Ask HN: Any good book on companies/individuals failure stories? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Any good book on companies/individuals failure stories?

13 pointshooda10 comments

It seems to me that I am overfed on survival bias success reads (books, blogs, podcasts, etc.) I am looking to read some failure stories of companies or individuals.

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In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters is a history of computing told by its terrible business decisions. Reading this book, it seems the whole history of computing is made of astoundingly terrible business decisions. Maybe that's almost true. Very entertaining and informative. I learnt a lot, extremely highly recommended. Chapters on IBM, Digital Research, Apple, Microsoft, OS/2, Borland, Intel, Motorola, Google, Novell, Netscape, etc. Second edition 2006.

General history books would be great written like that too, focusing on the stupidity and errors. Much more educational, and funnier.

No response to this post can mean many things: 1. Everyone else (just like me) is also drinking from the survival bias success stories firehose. 2. There might not be many authentic referral-worthy failure stories books (there might be individual stories, though) 3. This piece just fell through the HN cracks:)

You may enjoy Breaking the Mishap Chain, an excellent free book from NASA:

https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/break_mishap_chain_detai...

The Hard Thing About Hard Things isn't exactly what you're asking for but close because rather than describing the good times, Ben Horowitz writes mostly about the bad times. You can read some of it online like Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO.

you can read a lot failure stories from this site

https://www.failory.com/interviews?type-of-interview=Failed%...

You can read academic writing articles here https://smartwrite.net/research/

Fire In The Valley (The making of the personal computer: McGraw Hill) includes the story of Steve Jobs being invited by Xerox Corp. to view what Xerox techs had been creating. Apple succeeded in selling the innovations, Xerox lost a packet!

"Dreaming in Code" by Scott Rosenberg

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou.

You will be in for a ride.

Honestly what's the point? There are so many ways to fail. Success is the combination of many pieces that fit together well. Failure can come from anywhere at anytime. Maybe you should read Homer's stories, about Achilles for example.

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