Review: The Company

Company
Max Barry

In a large, modern company there are people (who are called resources or headcount - if the management decides to be especially stockholder friendly) who will typically not be told of the relevance of their activities, the reason why they do what they do or the effect of what they do. They are merely cogs on a wheel that has no interest in telling them where they are going.

They are also programmed to respond to certain corporate jargon. The response is usually one of fear and then the reaction is to save one's job. The jargon they typically respond to it "downsizing", "outsourcing", "consolidation", "increasing efficiencies", "increasing shareholder value". All of them mean people will be laid off. No one knows what the company gains from these actions, but they are done anyway.

The book, The Company, by Max Barry takes this premise and with a healthy dose of cynicism explores what happens when simple workers are exposed to these actions. The method he uses is something most of us often wonder about - that we really are laboratory rats in an experiment being conducted by a super-intelligent species.

The characters are delightfully exaggerated, their reactions also seem exaggerated but the underlying reason is quite real and understandable.