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In her mid-twenties, Anna Wiener is in New York City, working a low paid job in the publishing industry. Everyone she knows is working the same kind of barely making it job as they check their safety net of parents wondering how long they could subsist as they 'paid their dues'. When she has the chance to change her life and move to California and work in the technology industry, she jumps at the chance.She works there for half a decade, cycling between several tech start-ups and more established technology companies. Anna doesn't have technical skills; she isn't a programmer or a data scientist or a security guru. She works in customer service, fielding calls for help, tracking down copyright infringements and checking company content boards for offensive and illegal content. She is incredibly well paid compared to her NYC days and the culture is very different. Employee structures are flat and perks abound. Remote work is allowed and encouraged.But there are drawbacks as well. A higher salary doesn't mean much when all the technology money has made the real estate market so expensive that it is the rare person who doesn't have to have roommates well past the age that most people are on their own. Perks don't mean much in work weeks that routinely are expected to be eighty to a hundred hours weekly. Women are marginalized as are the non-tech employees. The buzz word for compensation is meritocracy but it's strange how the merit all seems to reside in young, white males who look just like the founders of these young companies.Uncanny Valley is a term used in the technology industry. It refers to the fact that individuals respond more favorably to robots that appear human, but if the robot gets too human appearing, a revulsion sets in. It is a metaphor for the technology industry that appears fascinating and desirable from the outside but is anxiety producing and barren from an insiders' view. It is the casual data driven environment where every purchase and opinion is tracked and sold to companies so that they can better target their products and influence society. It is a cautionary tale that only an insider can tell. This book is recommended for readers of nonfiction and especially for those considering a career in technology.

I really enjoyed this book, but probably not for the reasons others might. For starters I spent 38 years in high tech working for the largest company in the world in its day that invented mainframe computers and ended my career at the largest telecom company in the UK. In between I ran software companies and much more. I can tell you that it was a different, in that we actually provided real world solutions for everything from highway design to monitoring air and water quality, automating production, using GIS to monitor the environment, and general business accounting. I also lived in San Francisco when it was a city populated by all walks of life, with neighborhoods of Italians or Irish, a thriving middle class, seniors, children and it was clean and well governed. There was a thriving remnant of the Beats and the Hippies and it was a place where gay culture flourished alongside business people in suits and ties.I, of course, know about the changes in the industry and the youth movement which made me a fossil who got out in time, and I certainly visit “the City” on a regular basis, but the book convinced me of two things: one, I am glad that I am no longer in technology as it has been turned over to self-absorbed Millennials who are only interested in money, social media, AI, and never growing up or trying to accomplish anything that would help people in the real world. Imagine “Animal House” with John Belushi as the CEO and you pretty much have it down.Secondly, the narcissistic, self-absorbed, frat house like children, mostly men and all no older than 35 have taken over SF and basically driven out just about everything that once made it a great city so that it bears no resemblance to its last 75 years. Think avocado toast, Burning Man, $17 lattes, restaurants with a 120 decibel level, and overpriced everything in a town filled only with them, the homeless, the 1%, and the crowded in minorities running the restaurants and you pretty much have it also.So, I loved the book because it made me thankful to not live in SF or be working in tech…now why you might like this book is debatable.