I read it in one sitting, overcome with the eerie sensation that my own life was being explained to me. If Silicon Valley had seen her potential, she would not have become one of the finest, most assured writers about the internet today. She was seen as dispensable her memoir is anything but. They feel that their story has not been told, even if it is a story as old as time.Īn anomaly is Uncanny Valley, a breakout first book by Anna Wiener about her four years working expendable non-coding positions in Silicon Valley start-ups. There are tell-all books by nannies (Mary-Kay Wilmers’s), assistants (Anna Wintour’s), gallery girls (Gagosian’s), more juicy than substantive. The underlings feel that they alone are witnessing the hypocrisy, outlandish expenditures, and dirty secrets of powerful people. Alluring for access and proximity to power, debilitating for reasons of incompetence or abuse. Jobs that birth writers tend to be inspiringly exploitative. It is occasionally the case that subjects find themselves in the unique position of being written about without knowing they are in the presence of a writer.

And yet the majority of writers are incapable of figuring out what it is they are looking at, too lazy to suss out the implication or injustice lurking beneath the surface. Whether you are party reporting or writing profiles, you can always find something unethical to unearth, if you care to dig. It thrills to read a story that no one wants written about themselves. No fundamental understanding that a writer, at the end of the day, is only going to make her career if she exploits her subjects, even if it’s just to expose their bad personalities or unkempt apartments.

No inkling that a salacious story is better than a puff piece. The best pieces of long-form journalism are those where you get the sinking feeling the subject has no idea what the point of journalism is.

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