Anna Wiener writes well. I enjoyed this memoir of her time working in the tech industry in the bay area because it is so well written. On the downside, it felt too long in spots and I was annoyed by her use of lists (key annoyance was including reference to sous vide, a water bath cooking method, three times).
After finishing Uncanny Valley I looked her up and was happy to find she’s currently a contributing writer to The New Yorker and not at all surprised to see she has a minimal digital presence.
Here’s her Twitter bio: writer @newyorker & others | author of “Uncanny Valley” (2020) | not here.
Having lived just “over the hill,” the hill being the Santa Cruz mountains, from San Jose in the late 1990’s before Google was a thing, I remember what it was like as the allure of the tech industry washed over that area. Every one was enamoured with tech.
At the time I had a job in local government supporting workforce development. I remember during a bus ride to work my regular bus driver talking with a colleague, a senior manager who worked with business leaders on employment needs, about his need to hire a number of people for a tech startup that he, the bus driver, had going on the side. The bus driver promised my colleague he could offer $25 an hour starting salary and my colleague said, jokingly, though I wasn’t sure if it was truly in jest, that he might even be interested in that. My colleague left for a new job before the summer was over.
It seemed everybody I talked to was either looking for a job in tech or starting a new job in tech.
Beach, Santa Cruz, CA 
Downtown, San Jose, CA
Anna Wiener’s experience in tech was over a decade after my time living silicon valley adjacent.
Initially, Wiener entered tech in the 2000’s by joining a digital book startup, keeping one foot in her literary career path while trying to earn a decent salary. She moved on to another startup that focused on digital surveillance, wrestling with what this type of technology meant in the world at large and not quite wanting to accept the reality of what it means to be able to watch people’s lives unfold in real time digital data streams.
Wiener’s memoir offers non tech folks some insight into what it was like working in this field, though it’s far from an in-depth look at the industry. Moreso, it’s about her coming to terms with her need for work that is both financially rewarding and intellectually rewarding and work that aligns with her values.
Tech had promise but there were concerns.
There was “God mode,” a reference to the surveillance tech company’s ability to view the data from the other companies it did business with, an all-seeing view of information. Sure, employees knew they shouldn’t use this capability to access data from the company everyone hates (a veiled reference to Facebook) to look at the personal information of former girlfriends or co-workers, but really who would know and who would stop them.
She wrote about the startup culture’s need for employees to prove they were DFTC. Down For The Cause. DFTC was a rallying call. DFTC was the buy-in and commitment her employer expected. DFTC was stenciled on the office wall. You can’t work late? Why? Aren’t you DFTC? You want to be paid for the extra work? But aren’t you DFTC? You want a promotion? Prove you are DFTC.
There are also lots of men. Most seemed to be 20-somethings. Every boss is a man. Nearly every co-worker is a man. Everything is designed by men, planned by men and managed by men. A whole industry infrastructure – platforms and systems, logic and language – set up by a wave of young men eager to make lots of money during a present day gold rush.
Tech offered her a great salary, hoodies with the company logo, beer on tap, and well designed office spaces. There are company skiing trips, complete with added tension if your bedroom door doesn’t lock. And of course, for those with good timing and the ability to buy-in, stock options that could result in a windfall. It did for Wiener.
Wiener came out on the other side.
She left her last tech job with the unusual mascot (a reference to GitHub), cashing in on stock options that provided her a modest sum for the bay area, for others a life changing amount of money. She returned to her literary roots, stayed in San Francisco and, based on the minimal information about her online, is now focused on writing about the tech industry.
I really like Anna Wiener writing. Her style seems well suited to long-form essay, just the type of writing you find in The New Yorker, where she is a current contributor. I look forward to reading more from her.
My Rating 3/5
The Seventeenth Line 