The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020 791I
n the pastdecade the number of people
using the internet has leapt from 1.8bn, or
a quarter of the world, to 4.1bn, well over
half. Internet companies grew with their
user bases. Ten years ago Facebook had
roughly 2,000 employees; today 45,000
people work for it full-time, mostly in Sili-
con Valley. Google went from 24,000 staff
to 119,000 in the same period. Add in other
big firms such as Apple and Netflix, dozens
of unlisted “unicorns” and thousands of
startups, and the head-count in the valley
is equal to a fair-sized city.
Who are these people? A handful are
stereotypical wunderkinds, too busy
building apps that improve the human
condition to waste time on human emo-
tions (or finish their degrees). But many—
all the normal folk in sales, marketing, hr,customer support—are like Anna Wiener,
the author of “Uncanny Valley”, a memoir
about working in the tech industry of the
2010s. Like most people, the condition they
mainly want to improve is their own.
In her telling, Ms Wiener, a sociology
major who had the misfortune to graduate
into the global financial crisis, starts her
professional career as an assistant to a lit-
erary agent in New York. Tired of being
privileged yet “downwardly mobile”, she
joins a tech startup on the east coast, flubs
it, but fails upwards to a better-paid job in
San Francisco. Once there she observes
first-hand the absurdities and extrava-
gances of the industry. One of her employ-ers is a meritocracy-obsessed cult with a
name-your-own-salary policy that leads to
an enormous gender pay gap. It marks its
first round of venture-capital funding by
building an exact replica of the Oval Office.
Another outfit unironically releases a
sinister feature called Addiction which, as
Ms Wiener ghostwrites in the blog post an-
nouncing it, “allows companies to see how
embedded they are into other people’s
lives”. She is at her best when describing
the carelessness that would give the tech
industry its well-deserved reputation for
hubris. “Don’t be evil” is a blithe motto if
the definition of “evil” is unexamined.
In New York, Ms Wiener recalls, “I had
never considered that there were people
behind the internet.” But in San Francisco
“it was impossible to forget”. After all, she
was one of them. Occasionally she has
pangs of conscience, asking a friend, “Do
you think I work at a surveillance com-
pany?” But such concerns fall by the way-
side in a cloud of ecstasy and clean air, as
she finds the twin millennial grails of a de-
cent salary and comprehensive health care.
Ever the ingénue, Ms Wiener does not set
out to straddle the world like a colossus.
She and legions like her are content merely
to peep about from under the legs of digital
history’s great men—men like the founder
of “the social network everyone hated”, as
she periphrastically refers to him.
“Of course, I hate [Facebook]. WhoHistories of the webParadise lost
Two dotcom memoirs point to a pressing question: whose internet is it anyway?Uncanny Valley.By Anna Wiener. MCD
Books; 288 pages; $27. Fourth Estate; £16.99
Lurking: How a Person Became a User. By
Joanne McNeil. MCD Books; 288 pages; $28Books & arts
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