This is a book on Ali Niknam's startup bunq, a fintech bank in the Netherlands, which has brought him to become a billionaire a few years later.
It follows the saga of starting a bank from scratch in 3 years in an environment where nobody got a license in 30 years. It covers four+ rewrites after visits to the "pain room" as dubbed by the CEO, initially in Scala then PHP. I guess it's the character foil to the haskell bank where people go home at 5pm....
Throughout, there's entirely uncritical and unquestioned overwork: 14 hour days, sleeping in the office, etc., and sexism: the team is referred to as "boys", there being only one or two in the team, three references to picking up women and how this is a common discussion topic.
The teams Duke and Ali discussed for nights on end are beginning to take shape. Before their recruiting offensive, there were two teams: âITâ and âOverheadâ. Team Overhead covered everything that wasnât IT.
No comment is needed on the above.
I am not sure how I'm supposed to read this, but I don't think it's having the intended effect in any case. It truly embodies everything I dislike about startup and tech culture.
I am forced to conclude that this book is written with a primary target audience of Ali Niknam, and secondarily any people who want to be muskrats placed in a medieval stretching torture device (may even call them elongated muskrats).
In conclusion, my "I am Ali Niknam and I am selfless and mission obsessed and don't have a massive ego" t shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.