So many of us are intrigued by the world within Silicon Valley -- I'm sure that's why we continue getting books, movies, and TV shows created around the stories that exist there -- and this was a fascinating look at the reality of the tech industry and what happens there, for better or for worse. It's a subject matter that has the potential to be dry, but this was so well-written I found myself hardly able to put it down.

An interesting concept that unfortunately did not make for an interesting read.

I found myself constantly waiting for the climax of the book, for the story that made her story worth reading ... while every story deserves to be told, not all stories need to be made into an almost 300 page book.

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener is a great read! A real engrossing page-turner and worth the time of a read!!

Uncanny Valley is a memoir about working in a startup in Silicon Valley as somewhat of an outsider. I enjoyed getting a behind the scenes peak into a very different industry from my own. Her writing is good, but the lack of proper nouns can become frustrating as she always refers to places such as Facebook as ¨the social media company everyone hates¨ which gets old. If you want to learn about startup and silicon valley culture, this is a good book to read.

Having worked at a Big Tech Company during one of its most tumultuous and high-profile years, I opened Uncanny Valley with great trepidation, bracing myself for the Pandora's box of feelings that I feared it might unlock. This memoir is masterfully executed; it felt not only like Anna's, but my own.

A really well written account of a field that affects us all, whether we want it or not. Poignant and engaging.

A page-turning memoir of contemporary Silicon Valley

This memoir received a lot of buzz prior to release. In some ways, this was inevitable — Silicon Valley remains a perennial fascination for so very many people. However, one thing that was coming out of the early buzz was that this is a rather different kind of Silicon Valley memoir/book. I started reading it pretty much as soon as I got a review copy, and I’m happy to report that the hype was justified: this is a superb book.

Uncanny Valley is a combination of personal journey and analysis of technology and the ways in which it — and those who create it and work around it — have changed society and the way we interact with the world and each other. Wiener covers most of the hot-button issues swirling around Silicon Valley — privacy, diversity, sexual harassment, and so forth — offering fair interpretations of what tech leaders have said and how they have reacted to accusations of failing: the level of defensiveness, the often insufficient changes in policy and practice, and so forth. The author places these responses in context, which does explain some of it, but she doesn’t give them a pass, as so many in business and the media do.

“Not everyone was excited by the public conversation. Some prominent founders and investors, habituated to fatuous coverage of playful workplaces and unfiltered, idealistic CEOs, did not appreciate this style of media attention. They blamed journalists who reported on sexual harassment for making the industry look bad; they claimed the media were jealous because the tech industry was eating their lunch. They complained that complaints about the boys’ club discouraged girls from pursuing STEM, as if this were all just a matter of marketing.”

It was particularly interesting to see the author’s perspective of technology evolve the longer she worked for the companies. When leaks occurred, for example, Wiener reexamined what it was that the data company she worked for actually did. Put simply, it was a tool that harvested massive amounts of data that could be used to track, target, and manipulate users — often without their consent and knowledge.

“The guidelines asked that users focus on stories that were interesting to hackers. I had always considered hacking an inherently political activity, insofar as I thought about hacking at all, but it seemed the identity had been co-opted and neutralized by the industry. Hacking apparently no longer meant circumventing the state or speaking truth to power; it just meant writing code. Maybe would-be hackers just became engineers at top tech corporations instead, where they had easier access to any information they wanted.”

It would be easy to think that this book is essentially a criticism of technology, and to an extent it is — although, plenty of the blame lies with the users and our willingness to allow these companies to take over so many aspects of our lives, at the cost of privacy and personal information. But Wiener is also clear about the ways in which certain tech companies (they are rarely, if ever named) have provided or created benefits to society. [Not going to lie, though: the critical portions of the book are more interesting to me.]

One of Wiener’s comments really stood out for me, as it is a more-eloquent expression of my own thoughts about new shifts and trends in fiction:

“Sometimes I would worry about my internet habits and force myself away from the computer, to read a magazine or a book. Contemporary literature offered no respite: I would find prose cluttered with data points, tenuous historical connections, detail so finely tuned it could only have been extracted from a feverish night of search-engine queries. Aphorisms were in; authors were wired. I would pick up books that had been heavily documented on social media, only to find that the books themselves had a curatorial affect: beautiful descriptions of little substance, arranged in elegant vignettes—gestural text, the equivalent of a rumpled linen bedsheet or a bunch of dahlias placed just so. Oh, I would think, turning the page. This author is addicted to the internet, too.”

From the tech companies insistence that the solution to all of society’s and the world’s problems was the same (more tech), to the quite obvious fact that many of the new products and services come out of the Valley were essentially “inventing” things that already existed, or “disrupting” things that were working perfectly well… Wiener gives readers a pretty comprehensive tour of Silicon Valley culture, warts and all. However, it is not a book that is preaching to the audience, nor is it prescribing what we should think: the author lays out the facts, as she experienced, and offers questions and sharp observations.

Uncanny Valley has received a lot of praise since its publication, and I think it is totally justified. This is a brilliantly-written, intelligent and engaging memoir. Incisive, often amusing, and definitely recommended. One of my favourite books of the year so far. I’m really looking forward to reading more by Wiener, and will be first in line for her next book, whatever it might be.

An interesting insight into the world of Silicon Valley, seen through the eyes of a 20-something who moved from working in publishing in New York to San Francisco and the sexist world of tech start-ups. Her increasing disillusionment as she navigates her way through the complexities of an evolving and somewhat dysfunctional industry makes for interesting reading, though it at times dragged a little in my view. And for me, whilst I understand why, the fact that she does not name any of the companies, simply describing them, felt a little frustrating and prevented me from truly engaging with both her world and the book. Overall an interesting read that provided me a with a thought-provoking look into a world I only knew a little about.

When you are young, the glitz and glamour of new jobs is persuasive. Wiener's look at what it was like in the early days of the Silicon Valley tech boom is an eye-opener. Her observations are sometimes funny and certainly all on straight from the heart.

3,5/5

I was fascinated by this book in the first half of it but then, the second half underwhelmed me as it was a lot of ideas and experiences that I have seen before. Still recommend though!

This book is about Anna Wiener's experience working in Silicon Valley startups. The first half talks more about the actual work that she did, working on costumer experience in those start-ups but also about the privacy aspect of things and how she started to question what these companies were doing, especially after reading an article mentioning that a lot of start-ups were sharing their information with the NSA. So interesting!

The second half focuses more on Wiener's experience working as a woman in a male-dominated field, from casual sexism to outright harassment and the hupe pay gap between men and women. Those are without a doubt important topics and I don't feel like they are talked about enough but it reminded me too much of the TV show Good Trouble so I didn't learn as many new things as I thought I would.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the beginning of this book- but ended up putting it aside. It’s a memoir about startup culture in Silicon Valley and totally should have worked for me- but I found myself getting bored at around 100 pages. I think I figured Silicon Valley would equal rich people behaving badly, and while some parts were interesting I thought it ended up being repetitive. I think the author is a talented writer, though, and I'd be curious to read something fiction from her!

Usually love memoirs. This one not so much. No connection whatsoever. Was like reading the ingredients of food you despise.

Thanks to publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

This book was very interesting to me, like Anna I work for a start-up, albeit much smaller scale but I was curious to read about another viewpoint on the subject. Anna was informative and raw in her experience in her Silicon Valley startups.

If you are looking to learn more about the inside happenings of startups I highly recommend this book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux MCD, and author Anna Wiener for this copy!

A little monotonous but I enjoyed the read nonetheless. The title is the most genius thing I've ever heard in my life (maybe an overstatement, but I do love the title). The content, however, wasn't as revealing as I'd hoped - the stories are the author's own encounters with a Silicon Valley culture anyone who reads tech industry articles is already familiar with, and I didn't see why the content here warranted an entire book and couldn't be another of those articles. I'd hoped for the stories to be more shocking or insightful, but I wasn't disappointed so much that it stopped me from recommending the book to several friends who, on the whole, did report enjoying it. The most interesting part of this was the author's start in NY publishing and move to tech, and her navigation of that career change and the ways she compared and contrasted a legacy industry with the world of start-ups.

Keenly observed and astutely written, Uncanny Valley is a memoir about a woman's experience working for silicon valley startups where in the backdrop of technocapitalism, casual misogyny and racism are as omnipresent as poke bowls at a lunch buffet. Wiener's book discusses a lot of these issues in the silicon valley seldom monitored by any state sponsored regulatory bodies. Even as it tries to be expository, the book is not as edgy as the title makes you believe. Though Wiener is keenly aware of her (white) privilege, the book is not a take down on the workplace culture of silicon valley dictated by tech bros wearing their (toxic) masculinity in their sleeves. It's a mildly shocking yet enjoyable rumination of a nontechnical woman navigating the murky waters of tech startups. Still worth a read.

This was a fascinating glimpse into the tech world, written by an outsider-turned-insider. To hear how the author stumbled into and then navigated the start-up culture reads as though one of my buddies was embedded and is reporting back. As such, it's a trusted voice that reminds us of the ethical issues of big data that seem to fall to the background while we're downloading, sharing, and liking.

I was so excited to read this memoir, and was delighted when my library acquired a downloadable audiobook version narrated by the talented Suehyla El-Attar.

In her early twenties, Anna Wiener leaves her meager publishing assistant job in NYC for the lucrative and shiny promise of Silicon Valley. She speaks of the Valley's tech companies in code, never explicitly naming them but referencing key characteristics that many readers will be able to identify. Wiener describes the Silicon Valley "ecosystem" in a humorous, eye-roll sort of way, confirming many of the stereotypes we associate with tech bros and entrepreneurs.

About halfway through the book, Wiener started getting frustrated with her job, and I started getting frustrated with her. "Just leave!" I wanted to shout. But, I, too, have drank the Kool-Aid that toxic workplaces feed to thirsty millennials, so who am I to judge? Anyway, I recommend this (audio)book to readers in the millennial range who have grown up in the age of Am*z*n, G**gle, and Tw*tt*r, and have experienced the consequences these companies wreak on our psyches (and wallets).

Anna Wiener is a young woman with an English degree and no technical experience. Her memoir starts as she enters the heady and often overly optimistic world of start-ups. Sky high budgets, charismatic founders, lots of misogyny and non-diverse hiring make for a work bubble that glorifies the technological boom and downplays the downsides of the new world.

Wiener is good at evaluating her own process and beliefs as she moves from job to job as a support person, a role that doesn't garner a lot of respect even though she refuses to hide in the background of the companies where she works. She discusses with care and detail how the tech economy can isolate people and push out the middle class in cities where tech takes over.

This is book is compulsively readable and asks readers to consider whether a predominantly online life has value or instead leaches life from our lives.

Highly recommended.

For how infrequently I read memoirs, this was a really decent choice. Attracted as much by the very apt title as by the context (an insider tell all of behind and in front of the scenes toxic culture of Silicon Valley) I found this book to be an immersive read almost immediately. A quality the narrative maintained throughout, so much so that for all intent and purposes it read just as dynamic as any work of fiction. Ay, but therein lies the rub…this wasn’t a work of fiction, this was a real story told by a real person who lived it. So where with fiction you can easily go and talk about the protagonist, here it would technically constitute a personal attack on the author. Tricky business…reviewing memoirs. But ok, let’s give it a go. So the protagonist is a young woman, a typical and nicely self described linty liberal of Brooklyn NY, a bookish, analog person working a thankless low paying job at a small publishing company. She becomes intrigued by the startup culture, eventually enticed into trying it on for size, first on 3 months trial basis with a small company in NY and then onto a proper well paying job in a much larger company in SF. And thus begin her adventures in San Francisco, a city that isn’t just the base for startup culture, but also a place irretrievably and radically by it. Terrifyingly expensive, aggressively gentrified to suit its new denizens, the upwardly mobile young hip people with too much money, the author presents San Francisco (the city she still resides in according to her bio) somehow even less inviting than NY. Just a sort of prohibitively expensive yuppie mecca. In that representation she is pretty much consistent throughout. But her relationship with the startup field is…well, it’s mixed at best. She constantly has moral qualms which are constantly overridden by the devotion to steady paycheck. She provides a fairly disparaging image of the entire culture, the way it perceives the world…all information is data, all things can be optimized and improved, preferably through a neverending series of apps. The author sticks with the job (two jobs actually) for several years before the deleterious effects on one’s soul and moral fiber become too egregious and then she leaves to write about it. And really, as far as jobs you do in your 20s or things you do for money in general goes, all things considered she did well, even leaving with a sizeable payout. But apparently it wasn’t easy. And here’s the thing…she complains about it…a lot. Which may or may not sit well with some readers. For me…I understood where she was coming from and a lot of what she said was relatable, but there was an aspect of my brain just screaming…first world problems, these are all first world problems. The author is very smart and very self aware, so none of this ever comes across as obnoxious or whiny, but it does tend to dominate the book at times. That level of white privilege that allows the person to complain so effusively about doing a fairly easy job (customer service in sweatpants from the comfort of her couch at times easy) for crazy amounts of money. So anyway…there’s that. But other than that, it was a really good read. I didn’t even think I was all that interested in Silicon Valley, I barely made it through the pilot episode of a tv show dedicated to it. Analog most of the way, I appreciate technology, but cautiously and certainly don’t live by or utilize many or any really apps. For me it’s all fairly vague, all those jobs that will disappear the second zombie apocalypse arrives, but this book brought it to life quite vividly, if unappetizingly, and I’m glad to have read it. Very well written too, self aware, clever, funny…very smart book, actually, not quite an expose, but very nearly. Certainly a strange and quite a soulless and ugly sort of culture of excess and grotesque pursuit of optimization, but then again the future might very well be written in code the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are so enamored with, so there’s that. Interesting read, sobering, lot of food for thought. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

I enjoyed this book, having grown up, lived, interviewed and worked at companies in the Silicon Valley. Now that I work in the city, I can relate even more to Wiener's experience. Like many others, I found the intentional not-naming of tech companies, CEOs and places to be a little distracting since I kept pausing to look up the references. Wiener has a talent for accurately describing the slightly out-of-body disillusionment of being part of this culture, from the fashion choices to tech circle philosophy. A good read if you are also a bit burnt out from the Silicon Valley grind.