BUY NOW
A rip-roaring comedy about big plans and bigger egos at the world's largest tech company
Something is fishy at Anahata—Silicon Valley’s premiere tech company, and it’s not just the giant squid that serves as its mascot. An exiled prince with janitorial expertise is working as a product manager. The sales guys are battling with the engineers. The women employees are the unwitting subjects of a wild social experiment. The VPs are plotting against each other. The yoga-loving, sex-obsessed CEO is rumored to be planning a moon colony, sending his investors into a tizzy, and everyone is obsessed with Galt, their fiercest industry rival. Is it all downhill from here for the world’s largest tech company? Or is this just the beginning of a bold new phase in Anahata’s quest for global domination?
Praise for The BIG DISRUPTION
Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times
“A zany satire . her diagnosis of Silicon Valley’s cultural stagnancy is so spot on that it’s barely contestable.”
Lauren Smiley, THE Guardian
“[Powell] wields Bonfire of the Vanities levels of absurdity and social observation to chronicle this particular northern Californian strain of masters of the universe.”
Kara Swisher, New York Times contributing opinion writer and co-founder of Recode
“Jessica Powell is everything you want in a writer about power and money and lunacy in modern day Silicon Valley. She is an insider who has come outside, an insightful chronicler of the ridonkulous foibles of the digital overlords and a deft teller of tales. She was in the room and has managed to gleefully open its doors and let us see the antic circus inside. Such a view has never been more important as tech’s damage becomes more and more clear.”
Tope Folarin, Caine Prize winner and author, A Particular Kind of Black Man
“The best books typically prompt us to laugh or think or learn something about the world that we might not have otherwise known. You will do all these things while reading this book, and more. This is a wild, incisive, and incredibly necessary look at the way that Silicon Valley works, and a wonderfully good read as well. The Big Disruption is a book that explains and defines this moment—the kind of book many of us have been waiting for.”
Walt Mossberg, former Wall Street Journal columnist and co-founder of Recode
"From years of dealing with Jessica Powell during her time at Google, I knew she was witty. But I am sitting at a Starbucks laughing out loud like an idiot at her very smart new book The Big Disruption, a brilliant and funny satire of the male, engineer-driven culture of Silicon Valley where the leaders are cryptic and obtuse to reality."
SHORT STORIES and HUMOR PIECES
Fragile Logic, short story, 7x7 LA
The Day the Household Appliances Quit, humor piece, The New York Times
Parent-Teacher Association, short story, The New York Times
Leisure World, short story, Kanstellation
Our Poets Need Pythagoras! humor piece, The New York Times
This Phone Will Change Your Life, short story, One Zero Magazine
Your Privacy is Our Business, humor piece, The New York Times
It’s International Women’s Day. Have a Sticker, humor piece, The New York Times
A Prince Goes on a High-Tech Job Interview, excerpt from The Big Disruption, WIRED
BOOKS
The Big Disruption: A Totally Fictional but Essentially True Silicon Valley Story, published by MEDIUM.
Literary Paris: A Guide, published by The Little Bookroom.
Essays and Opinion
I Miss a Lot of Things About the Office. My Breast Pump Isn’t One, New York Times
Bosses, Consider Caring, New York Times
The Rise of Remote Work Can Be Unexpectedly Liberating, New York Times
Why Have One Pandemic Hobby When You Can Have 1,000 of Them? New York Times
Silicon Valley Destroyed Everything. Or Maybe Not. One Zero Magazine
Why Wall Street Realized Unicorns Aren’t So Magical, TIME
Here’s How to Regain Trust and Work with Tech’s Critics, Fast Company
How to Quit Your Job in 837 Easy Steps, Medium Magazine
The problem with banning pornography on Tumblr The New York Times
The Rich Will Outlive Us All. Medium Magazine
You Desperately Need Fewer Facebook Friends. Medium Magazine
Get Ready for Some Cowardly Super Bowl Ads. Medium Magazine
I Won’t Upgrade My Phone Until It Can Turn Into a Magic Pony. Medium Magazine
Why I Left My Big Fancy Tech Job and Wrote a Book. Medium Magazine