Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time

The authors need to compete against other books. Book sale targets means it has to appeal to anyone vaguely business-y in the airport book shop. That plus shorter attention spans in general plus need to cater to a wide audience forces the authors to market it on a "One trick doctors hate" level magic fixes.

They of course fail to deliver on that, but don't think that makes them entirely a waste of time. As article author says "partly true".

Which is OK. I read Liars Poker because I enjoyed it, not because I'm about to be a world class bond trader

Re: Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time

#6

Post by criddell » Mon, May 19, 2025, 12:09 PM UTC

Discussion from a week or two ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43940747

Re: Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time

#7

Post by itsthecourier » Mon, May 19, 2025, 12:11 PM UTC

bezbac wrote: post #4

This reads like ai slop

I hope this one was written by a human, would be terrible to read such critique of the author didn't read them

Re: Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time

#8

Post by GenZ_RiseUp » Mon, May 19, 2025, 12:15 PM UTC

Cynical is easy, and the article is not entirely misguided in why those books are rationalized, retrospective narratives (as JACK puts it), however, stories do help inspire.

While they should not be read for prescriptive purposes, they can be a font of connections to draw from if one is in the knowledge business. People like fables, stories, patterns leading to success, etc.

Good book recommendations at he end though - dry, but supplementary (also shouldn't be prescriptive!). Experience trumps all.

Re: Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time

#9

Post by caleblloyd » Mon, May 19, 2025, 12:19 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #5

The authors need to compete against other books. Book sale targets means it has to appeal to anyone vaguely business-y in the airport book shop. That plus shorter attention spans in general plus need to cater to a wide audience forces the authors to market it on a "One trick doctors hate" level magic fixes. They of course fail to deliver on that, but don't think that makes them entirely a waste of time. As article au…

I love Michael Lewis’ writing style! I have probably read half of the books in this blog article and can remember hardly any of them, but I could still summarize Flash Boys because it was such a cool story.

Re: Reading "Business" Books Is a Waste of Time

#10

Post by Zigurd » Mon, May 19, 2025, 12:23 PM UTC

This is true in general. The article starts with a prime example that's plagiarized from Sun Tsu, Which has been the template for dozens to hundreds of ghostwritten "business" books meant to polish the reputation of the name on the cover.

Every now and then you encounter someone who's too busy for bullshit. Jeff Bussgang teaches a startup course at HBS and is general partner at Flybridge. His recent book The Experimentation Machine is a concise blast of information on how to do a start up right now. No self aggrandizement. A distinct lack of the personal pronoun "I." The example scenarios in the book are not cherry picked outliers meant to make a CEO or investor look good. This kind of book is remarkable for not following the business book formula.