Review: Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley

Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley by Carolyn Chen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’m not a Silicon Valley employee, but I have worked for companies based there, and for software companies who operate in the same general manner. So I recognized the lengths that companies are going through to generate more output from their labor inputs. And one way to do this is to squeeze out those spiritual needs of their employees and manage them as part of their optimization of work time. The book gives examples of this. It seems to me the author couldn’t decide whether this would be a how-to book or more of a scholarly description of the move to push scrubbed Eastern religion to their employees. The writing wavered between these two goals, but I believe the how-to content wasn’t complete enough. It ends up being a reasonable description of the use of watered down Eastern religious practices such as meditation. Interesting, but I didn’t read anything I hadn’t already seen in practice in non-Silicon Valley employers. Scariest concept – HR departments are now studying cults to try to duplicate their ability to attract and maintain members. I will be avoiding any Kool-Aid in company meetings from now on.

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