Build

So much good advice; I took a ridiculous amount of notes and probably should have just bought this one. Highly recommended for anyone building a company, especially a product company. Also covers his personal history beginning at General Magic through Google's acquisition of Nest, which I've always wanted more detail on.

3.5
Breadth over depth:
Touches on so many different aspects of a person's career.

Mentorship over stories (although the stories he touches on are super interesting, at least for this Bay Area resident, tech enthusiast, ex-Googler).

Opinionated which is usually great but when you know he misses the mark, it's painful (e.g. coaching vs mentorship means something totally different than what he talks about, etc).

And of course, his opinions are influenced and strongly shaped by his experience, which is quite a journey however it's one journey.

That said I enjoyed parts of it, and learned things here and there too.

There's nothing really ground-breaking in this book. Certainly nothing “Unorthodox”. There's a ton of Americanisms and US work mentality: work as much as you can, sleep as little as you can, and when you dream - dream about work. Which are not the views I agree with. At all.

However, the book is interesting as a memoir - a look behind the curtains at General Magic, Philips, Apple, Nest, and Google. Especially the parts about iPod and iPhone development and extremely tight deadlines.

A nice overall view of what it means to be a founder, a CEO, and a leader in a successful or less successful startup.