Uncanny Valley

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener (2020 4th Estate hardcover 280pp)

After working for several years as an assistant in a publishing firm Anna Wiener feels she’s reached a dead end and decides to leave New York city. She makes her way across the country to the promised land of Silicon Valley to find a new role in the fabled world of the tech start up.

She first joins a small analytics firm apparently doing wonderful things with the data generated by other businesses. As a non techie herself she initially finds it hard to fit in with the team but eventually carves out a niche for herself doing technical support and customer service.

She moves on again to larger company dealing with Open-Source software, finds it more relaxed to start with but problems for her soon mount up and she keeps having doubts about the firm, her colleagues and the tech industry as a whole.

Set against the background of a rapidly changing San Francisco area this book shines a light on life in the fast-moving, myth-making tech sector. Another angle on the story told in Clive Thompson’s “Coders” which I read (and reviewed) earlier this year – this time from a semi-outsider. What she finds often isn’t pretty, sexism and racism is rampant in the industry. It’s a world made for and by young men who fool themselves into thinking they are the pinnacle of society, the so-called ‘meritocracy’. Their leaders often spouting cod-philosophy as they turn around and treat others like dirt.

I enjoyed the book but at times it did seem a little slight. Wiener has decided not to name any of the companies, instead using cute or whimsical phrases to identify them while at the same time leaving plenty of clues as to who she is referring to. The latter part of the book verges off into a litany of her self-doubts which some readers might find a little much. Overall, it’s a good snap-shot of a time, a place and an industry which may now be on the edge of becoming extinct.