Uncanny Valley
by Anna Wiener, Suehyla El-Attar, Javier Calvo · first published 2020
56% recommend44% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Memoir-style account of working inside Silicon Valley startups, offering a sharp, often wry critique of tech culture. It is worth reading for anyone curious about the industry from the inside.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"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 weal
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…Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork - Reeves Wiedeman Whistleblower: My Unlikely Journey to Silicon Valley and Speaking Out Against Injustice - Susan Fowler Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley - Adrian Daub The Scapegoat - René Girard
on “Ask HN: Books on the inside stories of big tech?” ↗This article is far too on-the-nose for my taste. As an exaggerated critique of Silicon Valley, I much rather enjoyed Anna Wiener's "Uncanny Valley". Article: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valle... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565691
on “This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley” ↗…attitude now; in both cases, he washes his hands of the hard work of actually building and surviving the real world. Also - if you're not familiar with Anna Wiener, I think her best work is the essay "Uncanny Valley": https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valle...
on “The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog”” ↗Anna Wiener makes commentary in her book Uncanny Valley that's pretty on the nose, and I know I wouldn't be able to do it justice. Worth a read.
on “Ask HN: Is HN a ‘healthy online community’? I’m doing a case study for a class” ↗No Place to Hide By Glenn Greenwald and Uncanny Valley By Anna Wiener
on “Ask HN: Dystopian Sci-fi books that take place in San Francisco to recommend?” ↗…Robert A. Caro The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris Elon Musk, by Ashlee Vance The Sovereign Individual, by James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg’s A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys Uncanny Valley, by Anna Wiener'
on “Silicon Valley's Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions” ↗Wasn’t this guy the CEO of the unnamed startup in Anna Wiener’s “Uncanny Valley”? https://slate.com/culture/2020/01/uncanny-valley-brand-names...
on “The first 18 months of a startup” ↗Bit of context since the title needs improvement: Anna Wiener, a former GitHub employee, authors a book titled "Uncanny Valley" about "Unregulated surveillance, ruthless bosses, sexual harassment..." in Silicon Valley. Also, from TFA: "in January 2018, Universal Pictures optioned film rights; the screenplay is now in its initial…
on “Anna Wiener on her book “Uncanny Valley”” ↗Hacker News is mentioned in the Quartz article, which is an interview with Anna Wiener, author of the new book "Uncanny Valley"(underscores mine): Quartz:"You talk in your book about the tendency in Silicon Valley for venture capitalists or people on _Hacker_ _News_ to hold forth on philosophical issues and debates that don’t…
on “There’s a deep sadness to it: A new book takes on masculinity in Silicon Valley” ↗