Dan Lyons

Harvard Book Store welcomes writer and public speaker DAN LYONS—the New York Times bestselling author of Disrupted—for a discussion of his latest book, Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us.

About Lab Rats

Why do so many people hate their jobs? Lab Rats is a groundbreaking, examination of how the half-baked ideas of Silicon Valley and its "new oligarchs" have changed the way we work, damaged our brains, and left us poorer and insecure.

After publishing Disrupted, his bestselling memoir of his disastrous experience working for a young tech company, Dan Lyons watched, astonished, as hundreds of readers wrote to him with their own harrowing stories of discrimination on the job, fear-mongering managers, and companies denigrating employees in pursuit of quick profit. The problems he had identified in the start-up world, Lyons realized, are infecting virtually every kind of job in America—at a time when companies are giving more lip service than ever about happy employees. 

What happened to work? Who is responsible? And does any company have a model for doing it right? As Lyons ventured across America in pursuit of answers, he came to identify "Four Factors," a series of ideas that have broken the social contract that once existed between companies and their employees. These new, often dystopian notions about work have made millions subject to constant change, dehumanizing technologies, and even health risks. A few companies, however, get it right. With Lab Rats, Lyons makes a passionate plea for business leaders to understand this dangerous transformation and offers a way out.

Praise

"I loved Dan Lyons's book Disrupted. With Lab Rats, he takes his critique of the modern workplace to the next level, to show how Silicon Valley's sometimes disturbing ideas about how to treat employees now pervade many workplaces. This is a fascinating, thought-provoking, hilarious, and sometimes harrowing account of current work culture." ―Gretchen Rubin, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Project and The Four Tendencies

"Dan Lyons's Lab Rats defies easy description. It is hilarious, but not funny. I sputtered laughing and choked crying (literally, not figuratively) as I read it. Yes, to an extreme, Lyons gives Silicon Valley the thrashing that it, alas, largely deserves. But in the final third of the book, he offers us an effectively illustrated way out—an approach to work and business that puts people first, profitably serves customers, and makes the world a little bit better in the process." ―Tom Peters, New York Times bestselling author of In Search of Excellence