Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Wiener begins work at the open-source startup, a beloved institution in the industry. Taking inspiration from the free software community that birthed it, the startup’s culture maintains a “subversive, countercultural, and deeply techno-utopian ethos” (158). Wiener describes the freedom this offers employees: They can name their own salaries and work remotely if they wish. The company exists as much or more online, in the cloud, than in its opulent headquarters. To acclimate herself—and with no formal onboarding program established—Wiener plumbs its extensive archive of documented meetings and conversations. She reads chat logs about a sexual discrimination scandal from which the company has just begun to recover, scrolling the record of how employees reacted to the event in real time. She considers this lurking pragmatic, using it “a means of discovering whom to avoid and whom to trust” (160).

In her second week, Wiener travels to Chicago to join a “hack house,” an event in which employees convene in a city together to work in person. She befriends her new coworkers easily and on the second night, they discuss recent changes in company culture as it navigates out of a “prolonged awkward adolescence.” One female coworker complains coldly that the discrimination scandal, while upsetting for moral reasons, has also reduced the value of employees’ equity.