Microserfs has a permanent spot on my bookshelf, and really did a great job capturing the zeitgeist of working in tech in the 90s. It was more about the early 90s than the late 90s when I started in tech, but not much really changed until the dotCom bubble burst in 2000. A lot of us who didn't happen to work for GiantTech in the 90s shared the existential anxieties described in earlier chapters of the book, but without the upside of lucrative stock options. It's worth a read if you haven't. A lot of it is still relevant today.

It nails the period. When the article later talks about Coupland’s follow-up J-Pod, I think it’s important to note that the naivety that the book reacts to isn’t just his own, really the entire zeitgeist was like that. Hence the magnitude of 9/11 as a wake-up call.

Po Bronson’s “First $30 Million” is also a classic that seems to have been memory-holed.

The Author, Douglas Coupland also coined the term: Generation X in the novel(?) of the same name. Edit: whoops, this is mentioned in the article.