

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