Cover Image: Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley

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It isn’t often you are allowed inside. Anna Wiener is just such a person. She finds herself first on a e-start up. Later landing in San Francisco, the hub of e-commerce, she not so much reveals life inside, as reaffirms those quiet beliefs that those in charge have never worked a long day in their lives to the benefit of anyone but themselves. We learn you cannot learn JavaScript in a weekend. We learn that those in charge do as little as possible. We learn that PT Barnum lives loud and proud among us today in every scattered idea that finds loose money and a day in the tech sun.

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DNF - Did not finish. I did not connect with the writing style or plot and will not be finishing this title. Thank you, NetGalley and Publisher for the early copy!

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There is a particular kind of satisfaction reading about the dysfunctional structure of the tech industry from an insider’s perspective. In Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, we follow along as she makes a surprising and unexpected transition from publishing to the tech startup world. This memoir felt like eating candy, especially since I hold a deep grudge against the kinds of spaces, companies, and people Wiener shared space with during her time in tech. Wiener doesn’t write out of malice or tell tales out of school (unless warranted). She is honest about her experience, and even at times complementary to those she built relationships with. But her experience is enough to confirm for me that the tech world is one I will never willingly engage with. Writing a memoir is difficult, especially if there are stories that are difficult to tell, like when she was insulted to her face multiple times or when she had to fend off multiple inappropriate sexual advances by male coworkers. But Wiener kept her tone consistent and her focus tight. Uncanny Valley is very well executed. This was a welcomed perspective on a sector that has changed the world drastically in the past fifteen years and needs a bit of a reality check.

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An easy, enjoyable, and fun read which lifts the curtain on start-up, tech-bro culture at the height of its allure. As someone who is a stranger to the tech world, but still a consummate millennial consumer, I found the coded references to well-known brands, companies, and entrepreneurs acted like a scavenger hunt, an added entertainment bonus.. Anna obviously has a talent for writing the type of day-to-day detail that industry outsiders will find interesting and insiders, I assume, will find familiar. Who did what, where, and how, the book reads like a journal, but is more of a yearbook-- noting the superlatives of the time. I look forward to more of Ms. Weiner's musings, whatever the topic, or industry, may be.

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In her mid-twenties, Anna Wiener is in New York City, working a low paid job in the publishing industry. Everyone she knows is working the same kind of barely making it job as they check their safety net of parents wondering how long they could subsist as they 'paid their dues'. When she has the chance to change her life and move to California and work in the technology industry, she jumps at the chance.
She works there for half a decade, cycling between several tech start-ups and more established technology companies. Anna doesn't have technical skills; she isn't a programmer or a data scientist or a security guru. She works in customer service, fielding calls for help, tracking down copyright infringements and checking company content boards for offensive and illegal content. She is incredibly well paid compared to her NYC days and the culture is very different. Employee structures are flat and perks abound. Remote work is allowed and encouraged.

But there are drawbacks as well. A higher salary doesn't mean much when all the technology money has made the real estate market so expensive that it is the rare person who doesn't have to have roommates well past the age that most people are on their own. Perks don't mean much in work weeks that routinely are expected to be eighty to a hundred hours weekly. Women are marginalized as are the non-tech employees. The buzz word for compensation is meritocracy but it's strange how the merit all seems to reside in young, white males who look just like the founders of these young companies.

Uncanny Valley is a term used in the technology industry. It refers to the fact that individuals respond more favorably to robots that appear human, but if the robot gets too human appearing, a revulsion sets in. It is a metaphor for the technology industry that appears fascinating and desirable from the outside but is anxiety producing and barren from an insiders' view. It is the casual data driven environment where every purchase and opinion is tracked and sold to companies so that they can better target their products and influence society. It is a cautionary tale that only an insider can tell. This book is recommended for readers of nonfiction and especially for those considering a career in technology.

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“My mother often asked, gently, why I was still an assistant—making coffee, taking coats—at twenty-five. She wasn’t asking for a structural inspection explanation.”

Uncanny Valley is a memoir about working in Silicon Valley start ups.

It’s also an examination of the systemic inequities of the publishing and the tech industries. While the author moves beyond her work with books, where it’s impossible to maintain a career without a second job or independent source of income, the tech industry is just as lopsided toward the incomes of those at the top.

“It was an indignity to talk about money when our superiors, who ordered poached salmon and glasses of rose at lunch, seemed to consider low pay a rite of passage, rather than systemic exploitation in which they might feel some solidarity. Solidarity, specifically, with us.”

Wiener struggles with the culture at her string of tech jobs and in the SF Bay Area, overrun by tech workers who are making money in real estate while pushing out longtime residents, boarding firm buses rather than taking public transportation, and otherwise overrunning the Bay Area with self-important hipsters. The author bemoans the so-called meritocracy at tech firms where “boys will be boys” and shit on everyone for “accepting less” while refusing to acknowledge the racism and sexism in the world.

I think my favorite bit is where the author has an HR-arranged lunch date with her company’s CTO and they joke about an app that pairs drinks and books. The next morning, he tells her he has coded the app. Just your regular Tuesday night in the tech world, I guess.

Wiener later questions self-driving cars to the inventor. Re: misogyny, she “dies on every hill.” Yet while structural issues are obvious, she makes little to no progress in improving matters. One of her coworkers demands improvements and is fired. She ends up in a meeting with the CEO, meekly agreeing with him that her coworker had to go and wasn’t committed.

As an aside, I found her discussion of virtual work, which came out prior to COVID, really interesting. It was what it was like before so many of us were WFH and considering ourselves lucky (we were/are) to have a job.

While Wiener freely admits she feels guilty for her part in the tech world, the book reads like one long attempt to assuage said guilt by exposing it. Unfortunately, we’ve seen that unless people personally experience something, they put it out of their mind and pretend it doesn’t exist.

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In this memoir, Anna Wiener describes her experiences in Silicon Valley after she leaves her publishing job in NYC to join the booming tech industry.

She didn’t name any of the startups she worked for or other tech companies that she mentions throughout - it was fun to guess which ones she was referring to based on the code names or descriptions.

She didn’t really seem to have a very positive experience and felt quite unhappy and out of place given the sexism in the male dominated industry and questionable practices, despite some of the advantages like higher pay and ability to work remotely. Ultimately, she left the industry to become a writer.

“The money and ease of the lifestyle weren’t enough to mitigate the emotional drag of the work: the burnout, the reporting, the intermittent toxicity.”

This subject matter had so much potential but unfortunately, the author’s writing style fell flat for me. It was not engaging but rather dry and monotonous, which made it a frustrating read because it felt like it was dragging. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped because I didn’t feel emotionally invested and was eager to finish it so I could move on to a better book, which is never a good sign.

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Unfortunately, Uncanny Valley fell a little flat for me. I never connected with the main character, and it started stronger than it finished. It was hard to get interested in her storyline, I didn't feel like I had a sense of what she truly wanted, and it seemed longer than necessary.

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With the year ending, books have to be blowing me away in order for me to keep reading them. At a different time, I probably could have appreciated this book more - but this feels like one of those books that was hot, hot, hot, and then just vanished from the conversation. Of course this was a weird year - lots of imporant issues pushed to the forefront, and this may have just had bad timing...but none of this books contents seemed to matter to me and I realized I didn't really care about Wiener's experiences.

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I flew through the first quarter of this book and really wanted to love the rest. However the Remainder just got worse and worse. The writer was vapid and whiny and added no real meat to this story. It felt more like a list of grievances rather than actual insight into a sexist work culture. Really wanted to love but ultimately found myself resenting the writer.

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I can certainly see why people have so enjoyed Weiner's memoir. She's a good writer, and there were many moments of wit and she weaves a mostly engaging story. I suppose my main issue here was that this topic -- Silicon Valley is filled with white men in power and women aren't treated fairly! -- is just not new. We all know this. There isn't much here that's illuminating, and what Weiner chooses to focus in on is often repetetive. or unnecessary (like overly detailed descriptions of parties and other extravagances.) I also felt like Weiner doesn't really grapple with her own privilege here, which seems like a lost opportunity.

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Nonfiction is not my go-to genre but this is an interesting read told from a unique perspective. It is written by a woman with an inside look but it is obvious she isn't a writer by profession. Overall, it's a good read for a nonfiction text.

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Uncanny Valley is Anna Wiener’s story of working in tech, primarily in Silicon Valley. Anna is looking to leave her NY-based job in publishing, seeking more from a career. Millennials were flocking to the West coast, where the tech industry continued to grow — software, digital service providers, and social media platforms, all making a name for themselves and marking their presence. Anna decides to join them.

In this book, she details her work experience at a few different companies: one book related, one focused on data analytics, and the other, open source software — both the day-to-day and events like offsite team retreats. Anna holds customer service side roles, and quickly observes, across the industry, these positions are often valued less than their technical counterparts.

Perhaps because Silicon Valley has been this way for the bulk of my career years so far (Anna and I are the same age), I just didn’t find much of this surprising or novel — A male-dominated culture of intellect, with a significant effort to maintain confidentiality and privacy of the company, while access to the privacy of customers and users sometimes remains vague (check, check, and check). I wasn’t expecting Bad Blood but the revelations were minimal at best.

Every industry has room for improvement, tech is certainly not immune, but I struggled with Anna’s complacency — If you don’t like what you see and it’s not changing, why stay? This wore on me, especially in the second half of the book.
I am pleased to see Anna has since found success in writing, and been able to build her career around it. While I don’t have a specific one currently at hand, a quote about returning home would be fitting here.

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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!

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While I am sure that the author has many stories to tell because of her love of fiction and all things literary, I am not sure this memoir was for me. While insightful regarding 'behind the curtain' of tech startups, and watching silicon valley develop before her eyes, the author's tone seems inauthentic & annoyed. While I appreciate her sole female presence in a male dominated industry/region/atmosphere, and the struggles thereof, it still doesn't yield a compelling book.

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Anna Wiener was in her mid-20s when she decided to leave her job as an assistant in the NYC publishing industry, moving to San Francisco to work for a web-analytics start-up. She was looking for momentum, optimism, promise, and- frankly- for more money: ‘The only way to have a successful and sustainable career in the publishing industry…was to inherit money, marry rich, or wait for our peers to defect or die’. She thus left her book-loving, Brooklyn-based, analogue life, swapping it for a few years in California’s shiny land of opportunity.

This memoir, published earlier this year, documents Wiener’s years in Silicon Valley. Wiener now writes for the New Yorker and has left San Francisco behind her. In ‘Uncanny Valley’, she looks back to those years, offering an (almost) anthropological insider look at her life there. As she wasn’t an engineer or tech whiz-kid, she had always kept some distance from the Silicon Valley culture.

It’s all here. The young, arrogant, mostly white & male CEOs in their 20s who know little about life, yet offer up their lifestyle and ideas with a guru like attitude to their many followers. The devastating gentrification and housing crisis in San Francisco. The deification of tech, to the expense of all other forms of culture, pleasure, leisure, art. The war metaphors: ‘we were at war with competitors, for market share. We would look down at our bottles of kombucha or orange juice and nod along gravely’. The expected passionate allegiance to the company. Money and more money as a religion.

In a recent NYT Books podcast, Wiener described her memoir as critical but not a full attack on the industry. Her memoir is a delicious, cleverly constructed, funny but also bitter and dark set of observations about Silicon Valley from the inside. I’m glad Anna Wiener eventually decided to leave the industry and dedicate herself to writing. She is a gifted, engaging writer, with an eye for detail and for the absurd.

Thanks to Net Galley for offering me a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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First, thank you Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for the review copy in exchange for a hella honest review.

Uncanny Valley is a foray into the tech industry for those who know nothing about it or want to validate their life experience. Anna Wiener tells readers about being a white woman from Brooklyn in the Silicon Valley.

The lack of conviction and ownership are my biggest issues with this memoir. The book would have been stronger if it didn’t feel like it was trying so hard to be PC. It would have been interesting if Anna Wiener was unapologetic with her choice to immerse herself in tech culture or joined the artsy radicals who push for tech in underprivileged communities, but this memoir explored neither. Wiener never confronts or acknowledges her own privileges. This memoir is an attempt to be a complicit witness to the problems in the tech industry while trying to maintain one’s innocence.

The prose is distant. This reads as: younger Anna Wiener picks a side and older Anna Wiener feels guilty for choosing money. I get it. There’s a lot of nepotism in publishing. It’s an industry rigged for the rich and well-connected. But Wiener does not hold herself accountable for her own actions, especially when she’s quick to criticize her tech peers for not being able to see past themselves.

Wiener’s surface-level criticisms of the tech industry didn’t get into the nitty-gritty. She briefly criticizes tech surveillance, how startup culture is rooted in self-importance, and how tech people can’t see the merit in things nontech. Her main focus in the memoir is emphasizing her struggle maneuvering the technical field as a liberal arts major.

Wiener’s memoir is full of contradictions. She identifies as a New York native who tried to break into publishing but switches careers. She makes jabs at herself for “selling out.” Throughout the memoir, she reminds her readers that her friends are artists. They’re radical and think she’s alright, so she’s not one of those predatory tech bros. Her ideological stances never match up with her actions.

In the memoir, Wiener lives with people who collectively earn $400,000 a year and says subsidized apartments “weren’t designed for them” but continues to benefit from laws designed to protect people who earn way under 100k. There are other comments about gentrification but Wiener doesn’t understand the spaces she occupies destroys communities until she’s back home in New York (in the last third of the book). Seeing her home turned upside down makes her feel some sort of way, but Wiener’s defense is that she likes “the lifestyle.” I believe she then goes into a bookstore and shares gripes about tech with a bookseller who’s struggling.

This book isn’t for me. Maybe it’s my fault for thinking a memoir by a transplant could give me insight into an industry I grew up in. Maybe it’s because I’m literally the bookseller.

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Silicon Valley through the eyes of a female insider,A woman who lived it knows the players and reveals what life work is really like in that rarefied world.An engrossing read.#netgalley#uncannyvalley

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Fascinating look at silicone valley and a live so different than the one I live in the world of education. I switched between the kindle provided and audio that I payed for (highly recommend providing an audio if you have it with the review copy) it was nice to be able to listen to the experiences as well as read! Added to my liking of the book for sure!

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I received an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review from NetGalley. I have mixed feelings about this book. The author recounts her time in San Francisco, working at two startups in a non-technical role. She Se certainly isn't the first to dissect startup culture, but I pressed on because I liked her voice and tone. One much-talked about aspect of the book is that she rarely uses pronouns - so the company she works for and many other companies, as well as people, are never identified. At first, I didn't love it. It adds an odd tone to the book as if the author is explaining things to a person who would have no reference to the word Google, for example. I came to appreciate this literary device and I think it lends anthropological air to the book. However, this trope wasn't enough to save things for me. I considered abandoning the book altogether but pressed on because I was certain something would happen. It didn't, not really. She briefly touches on acquisitions and some interesting political events, but ultimately glosses over the topic of sexual misconduct in the workplace and the end is pretty anti-climatic. I would only recommend this book to someone with an interest in startup culture that doesn't actually know anything about it. Anyone familiar with it wouldn't stand to learn much here, and it isn't meaty enough to attract a passive observer like myself.

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