Company
by
Max Barry (Goodreads Author)
A bitingly funny take on corporate life by the author of acclaimed bestseller Jennifer Government
Company: the Novel That Answers the Big Questions
What are the relative merits of sleeping with your boss versus someone at the same level? Which causes the more spectacular career implosion?
When is physical violence an appropriate response to management policy?
The Mission State...more
Company: the Novel That Answers the Big Questions
What are the relative merits of sleeping with your boss versus someone at the same level? Which causes the more spectacular career implosion?
When is physical violence an appropriate response to management policy?
The Mission State...more
Hardcover, 338 pages
Published
January 17th 2006
by DoubleDay
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Company is funny, rela...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 f...more
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Joshua Ferris'...more
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
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
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
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
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
This book was like Dilbert in the form of a novel. There is some pretty strong mockery of common co...more
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
Listen to Co...more
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
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
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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“There's no requirement that jobs be meaningful. If there was, half the country would be unemployed.”
—
20 people liked it
“Elizabeth is smart, ruthless, and emotionally damaged ... [i]f Elizabeth's brain was a person, it would have scars, tattoos, and be missing one eye.”
—
13 people liked it
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