Welcome to Ungoliant! As part of your onboarding process, we encourage you to read a few books before you actually start work. That will give you the best chance of understanding our unique culture.
If a reading list seems retro, it’s not. “The Little Prince” has a special place in Netflix lore: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is still quoted in the streaming firm’s culture guide. The US Marines have something called “The Commandant’s Professional Reading Programme”, a kind of book club with bullets; marines are expected to read five titles a year from a list of recommendations on topics such as strategy, warfare and decision-making. “The Looming Tower”, a history of the 9/11 attacks, and (more improbably) “Impro”, a guide to improvisational theatre, have both featured on lists for Palantir employees.
Other forms of entertainment can also provide clues to how bosses want you to think. As a child Howard Schultz, the man behind Starbucks, was a big fan of the Gene Wilder version of “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”. When he was planning the firm’s first roastery, a premium retail outlet built around coffee, he invited a bunch of executives to his house to watch the film and use it as a source of inspiration.
At Ungoliant, you will never ever be invited to watch the boss’s favourite childhood film. Willy Wonka is not a lodestar. But if you read these books instead, you will understand our values and how we like to work.
“The Trial” by Franz Kakfa. This tale of an ordinary person who is abruptly plunged into a nightmarish world of senseless bureaucracy is less a novel, more an employee handbook.
“Catch-22” by Joseph Heller. The title of Heller’s novel is about an impossible wartime dilemma: pleading insanity as a reason to avoid flying missions is itself clear proof of sanity. At Ungoliant, if you do good work, you will be asked to move into a role managing people. If you do bad work, you will be fired. There is absolutely no way to carry on doing what you actually enjoy.
“The Waves” by Virginia Woolf. Streams of consciousness, individuals blurring into each other, entire lifetimes passing and an overpowering sense of confusion. This is the perfect introduction to office life.
“Say Nothing” by Patrick Radden Keefe. It doesn’t matter what this book is about. It’s just very good advice.
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. None of us have actually read this one but we think it must be a primer on project management.
“1984” by George Orwell. Some people apparently regard this book as dystopian, and it is true that the Party is a bit keener on sticks than carrots. But there’s a lot to learn from its core messages: that harnessing data is a source of genuine competitive advantage and that it’s better to work together towards a common purpose than pursue your own selfish aims. Winston Smith is clearly not a team player and we can all see how well that worked out for him.
“The Island of Dr Moreau” by H.G. Wells. The one thing you can say about Dr Moreau is that he dared to dream. Yes, his dream was heavily based on vivisection, and some of the consequences were rather unfortunate. But no omelette is made without breaking a few eggs. To be clear, Ungoliant has no current plans to turn animals into beast folk. But thinking differently and failing is far, far better than accepting arbitrary boundaries. Further reading: “Frankenstein”, “Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”.
“Emma” by Jane Austen. An inveterate meddler ends up getting everything she wants. Proof that micromanaging can really pay off.
“The Secret History” by Donna Tartt. An outsider joins a tight-knit group of people who are devoted to a single mentor figure and steadily loses all sense of morality. The fact that the characters wind up paying a heavy price for their behaviour is the only thing to quibble with in this book. In all other respects, it tells you just what you can expect from your time working here.
“Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel. A supremely capable operator scales the organisational ladder on merit but fails to remember that his fate is in the hands of a wildly capricious boss. All Ungoliantians matter, but only one of us has 85% of the voting rights.
If you read all of these and still turn up to your first day at work, you are just the kind of employee we want. We look forward to seeing you next month. ■
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