If you are looking to be reassured about the character of tech bros, or to have your faith restored in the American workplace, “Uncanny Valley” is not the book for you. Written by New Yorker tech contributor Anna Wiener, “Uncanny Valley” was recently listed as one of the New York Times’ most anticipated books of 2020. In this memoir, Wiener unveils the harsh realities of life in and around Silicon Valley. Wiener confirms fears of technology’s consequences with striking elegance and countless eye-widening anecdotes.
Wiener’s writing is sinister from the beginning, leaving little room for any shred of optimism readers might have regarding life for women in the tech industry. The book begins with Wiener still working at a publishing agency in New York City. She writes of her low-ranking role, “There was no room to grow, and after three years the voyeuristic thrill of answering someone else’s phone had worn thin.” Wiener also implies that she was not a typical employee longing to be a “techie,” in fact, there was little to no element of inevitability to her oncoming career in tech. She says how “it never occured to me that I might someday become one of the people working behind the internet, because I had never considered that there were people behind the internet at all.” Though this may seem like just a minorly self-deprecating comment, it ominously foreshadows the apathetic nature of the industry Wiener was about to enter. Silicon Valley looms large in all of our imaginations. Wiener’s experiences confirm what we all try not to think about, that this overarching industry is practically devoid of compassion altogether.
If readers are looking to discover how ridiculous the routines of the tech industry are, “Uncanny Valley” is the place to do so. In one scene early in the book, Wiener is being interviewed for a position at a Mountain View start-up when she is asked “questions that were both self-conscious and infuriating.” These questions included “What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?’, “How would you explain the tool to your grandmother?”, and, most memorably, “How would you describe the internet to a medieval farmer?” These questions are ludicrous and comical, but Wiener uses anecdotes such as this to convey how she was practically brainwashed into believing the values, or lack thereof, of big tech. This is a noteworthy insight that can be expanded to workplace culture more largely, that professional success can often resemble simply learning the codes and behaviors of the setting in question, as opposed to success being oriented around genuine intelligence or skill. Later on in the book, when Wiener has risen to being an interviewer, she grills potential candidates by asking the very same questions, “as authoritatively as possible.” This oscillation from interviewee to interviewer represents the phony aspects of the tech hiring processes that Wiener participated in; the same woman sat bewildered upon being asked these questions gets off on the superiority derived from inducing that same bewilderment upon an inferior player in the same game–the tech industry. Wiener’s insight can be expanded to workplace culture more largely, that professional success can often resemble simply learning the codes and behaviors of the setting in question, as opposed to success being oriented around genuine intelligence or skill.
Wiener is just brusque enough; she reclaims the position of power by telling her story unapologetically. Wiener refers to Facebook as the “social network everyone said they hated but no one could stop logging in to,” and Amazon as “an online superstore that had gotten its start in the nineties by selling books on the World Wide Web–not because the founder had a love of literature, but because he had a love of consumers.” Wiener tactfully plays upon the reality that just about everyone is intimately familiar with the platforms produced by the tech industry, such as Facebook or Amazon, and yet, few of us have cared enough to investigate it further. Wiener writes of her experiences in such a way that allows a window into a realm that, though we all know, few of us ever enter.
In a recent WIRED review, it was written that Wiener “never resolves the self-contradictions of her industry, city, or existence.” Though this may be true, it is an extremely harsh and high bar to set for any text. “Uncanny Valley” must be read with the understanding and compassion that the tech industry lacks. When read as such, Wiener’s memoir works as a compelling behind-the-scenes look at the brutal practices of the all-too-often glorified tech industry.
