Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Part coming-of-age story, part portrait of an already bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir, Uncanny Valley, 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

"Joan Didion at a startup."  -  Rebecca Solnit

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 during a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivalling 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. 

"A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to it for clarity and consolation for many years to come."  -  Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror

With wit, candour, and heart, Anna Wiener deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world saviour to democracy - endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.