Up close and personal with the billionaire boys of tech

5 min readApr 24, 2024

Name just about any billionaire in the tech industry, and Kara Swisher is sure to know him. In fact, she’s probably interviewed him several times onstage at her events or her podcasts or for her New York Times column, the Wall Street Journal, or one of the other publications she’s worked for over the past thirty years. Yes, that includes Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and all the other boldfaced names in tech that crop up in the news on a daily basis. Some she considers friends. Others, not so much. But she leaves no prisoners — not a single one — in Burn Book, an unfiltered account of her three decades of reporting on the tech industry. Because this is no aw-shucks paean to the genius of Silicon Valley. This tech industry memoir is deeply personal, down-and-dirty, and even embarrassing at times.

GOOD GUYS OR ASSHOLES?

The tech leaders Swisher has come to know well tend to fall into one of two categories. They’re either assholes or good guys (and there are more of the former than the latter, at least among the best-known figures). Not that her assessments are without nuance. For example, she writes fondly and with great admiration about Steve Jobs. But she freely acknowledges that he was an SOB with the people who worked for him. And, yes, she despises the unhinged Elon Musk who has surfaced since he bought Twitter. But she seems in awe of his accomplishments as an entrepreneur.

In the end, then, her account comes across as fair — and that’s the reputation she has built within the industry. And since she’s watched many of them from their debut as entrepreneurs, Swisher has gained perspective on their evolution. “While there were exceptions, the richer and more powerful people grew, the more compromised they became — wrapping themselves in expensive cashmere batting until the genuine person fell deep inside a cocoon of comfort and privilege where no unpleasantness intruded.” Surprised? It’s an old story, isn’t it?

BURN BOOK: A TECH LOVE STORY BY KARA SWISHER (2024) 320 PAGES ★★★★★

*Silicon Valley from above. This crowded little corner of Earth is home to 84 billionaires. Image: Wikipedia Commons*

NO CHEERLEADER FOR SILICON VALLEY

At the outset it’s perfectly clear that Kara Swisher is no cheerleader for Silicon Valley. “Even if it was never the intention, tech companies became key players in killing our comity and stymieing our politics, our government, our social fabric, and most of all, our minds, by seeding isolation, outrage, and addictive behavior. Innocuous boy-kings who wanted to make the world a better place and ended up cosplaying Darth Vader feels like science fiction. But everything I am about to tell you really happened.” Silicon Valley now, in 2024, is home to eighty-four billionaires. But check in next year, and that number will likely be larger. Meanwhile, practically all those eighty-four will have become even richer. Because that’s the way it goes in this winner-takes-all economy.

A VIVID ACCOUNT OF THE CHANGING WORLD OF JOURNALISM

In the final analysis, though, Burn Book is a memoir of Swisher’s career in journalism as much as it is an account of Silicon Valley’s history. And it’s fascinating in that respect as well to observe her as her own career evolved. Beginning in traditional print media (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal). Then gravitating over time into Internet-based journalism (podcasts and a website) as well as events promoted online and by word-of-mouth. Kara Swisher is, in fact, one of the best examples among the small but growing number of journalists who have staked out successful new careers online. So, journalism isn’t dead, at least not yet. It’s just begun to move from the real world to the virtual space of the Internet.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kara Swisher is the best known and most feared journalist covering the tech industry, having covered Silicon Valley and its offshoots since 1994. She was born in 1962 in suburban New York and raised in Princeton, New Jersey. She studied propaganda and received a BS in literature and journalism from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, intent on a career in the military or the CIA. But a stint at the college newspaper, The Hoya, led to a master’s in journalism from Columbia and a radical shift in her trajectory.

Early in her career, Swisher joined the Wall Street Journal and soon teamed up with famed tech reporter Walt Mossberg. The two eventually left the Journal to found a series of profit-making interview events and conferences about the industry. For several years, Swisher also wrote a column as a contributing editor at the New York Times. But she is best known for the interviews she conducts with tech leaders, often in company with Mossberg, and for her podcast.

Swisher has been married twice, first to technology executive Megan Smith (who served as Chief Technology Officer of the United States under Barack Obama). They have two sons. After they divorced, she married Amanda Katz, with whom she is raising two other children. Burn Book is her third book.

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