Uncanny Valley doesn’t name names, it offers descriptions instead. Their leaders may not have enough life experience to see the full picture, yet they feel they do, because venture capitalists put them on a pedestal. The “young founders” aspect, besides great to poke fun at, is also a serious problem, when tech companies hugely disrupt society. When, for work, she attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, she describes she doesn’t feel like a women in computing, “more like a women around computers, a woman with a computer”. Wiener also takes the time to discuss serious problems in tech, including the feeling of “not belonging”, both as a women and as a non-engineer (she worked in support, and apparently that’s lower in the hierarchy).

It’s not a 300 page rant, though, Wiener does not simply attack everything the Valley stands for (there are other books for that), it’s more subtle. Her somewhat ironic tone works really well for this kind of thing, as it nicely cuts through the nonsense. Most of these phenomena were not new or shocking to me (as someone who works in tech), but I enjoyed Wiener’s liberal arts perspective on them. She was astounded by what she found: the constant gospel of work as the most important part of life, men who are overly confident about their own ideas, open bars, the 24 hour hustle, the dress code of company branded hoodies, God Mode, camping trips with no actual camping, childish company names, companies ran by people in their 20s, an office reception that is a replica of the Oval Office… the book is full of these on point details. It touched me, because I love books and don’t want them disrupted.Īt 25, Wiener left her life in Brooklyn, New York for San Francisco, to go work in the Valley. Making books shorter will effectively increase the rate at which we can learn.” This tweet from a start-up founder is quoted in Anna Wiener’s hilarious memoir Uncanny Valley, in which she tears apart the “dreary efficiency fetish” of the San Francisco tech scene, among other things.

“It’s unfortunate that the world does not reward conciseness more.

Uncanny valley anna wiener review