"Microserfs", Douglas Coupland (1995)
[book]
Microserfs—that’s what the author calls Microsoft employees. The protagonists are a group of 20-something coworkers crunching their souls away until they suddenly realize: they don’t have real lives. In search of “life,” they discover themselves, the bonds of friendship, and the importance of family. That’s the short version.
My history with Coupland goes way back. Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, I read Generation X and Generation A. Those books hit me hard. Both were about the same thing: a group of relatively young people fucking around—my favorite pastime back then—because they refused to live the boring, conformist life expected of them. But they weren’t ambitious either; they weren’t chasing Hollywood dreams or something. So, they just drifted, slumming it in mediocre apartments and… fucking around. That was literally my high school and college experience in a nutshell.
That’s why I latched onto Coupland so hard. He captured that suffocating mix of quiet despair and detached resignation that every generation of young people gets through.
Back then, I never even thought to ask where he was from. Years later, I moved to Canada and—right next to my first home—found two monuments signed Douglas Coupland. I was like, “What the fuck? Guess it’s time to finally read up on this guy.” And it all clicked—yep, he’s Canadian. Not just a writer but a sculptor too, someone who shaped me before I even realized it. In a weird way, he was guiding me to his homeland long before I made the decision to move. That kind of connection sticks with you.
Microserfs is that same Coupland story, just with a different backdrop. And honestly? That’s fucking great. It’s something I’ve seen with Pelevin too—telling the same core story again and again, but in a new way. And it works—it sets up the right expectations. His writing style here is classic Coupland: light, unpretentious, not afraid of profanity, sprinkled with humor and just the right touch of cynicism.
The crew doesn’t stay at Microsoft for long—they bounce to join a startup. That decision sets off everything: moving cities, protagonist Dan returning to his childhood home, losing all those cushy corporate perks, making new geeky friends, discovering bodybuilding and shiatsu massage, and, of course, tons of introspection. The novel is structured as Dan’s diary, complete with random words and trippy little writing experiments. It feels alive. Imperfect in just the right way, like you’re reading the actual notes of a real person.
The book kicks off as a full-throttle geek parade, overloaded with insane name-dropping. Even for me, someone deeply familiar with the world these characters live in, it was sometimes hard to wade through all the brands and early-90s West Coast tech memes. The name-dropping never stops, but the sheer geekiness dials down a bit. It might seem like the characters are losing their edge, but really, they’re just finding that thing they were looking for—life. They’re still geeks, but they’re adding layers: love, emotional support, conversations not about computers, all that stuff.
Once again, Coupland reminded me of what actually matters—without ever slipping into disgusting paternalism.