In this her first book, Anna Wiener has nailed the world of tech culture from her vantage point of being an insider yet feeling like an outsider. She moves to San Francisco after being a Brooklynite for most of her 25 years and experiences the dislocation blues acutely like most people. For those of us on the outside, it's not really clear what her high paying job entails or what the startup produces. For that matter, what do any of the startups she eventually works for do to amass the enormous paydays and perks that their employees enjoy.

What this reader got from this book was not a deeper understanding of those roles, but of what it meant for a book loving person finding herself working for an industry that is attempting to dismantle that industry, and what it means to be a woman in a mostly male-driven industry. I have been a resident of the Bay Area for over 35 years and found her depiction of San Francisco to be dead on. Two friends who have lived here since the early 70's pointed out that it "wasn't their city any more," thanks to the impassable streets, the endless construction, the disappearance of businesses that had occupied the same locations for decades.

"The city, trapped in nostalgia for its own mythology, stuck in a hallucination of a halcyon past, had not caught up to the newfound momentum...". Making way for housing, restaurants, and bike stands that cater to the tech community -- "... I was stuck in an industry that was chipping away at so many things I cared about." Weidner's insecurity in never quite feeling a part of this world doesn't keep her from being a solid observer.

Anyone interested in the start-up culture of Silicon Valley will want to check out this debut from Anna Weiner, who left a job in book publishing in her mid-20s to join a big-data company in San Francisco. Weiner delivers a compelling and sharply written reflection of her experience in an industry that can be both promising and reckless. Part memoir, part insider’s report, this timely release serves as an intimate and candid critique of our digital age.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sharing an advance copy of this upcoming memoir. I know it’s getting a lot of buzz on 2020 reading lists. Although memoir is not one of my favorite genres, I found this interesting and had no problem finishing it. As another reviewer stated, it’s about first world problems, for sure, which makes it a little hard to take at times. And despite the author’s attempt to come to terms with herself about why she stayed in an industry she eventually realized she didn’t like, I still had trouble understanding some of her feelings and decisions about her bosses and coworkers. Overall, I still found it a bit self-indulgent, but that’s how I feel about most memoirs. I don’t think I have the patience for the navel-gazing.

An insightful look into the mindset so many startups seem to be suffering from, valuing efficiency over operational security. There were many times I found myself thinking, "That sounds eerily like my office." However, the author failed to justify why she continued to work in the Bay Are when she seems to despise it, and the harmful effects of tech outside of security concerns.

The author's sojourn in Silicon Valley is simultaneously disturbing and banal, like an episode of "Black Mirror." Wiener works in customer service for two different tech firms, after starting her working life in publishing in New York City, then washing out of an e-book startup. When she tries to bring her book-loving personality and natural talents to the e-book world, she intercepts a chat in which she is pilloried for "learning, not doing." This is actually viewed as a drawback.

When this creative soul is transplanted to Silicon Valley to work for young, hyper, tech dudes presiding over startup companies, rolling in millions in venture capital and crippled with Messiah complexes, Wiener must do customer service 7/365 on her own phone. She is obliged to go on weird corporate retreats. She feels devotedly loyal to the CEOs and tries to ignore the growing warning signs that all is not well, in San Francisco, in modern tech, and in her own soul. Her life evolves pretty much as expected and she experiences discrimination in this men's world. After all, women are "good at" customer service by nature, aren't they? It's not like she's writing code or anything. I feared that these egotistic males who wanted to "move fast and break things" would break Wiener as well, but, as one would guess from the fact that she has written a memoir, they didn't.

Some readers may observe that this memoir enumerates strictly first-world problems: poor baby, earning six figures.

I, however, was inspired to wonder, along with the author, why we let these young men take over our entire lives and invade our privacy to such a massive extent. Are they worth either the power or the billions that we have given them? Are their cool tools worth it? How much power do they really have? The new Twenties should mark the end of our dreamy infatuation with these companies, their products, and the men who get preposterously rich creating them. This insightful memoir could not be more timely.

Uncanny Valley

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.

A phenomenal read – I blitzed through this, in no small part thanks to the sharpness of Anna Wiener's writing and her witheringly perceptive assessments about Silicon Valley. She turns a critical eye not only toward brogrammers and venture capitalists, but also toward herself, and the way she interrogates 21st-century tech culture and her own complicity in its myth-making is what makes this book such a relentless and riveting read. I think if I had read this while I was still living in the Bay Area, I would've had a mental breakdown, but in hindsight, it has helped me sort out some of my conflicted feelings about San Francisco and its surrounding tech bubble.

This memoir of working in Silicone Valley was very enlightening. The author deftly showcased the culture and it was nice that she had an outsider (of sorts) point of view. Not a flattering view but one that puts the reader in the world.