Uncanny Valley

November 11, 2019
Technology journalist Wiener looks at Silicon Valley life in this insider-y debut memoir that sharply critiques start-up culture and the tech industry. In 2013, Wiener left an assistant job at a New York literary agency to work for an e-book start-up run by young men who were uninterested in reading books. That job led to a move to San Francisco, where she worked in customer support at a data analytics start-up, then at a start-up that focused on software development. Wiener humorously describes the employee perks at the office (“a miniature theme park” with a wraparound bar, a roof deck, a speakeasy), though she decided to primarily work from home “in sagging leggings.” Wiener writes of how she struggled to be taken seriously in a male-dominated industry that lacked diversity; attended lavish work events—at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Lake Tahoe—while San Francisco’s homeless population increased; communicated with coworkers using just emoji; and watched 20-somethings get rich overnight. She eventually became disillusioned with her job (“I was burning out and failing up”) and left in 2018 to pursue writing, but not before buying up her vested stock options. Wiener is an entertaining writer, and those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at life in Silicon Valley will want to take a look.

Starred review from November 1, 2019
A former tech worker-turned-journalist gives the inside scoop on life inside the wickedly weird and wealthy world of Silicon Valley startups. Before Wiener took a customer support job at a San Francisco-based tech startup, she was a broke 20-something pursuing dead-end jobs in the New York publishing industry. Friends who had left the city warned her that the San Francisco they loved had been replaced by "a late capitalist hellscape" that catered to the "on-demand" whims of young techies with "plump bank accounts." Wiener quickly learned that the tech workplace was younger, more casual, and more male-dominant than she had expected. Helping company clients, she often felt like she was one step above artificial intelligence. "I was an intelligent artifice, an empathetic text, a snippet or a warm voice, giving instructions, listening comfortingly," she writes. Despite bouts of existential angst, within a year of moving west, Wiener moved into middle management and a work life that included a healthy salary as well as "an acronym and enterprise accounts." Still, her salary represented a tiny fraction of the total wealth--which sometimes amounted to billions--she saw generated in the high-stakes startup world around her. As she burrowed deeper into the tech world, she saw excesses that repulsed almost as much as they excited her. Quasi-autocratic corporate cultures, including her own, demanded body-and-soul loyalty for "perks" such as ultrastylish workplace surroundings, interoffice skateboarding, luxurious company retreats, and work-at-home privileges on platforms that looked like "video game[s] for children." Wiener also witnessed the ruthlessness of Silicon Valley's quest to control consumer behavior through data acquisition and the way it actively promoted men while telling females to "trust karma" when it came to advancement. Equal parts bildungsroman and insider report, this book reveals not just excesses of the tech-startup landscape, but also the Faustian bargains and hidden political agendas embedded in the so-called "inspiration culture" underlying a too-powerful industry. A funny, highly informative, and terrifying read.

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February 1, 2020

In Wiener's absorbing, fast-paced debut, the New Yorker staff writer recounts her experience moving from an ebook start-up in New York to a data analytics company in San Francisco, and, later, to an open-source start-up, all while in her 20s. Wiener's descriptions of Silicon Valley expose an industry in which sexism and misogyny are commonplace, where work and personal identities blur and overlap as people become indistinguishable from their brands. For Wiener, regular occurrences, including inappropriate comments and touching, combined with uncertainty around her own identity, led to a sense of loneliness and unease. She excels when challenging the tech industry: questioning its reluctance to diversify and refusal to hold itself accountable for digital surveillance. Brief, fervent chapters tell of working on, and for, the internet; the negative impact it had on Wiener's psyche; and the burnout and imposter syndrome she experienced as a result. VERDICT Wiener is a talented writer, and her story will engage fellow millennials who have found themselves obsessively refreshing social media or mindlessly scrolling to pass the time. Insight into the history of Silicon Valley, and the ideologies transforming society, are a bonus that will ensure the book's longevity.--Stephanie Sendaula, Library Journal

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2019
Wiener was providing technical support without much real technical knowledge, but when the CEO called her in for a meeting, he wanted to know only one thing: was she "Down for the Cause"? As the nineteenth employee (and fourth woman) of the analytics start-up, Weiner had a front-row view of Silicon Valley's tech-crazy culture. Her entr�e into the tech world started when she left a thankless book-publishing job to work at an e-book start-up, where, at age 25, she was older than all of the company's founders. Although Wiener assiduously avoids naming any of the platforms she worked on, she leaves enough clues for careful readers to fill in the blanks. In the course of a few years, she moved to the analytics start-up and then an open-source start-up, her salary ballooning to six figures without her learning any real skills. A compelling takedown of the pitfalls of start-up culture, from sexism to the lack of guardrails, Uncanny Valley highlights the maniacal optimism of the twentysomethings behind the screens and the pitfalls of the culture they are building.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)