Name: Patrick Book's review of Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener
Item: Uncanny Valley
Rating: 4
Author: Patrick Book

Anna Wiener

The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial—left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress. Anna arrived during a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir, Uncanny Valley, is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.

A Memoir

Uncanny Valley

Danny White

All these people, spending their twenties and thirties in open-plan offices on the campuses of the decade’s most valuable public companies, pouring themselves bowls of free cereal from human bird feeders, crushing empty cans of fruit-tinged water, bored out of their minds but unable to walk away from the direct deposits—it was so unimaginative. There was so much potential in Silicon Valley, and so much of it just pooled around ad tech, the spillway of the internet economy.

Linwan Song

Patrick Book

You were soooo close to getting it, but i cannot feel bad for a person w equity in a start up bc of a job they got and claimed they were not even qualified for

and the fact that she only got her priviliege checked ONCE?? wild

i'm also not sure how i've stumbled across 

 book talking about the 2016 us election but i am TIRED

Stas

You were soooo close to getting it, but i cannot feel bad for a person w equity in a start up bc of a job they got and claimed they were not even qualified for

and the fact that she only got her priviliege checked ONCE?? wild

i'm also not sure how i've stumbled across another book talking about the 2016 us election but i am TIRED

a lot of the events in the book i already lived a jakarta metropolite version of (*cough* former gojek employee…) but i appreciate this as a string of books i’ve been reading about california as wonderland. i’ve never fit in with the startup class and this book just proves that point even further. interesting social push and pull that wiener pointed out theroughout the book (esp with the message board commentariat, founder vs entry level dynamics, etc)

Patricia K

a lot of the events in the book i already lived a jakarta metropolite version of (*cough* former gojek employee…) but i appreciate this as a string of books i’ve been reading about california as wonderland. i’ve never fit in with the startup class and this book just proves that point even further. interesting social push and pull that wiener pointed out theroughout the book (esp with the message board commentariat, founder vs entry level dynamics, etc)

personal library, stooped

Cody Degen

Good book but really puts into scope how damaging Silicon Valley culture is to the world. Some of the best and brightest spending every waking moment of their life making tech, not to make peoples' lives better, but to make the most money, even when doing so is straight-up terrible and exploitative to humans. As someone with an interest in tech the dissonance between wanting to make a better life for yourself, wanting to work on interesting things, wanting to be on the cutting edge, while the industry you work in and sometimes the company you work for is a net negative on the world is sadly relatable, and really interesting to interrogate. Also important to read an outsider's perspective on an insular and homogeneous workforce, and the negative experiences (both for the user and for the employees) that result because of that.

Hannah Swithinbank

It’s a really readable book, but honestly a bit lightweight. It feels like she’s pulling punches on her self-critique and on the industry critique, and is gossipy than it is a deeply self-reflective memoir or a strong analysis of the tech industry’s place in the world.

Lamia Hajani

I don’t know. At times, this book is excellent. For the most part, I’m struck by how Weiner is an unspeaking narrator. The story is happening around her even though she’s write there in the middle of it. A good read, but I wish someone else had written it at times.

Ali Angco

See my thoughts by adding me on thestorygraph.com

Bouke van der Bijl

I really enjoyed Weiner's writing, it's very funny and engaging.

Andrew Louis

On-the-nose sketches of San Francisco tech culture. Ultimately, the criticism doesn't boil down to much more than: "tech people are naive and hypocritical" which is true of most groups of people.

Nick Gracilla

“I learn the bare minimum, code-wise, to be able to do my job well — to ask questions only when I’m truly in over my head. Still, I escalate problems all the time. I learn how to talk to our customers about the technology without ever touching the technology itself. I find myself confidently discussing cookies, data mapping, the difference between server-side and client-side integrations. “Just add logic!” I advise cheerfully. This means nothing to me but generally resonates with engineers. It shocks me every time someone nods along.”

Let me start with the strongest chapter of this book — which I can’t name because there’s no chapter numbers or titles. Weiner exquisitely captures the sense of being lost online, without an anchor, mindlessly clicking from moment to moment, with none of it adding up to much at all. That chapter, about halfway through, was a genius observation. 

The rest, however, fails to live up to its billing or to make for a sympathetic character for this memoir. It reads like a giant eye roll — to the industry, to her colleagues, and to herself, deeply unhappy with her work in technical support, making 100k+ a year, yet filled with self-loathing. In the end, as she acknowledges, she is in search of meaning: a meaning that she can’t generate for herself, and can’t find outside of herself. She doesn’t know what she wants in her career, in her personal life, or in her relationships. And that plays out as someone who must constantly be on the outside: even of herself. Incredible opportunities to talk about real challenges — surveillance, child pornography — are left unaddressed. I too was left cringing throughout the book. As much for an industry gone amuck during a period of its greatest excesses, as for Weiner, lost amongst it all, hoping for attention.

Amy Thibodeau

Not for me and more than a little pedantic.

Alex Q

I kind of expected this to be more hard-hitting, with facts and ideas for actionable change. It's really an individual story, about her feelings while working in the industry. Comes across as apathetic most of the time.

Emma Friedheim

I. Loved. This. Book. Friends/family, please read it immediately. Beautiful writing (despite an at times frustrating avoidance of proper nouns; we get it, you signed several NDAs) and poignant observations about Silicon Valley (a topic you'd think has been beaten to death by now). I also like that Wiener's scathing portrayal of San Francisco totally validates my returning to DC rather than moving to the West Coast :)

The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener - stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial - left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress . Anna arrived during a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already bygone era, Anna Wiener's memoir, Uncanny Valley, is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry's shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.

Fraser Simons

Well written and provides a first person account for some thing people probably already know about Silicon Valley, but gives a lot of context into the thinking, both good and bad, behind the bubble and the many many many startups. It’s thoughtful and insightful. Probably a more impactful experience for people who haven’t read about it and been aware of it.

elif sinem

Occasionally beautifully written, but after she leaves the analytics start-up it goes downhill on every imaginable aspect to me. I'm a woman in tech myself, and there's so much more to this situation than surface level sentences and prose that thinks it says something, but really doesn't. Overlong and overwrought New Yorker piece, and not of the good kind.

Michelle Li

mmmm bleh. i enjoyed the first half way more than the second half. i just really wanted the book to end differently, in a more confronting-complicity-in-tech kind of way but this really wasn’t that kind of book unfortunately. i thought i’d read this and feel a little better about some of the ppl in tech and the state of san francisco but i really fooled myself! lol 

anna is a good writer but i just wanted more complicated FEELINGS. 

my only notable thing to take with me is this little passage i loved on liking an inefficient life, contrary to tech’s profiting off convenience and efficiencies. my goal is to lean in to joyful inefficiencies and the spontaneity of human living. 

“unfortunately for me, i like my inefficient life. i liked listening to the radio and cooking with excessive utensils; slivering onions, defanging wet herbs. wringing out warm sponges. i liked riding public transportation: watching strangers talk to their children; watching strangers stare out the window at the sunset, and at photos of the sunset on their phones. i liked taking long walks to purchase onigiri in japantown, or taking long walks with no destination at all. folding the laundry. copying keys. filling out forms. phone calls. i even liked the post office, the predictable discontent of bureaucracy. i liked fill albums, flipping the record. long novels with minimal plot; minimalist novels with minimal plot. engaging with strangers.”

also, on working at an ad tech/data analytics startup:

“the surveillance apparatus was larger and more complex than originally reported, and silicon valley was deeply implicated. “i didn’t think about it while i was working there, because the product was so business oriented. i didn’t necessarily see it as a problem for society. plus, i don’t think i had the information that all the money from the internet comes from surveillance.”

ben wolfson

Alexia

A big yes for me. Felt like someone finally put into words all of my hopes and frustrations I felt while working at a YC startup.

Luke Leighfield

Wiener spent a good chunk of her twenties working at startups. In this memoir, she takes us inside the wild world of tech – the bros, the free lunches, the endless streams of money. I didn't love the book as much as I wanted to – probably because I've spent too much time working at startups and reading about tech – but if you're a little newer to the excesses of startup land, there's a lot here to love.

Jeremy Anderberg

“Tech, for the most part, wasn’t progress. It was just business.”

I’ve long been a sucker for a good Silicon Valley story. Steve Jobs, Accidental Billionaires, Bad Blood, Super Pumped — some of the most memorable tales I’ve read. Most of what I’ve read in the tech realm, however, has been penned by journalists; Weiner is coming right from the belly of the beast. For five years, she worked at a couple different startups in the Bay Area, and came away with an uncommonly keen understanding of both the allure of the culture as well as it’s “brogrammer,” infantilized DNA.

It’s a truly great memoir that is joining my ranks of must-read books about tech, Silicon Valley, and internet culture in general.

Wiener is an NYC native who moves out to San Francisco to work for “the analytics startup” (throughout the book she avoids proper nouns; “the social media startup everyone hates,” for instance). She’s in customer support and doesn’t quite feel like she belongs; she makes a lot less money (and holds less equity) than the revered software engineers. Anna doesn’t mind too much, though; she’s fixing problems, while the engineers are high-ego people who are building things for a virtual world.

Startups, as she observes, try to mix work and lifestyle into one unrecognizable blob. Companies plan group outings and offer catering for meals, mostly with the hope of making work “fun” so that nobody leads a meaningful life outside of that work. Anna was pushed to be, and asked about being, “Down for the Cause” — bro speak that translates to, “Are you all in?” She was expected to give her entire life to this company that was being run by a 25-year-old man-child who didn’t seem to know much about actually running a business — something a lot of Silicon Valley startups can claim.

Anna wonderfully and astutely observes day-to-day life in startup culture as an outsider — someone who is in that world but not of that world (to use a very Christian-y phrase); it’s highly entertaining and revealing and often funny: “I would open a new browser window and begin the day’s true work: toggling between tabs.”

Silicon Valley is usually disconnected from real life and real people, and Wiener does a superb job showing us exactly how. What most moved me personally were her observations about the internet in general and our society’s obsessiveness with efficiency and productivity:

“This fetishized life without friction: What was it like? An unending shuttle between meetings and bodily needs? A continuous, productive loop? Charts and data sets. It wasn’t, to me, an aspiration. It was not a prize.”

There’s so much more I could say about this book, but what ultimately sets Uncanny Valley apart is its superb writing. I couldn’t help but compare it to another memoir written by a young woman in a toxic environment: Educated. I don’t make the comparison lightly, but there are several similarities, including the fact that Wiener is critical without being cruel or spiteful. That’s a really hard balance to find.

For a number of good reasons, this is a book that I’ll happily recommend to just about everyone.

Kylie Pace

Hi, web developer here. This book is accurate. Anna Wiener made me feel less out-of-place, as a woman who rarely comes across other women at work, as a sometimes NorCal-er, as a grammar and literature fan, as a tech-bro eye-roller, and a 90% female tech team yearner (let's start it.) Recommending to all my colleagues.

Bad Girl Bex

Self-confessed, feminist killjoy, leaves her job in the literary scene, goes to work in the emerging tech start-up industry, hates everything about it, isn't a natural fit for the task or the environment, but tries to complain about how the big issue is women in tech - or rather the small numbers of them. Wiener can actually write reasonable well (the only reason I've given her 2 stars) but her faux-interrogation of her own place in this world, along with the reasons she isn't happy in it, betrays her actual lack of self-awareness. 

Very little really happens in this book. The author just sort of drifts from one tech position to another, bemoaning her fate as one of those few women in the industry, never once really stopping to think that this isn't a world that should have necessarily been created for her to feel welcome in. It's like she thinks "I have boobs, ergo I deserve to be given special consideration" and it gets old real quickly. Like many leftists, she's also a massive hypocrite, waxing poetically about unions, workers rights, Marxism and feminism one moment...then talking about all the expensive stuff she enjoys owning or paying for in these jobs she isn't ever happy in.

I did like the fact that she detailed just how out of touch she and her friends were when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, because that perfectly summed up just how out of touch the Democrats and Silicone Valley were, with the rest of the US population. Of course, these data fiends knew only too well how to massage the results in the following election (helping to make it appear that Joe Biden was the most popular presidential candidate in the past century - lol) but in 2016, they were as surprised as their fellow coastal elites on the other side of the country and could only look on in horror. 

Parts of this book are somewhat interesting and Wiener occasionally shows her chops as a writer in the odd paragraph, but quite why this book has been heralded as some kind of masterpiece I don't know. Actually I do...she's a woman who worked in tech, therefore she needs special attention. Ah feminism...don't ever change, you ridiculous, hypocritical, two-faced ideology of the perpetual victim. You never fail to disappoint.

Cindy

As somebody who worked in tech for several years in Silicon Valley, I was apprehensive about reading this. Wouldn't I be reading things I already knew -- and had lived? But I figured it might be interesting to read about Silicon Valley from a different lens, that of somebody who had never had a life in tech planned out for herself.

Uncanny Valley is riveting, almost in the way Gossip Girl can entice you by making you feel like you're part of an outer circle but not quite in the inner circle. I love the oblique references to various Silicon Valley companies and people; most are quite obvious in a mutually understood way ("A social network everyone said they hated", "A search-engine giant down in Mountain View") that makes for a nice puzzle. Others require a bit of sleuthing and Googling. Uncanny Valley is stylish, but it's still hawkishly observant and stripped of the rose-colored glasses.

Ana Couto

What an interesting memoir! Not sure I've ever read anything quite like it. One thing is clear after finishing this book though: Anna Wiener is far more intelligent than I'll ever be, which was both fascinating to get a glimpse into her complex mind but also frustrating (and I say "frustrating" because there were certain aspects of this book that I just did not understand, but I think if you have a good handle on Silicon Valley and start-up culture, you'll be fine). My favorite chapters were the ones at the beginning that focused on Wiener's experience in the publishing industry (which as a book nerd makes me totally biased), but overall it was a very intellectually stimulating read. It's a relatively short book as well, so if you enjoy the occasional memoir like me, I highly recommend picking this one up!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the free book in exchange for an honest review!

Linwan Song &
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Linwan Song &Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

Reviews

Highlights

Join the club

Linwan Song &
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener