Uncanny Valley

A Memoir

By: Anna Wiener

Narrated by: Suehyla El-Attar

Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

The prescient account of a journey into Silicon Valley: a defining memoir for our digital age.

At 25 years old, Anna Wiener was beginning to tire of her assistant job in New York publishing. There was no room to grow, and the voyeuristic thrill of answering someone else’s phone had worn thin. Within a year she had moved to San Francisco to take up a job at a data analytics start-up in Silicon Valley. Leaving her business-casual skirts and shirts in the wardrobe, she began working in company-branded T-shirts and hoodies. She had a healthy income for the first time in her life. She felt like part of the future.

But a tide was beginning to turn. People were speaking of tech start-ups as surveillance companies. Out of 60 employees, only 8 of her colleagues were women. Casual sexism was rife. Sexual harassment cases were proliferating. And soon, like everyone else, she was addicted to the internet, refreshing the news, refreshing social media, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Slowly, she began to realise that her blind faith in ambitious, arrogant young men from America’s soft suburbs wasn’t just her own personal pathology. It had become a global affliction.

Uncanny Valley is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of our generation’s very own gold rush. It’s a story about the tension between old and new, between art and tech, between the quest for money and the quest for meaning - about how our world is changing forever.

©2020 Anna Wiener (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

 "Joan Didion at a startup." (Rebecca Solnit, best-selling author of Men Explain Things to Me)

"This was the memoir I'd been waiting for. A witty, unique perspective and fresh insight showing us the behind the scenes of the tech industry in a new thrilling way." (Emma Gannon)

"A rare mix of acute, funny, up-to-the-minute social observation, dead-serious contemplation of the tech industry’s annexation of our lives, and a sincere first-person search for meaningful work and connection. How does an unworn pair of plain sneakers become a monument to the end of sensuousness? Read on." (William Finnegan, author of Barbarian Days)

just a book everyone should read

a valuable and insightful observation and reflection of the world we live in. having worked in tech, I was both a bit embarrassed and relieved to hear the tales from the echo chamber of business.

Engaging narrator, thin content

It rattles along but really it felt like a magazine article stretched into a book.

Underwhelming.

I’m baffled as to why this memoir has received so many rave reviews in the press and been named in Best Reads of 2020 features. Whatever the point of this non-story was, I missed it entirely.

Nothing really happens apart from the author moving from tech job to tech job. Her insistence on not naming certain social media platforms swiftly got on my nerves. “He wrote on the micro blogging site.” “I logged on to the social media site that everyone hated”. Fine once or twice, not repeated over and over. By the end I was yelling at my device: “Just say he tweeted, for the love of all that is good and holy.”

Love this audio book

Loved the audio book, everything from about it. Cramed with insight into the early day some of today's biggest companies. The booked is crammed with great moments of humour and whit. An excellent ride along with someone who was there and is open about her past on many fronts. A good listen , get it learn something and enjoy.

S boring book of lists

The author's descriptions consists of lists and lists of things and the way the narrator reads this like a performance piece is really irritating. It's really hard to take in. Even regular sentences are read with a weird valley girl, overly performed, sing-song cadance with too many dramatic pauses. It's like the book version of Paddy McAloon's I Trawl the Megahertz, which is meant to be snippets of stories and fragmented. A book shouldn't be disjointed, arty snippets of description. Everything is described in such a detached way. People are only referred to by their titles. It was a slog to get through. The author just seems like a bored teenager trying to prove she's better than everyone.

Neverending dullness

If she hates the tech industry so much why does she stick with it?! I repeatedly asked myself this while forcing myself to reach the end of this extended moan from the author. The book outlines the typical misogynistic environment of the tech industry and is basically a long ramble about the injustices and hardships the author encountered on her life journey. I can't believe I made it to the end- zoning out helped. It's well read at least...

great polemic

This is a polemic for our times, cutting, quick-witted, self aware and self-deprecating. Especially in the final straight there are some devastating acknowledgements of the vacuity of youth, absurd expectations for what are really simple ideas, and the casual (again, youthful) insouciance of these tech entrepreneurs of the long range effects and consequences of their cargo cult.

Excellent narrator, too.

Hair-raising account

I loved this. It's an account that rings totally true and it's pretty shocking - even if you think you know how toxic the tech world is. I loved the personal details and the ups and downs. Loved the frankness and the humour. As a picture of contemporary Silicon Valley life it's amazingly real and instructive. I've recommended this book to several people and I'm still thinking about it.