Work/Life During the Dot Bomb

Have you read “And Then We Came to the End” by Joshua Ferris? 
It’s (significantly) the book I tried to write during that era, but far far far better than I could have done. It’s amazingly well done. Despite being a book about work, “And Then We Came to the End” is a riot. And it’s uplifting.

Its about people in the marketing department a marketing firm getting crushed by the recession.  It seems that the work life of a ad agency creative is quite similar to a programmer’s work life:
All that work just to get to the work; the work of making work interesting; the work that goes no where; the changes that make the previous work irrelevant; the work to prime the pump, plus work relationships, biases, prejudices, jealousies, strati and perspectives that change in less than the blink of an eye.

Getting people to want to read about the workplace is a tough nut to crack. Joshua Ferris has made a creamy butter of it.  (He even added a character who is trying to write an interesting workplace novel.)  We all spend too much time at work. This book helped me appreciate why we do it.