288 pages
English language
Published Jan. 13, 2021 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-of-age-story, part …
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.
Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.
纽约编辑转行去硅谷当support
可能是接触的圈子，感觉程序员一直有光环，是成功的象征。一开始会觉得offensive，打破我原有的认知。但即使视角不同，作者依然也是privileged，希望自己等职业发展到一定程度也能认清对生活的目标，急流勇退。
因为提供了不同视角，所以推荐～
I am probably not the right person to review a memoir about a mid-20s woman who decided that a career in New York book publishing wasn't exciting enough, so she dropped everything and headed to Silicon Valley to work as a customer support rep for an up and coming software start up. Even worse, it specialize in "data analytics" - all the data you wished they didn't have on your. Then she moved on to a big open source company that was just getting bigger.
While there, she ran into all the usual types - bro programmers who didn't believe a woman could know or contribute anything in the tech world, driven male CEOs who felt like just because they happened to sell out at the right time and got tons of money meant they know everything about everything. And customers and modern hippies and long time natives dealing with …
I am probably not the right person to review a memoir about a mid-20s woman who decided that a career in New York book publishing wasn't exciting enough, so she dropped everything and headed to Silicon Valley to work as a customer support rep for an up and coming software start up. Even worse, it specialize in "data analytics" - all the data you wished they didn't have on your. Then she moved on to a big open source company that was just getting bigger.
While there, she ran into all the usual types - bro programmers who didn't believe a woman could know or contribute anything in the tech world, driven male CEOs who felt like just because they happened to sell out at the right time and got tons of money meant they know everything about everything. And customers and modern hippies and long time natives dealing with the gentrification of San Francisco.
I am hugely ambivalent about this autobiography. She combines both deep and banal insights, often in the same paragraph. She often comes across as condescending, which is weird for someone who admits she doesn't know really what she wants either. I mean there is the usual litany of just outrageous sexism, but she also seems to miss the driven passion of lots of tech people who just love the tech. She talks of them like an exotic specimen, but sometimes it just sounds to me like someone who doesn't have that focused drive and can't understand it.
But as a white male who has been a software programmer for more years than you can imagine, I certainly can't comment on the attitudes she must have faced. I'd like to think I haven't allowed it when I hear it, as I have had plenty of highly respected women developers. But it is obviously a sick problem my industry is rife with and I have no idea how to make it go away, besides just hire more women. She has quite a bit about how hard it is to break the chain, as people who aren't like the interviewers always seem to fall short. Maybe some day...
But it is a quick, interesting read of the sky rocketing Silicon Valley scene of the years from like 2000 thru the 2016 election. She is a bit coy about naming names, calling the companies "the search engine giant" or the "highly litigious Seattle-based software conglomerate" or the "social media company everyone loves to hate", which got tiring after awhile, to be honest. But it is an excellent record of the time and I recommend it highly.
