
Uncanny Valley - kawera
https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/
======
rotskoff
I think what I like best about this piece is the way in which it emphasizes
the cultural homogeneity of Silicon Valley and the tension that enjoying and
benefiting from that culture creates. It's absurd that each of these companies
present itself as radical, creative, and free-thinking, when it's just another
start-up with standing desks and Nerf guns lying around. Even the snack
selection is stereotypical "the requisite wholesale box of assorted Clif
Bars."

At the same time, the more relaxed, casual, and less hierarchical corporate
structures that these companies have adopted can be very rewarding. While they
haven't yet nailed the work-life balance considerations for many employees,
more comfortable environments may end up fostering more productive, more
inclusive teams (albeit there's a long way to go w/r/t diversity in tech) [1].

Just a plug: I've been a subscriber to n+1 for a long time, and I was
pleasantly surprised to see it on the front page of Hacker News. It's a
fantastic publication.

1\. [http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF](http://nyti.ms/1oCxUeF)

------
kough
I've been out of SF for three years but goddamn if I didn't get swept right
back into it while reading this. Fantastic writing, made me inhabit that same
mental space that I'd almost forgotten about. I miss it but I never want to go
back. The line about working at a startup feeling like an abusive relationship
hit home pretty hard.

~~~
neilk
At one startup I was in, I said to a coworker, "It's like we're all the kids,
and daddy drinks" and she had a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I actually just had a small laughter right now by reading it. That's how good
it is.

Still smiling after a good minute. Thanks for sharing it.

------
altotrees
Really well-written piece. Someone else mentioned Brett Easton-Ellis in this
thread, and I totally got that vibe from the early paragraphs on.

What really got me though, was thinking about my earliest days building small
Beavis and Butthead fan sites on Geocities, browsing Netscape for hours and
waiting five minutes for a certain page to finally load. I was only 12 then,
but everything just felt so new and shiny, and as someone else said like it
could and would change the world.

Having now lived around and worked in tech for a while, stories like these
make me feel a bit like I have been punched in the gut. It just seems negative
and gross, but in a really captivating way. I connect with what the writer is
saying, but also still get butterflies in my stomach when I think back to the
90's and my earliest exposure to startups and internet use.

At any rate, just me rambling. Well-done and insightful, I would read an
entire novel like this.

~~~
kough
Now picture someone not quite as old as you, who missed that first wave of
internet excitement. They've never had that excitement, and they're the ones
graduating college and going west now. I went out straight after high school,
moved from the East Coast, did my tour of duty. It's weird because at that age
I had no idea what kind of life I might want to live; what kind of lives were
even available to live, really. And I didn't have the same dreams you may have
had, definitely not the same inspirations.

All the aspects of the OP's writing that hit me like a gut punch now were
absolutely bog standard to me. Only once I'd left (largely due to depression
and burnout) did I realize how far that life is from the life I want to live.

------
machrider
Google cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZE...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4ToCZEnixcQJ:https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-
the-fringe/uncanny-valley/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
alanh
Does anyone know why this article was unreachable yesterday? Was it "just" an
outage of the entire n+1 magazine?

~~~
machrider
I got an "error connecting to the database" type of message. I think the
entire site was having trouble with the HN traffic spike.

------
bpchaps
Love it. Every time I try to talk about these things with those who
participate in these sorts of mentalities, I'm shrugged off as cynical, or
non-appreciative of a perception of positive progress. It's very difficult as
someone who's naturally not "in it", to explain why it's so difficult and soul
crushing.

~~~
moron4hire
Oh, yeah. Clearly you just don't "get it". Clearly you're just don't "want it
enough". I say, if you're so smart, articulate what "it" actually is, clearly,
without resorting to hand-waiving, or else I will default back to assuming
there is no actual "it" there.

~~~
bpchaps
I have a different personality with different sets of motivations, compounded
with mental health differences that make it near impossible to fit in with the
SV crowd. It's one of the few crowds like this, despite their swaths of feel-
good attitudes and intentions. It's incredibly exclusionary and dismissive.
Funny enough, your comment is a great example of what I mean.

I'm assuming you didn't read the article, or else you would have had a better
understanding of what I refer to when talking about "it".

~~~
moron4hire
I was agreeing with you. I'm sorry, that was my fault. I misused the general
"you".

~~~
bpchaps
Gotcha. No worries, sorry for blowing up like that.. :(

------
nickstefan12
The article form of "Silicon Valley" HBO...

I actually turned off the TV and finished the entire article. Its amazing to
think how rare it is for me to actually read an article and not just SKIM.
Maybe its not that amazing. Most articles just aren't worth more than a skim.
This was so enjoyable I was disappointed that it was over. I'd read a book
like this...

Favorite line:

> The hashtag unleashes a stream of photographs featuring people I’ve never
> met — beautiful people, the kind of people who look good in athleisure.

------
Johnny_Brahms
The workplaces she describe seems like they try to replace an ordinary life
with a life at work. Like some sort of continuation of university. She writes
it herself:

> "Job listings are an excellent place to get sprayed with HR’s idea of fun
> and a 23-year-old’s idea of work-life balance."

I have had a taste of that, and oh my god I would never go back. The life that
scared the shit out of 23-year-old me is way better than any company could
ever offer. I work to live, and I would never go back to this "work as life"
living ever again.

------
neilk
Last night I read the entire article, out loud, to my SO.

At first, she said wasn't sympathetic because for her, it was "first world
problems", and a millenial's predictable disappointment in the workplace.
She's not wrong.

But I read it as a kind of drug memoir. An addict talking about their days
breathing in all the toxic and intoxicating fumes of the city. And like every
former addict it's impossible not to have a kind of nostalgia for it. Life is
simpler, because your whole life is about the next fix.

~~~
kenko
Man, those workplace disappointments sure aren't "predictable" except in a
larger workplace ecosystem that's 100% fucked up.

------
hendzen
Great writing. Reads like a memoir, but with the depth of an ethnography. I
believe the company described here is Mixpanel FWIW.

~~~
enahs-sf
Rip sticks and dftc. Dead giveaway.

~~~
alanh
I had to look DFTC up. From their job descriptions:

> • _We are down for the cause (“DFTC”). We’re all here to make Mixpanel a
> success. There is no job too big or too small for us. “That’s not my job” is
> not in our vocabulary._

------
hkmurakami
It's interesting to me that my friends and I who grew up in SV and lived
through the .com boom as adolescents and had parents who worked during the
.com and PC/networking/semiconductor booms are largely skeptical and at times
even dismissive of the latest incarnation of SV culture.

Perhaps it's hubris ("the old version --my version-- was better"), perhaps
it's cynicism (seeing family/friends be burned in the last booms), or perhaps
it's a feeling of betrayal ("I grew up wanting to be part of a culture that
has morphed -- in my opinion for the worse").

Maybe it's something else. Though my sample size is small, I find this
contrast interesting.

Perhaps it's just a numbers thing where newcomers predominantly buy into the
current myth and want to live the current version of startup life, whereas the
old timers have not self selected in that manner and this represent a wider
spectrum.

~~~
dasil003
I graduated from high school in 1996 and was way into web development from the
very first days. I didn't end up coming out for the dotcom days, but I
definitely have fond memories of those times. There was a sense of camaraderie
of early PC and internet users where the motivations seemed to me to be
slightly more noble. Not that the VCs or tech giants of the time weren't
greedy—of course they were—but there wasn't the same kind of Hollywood feel
where all the ambitious people were flooding out here gold-rush style.

If you went on Usenet / IRC back in the 80s/90s, there was this palpable sense
that the internet would change the world. You could almost draw a direct line
back to the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and those ideas which led to
a lot of early software and networking work which we still benefit from today.
The vast majority of people involved with computers back then were just drawn
to them by their nature.

The problem today is that other sectors of the economy are really suffering,
and software has become so easy that the bar to get started is so low, add the
veneer of social media glorifying the whole thing and it lends itself to a
circus atmosphere. Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path.
I don't begrudge anyone their chosen path, but it has certainly led to a
different vibe than what it used to be.

At the end of the day though, I have to admit to myself that it is probably
simple nostalgia. Every generation thinks the old days were better as they
age.

~~~
hkmurakami
> Many people today choose tech as an arbitrary career path.

Very true. At even the most elite of schools, CS degree -> engineering career
has joined Econ degree -> banking and High GPA -> Consulting as a top choice
high flying career choice for bright students who aren't sure of what they
want to do for their careers.

I started college in 2003, when as college applicants we were going through
the deepest troughs of the dotcom crash. The number of entering CS students
was about 20. The dean called them "the true believers" (I was studying EE). I
believe that this number is now well north of 100.

>Every generation thinks the old days were better as they age.

I am constantly questioning my own opinion of this latest trend, as I'm keenly
aware of my own such biases.

------
danbmil99
That really hits home. It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated the
degree to which one's identity becomes wrapped up in the startup.

It sometimes feels like it has its own mind and soul.

~~~
alanh
It's also difficult to explain the corollary: When work is life, your boss
telling you that maybe it wasn’t a good “culture fit” anymore / after all is a
little like dying. That’s melodramatic, but losing such a big part of your
identity is disorienting and depressing.

------
Gaessaki
Fantastic writing. Reminds me a bit of "Microserfs", but somewhat more
focused.

~~~
arethuza
Ah - I made that association this morning when I read it over breakfast then
thought I was being crazy.

No references to flat food though!

------
seekingcharlie
Is it because we were the nerds in high school? Is it because we were the kids
who had to explain differential equations to our classmates more than once?

Is that why we now feel this incessant need to fabricate startups/tech as
being "cool"? Is that why we write grandiose tales of how "difficult" life is,
moving from CRUD app to CRUD app?

Sorry, author. I feel your pain, believe me I do. To me, this article honestly
came across as someone who had read too much Bret Easton Ellis recently...

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
>this article honestly came across as someone who had read too much Bret
Easton Ellis recently...

I very much enjoyed this article, but I had that BEE thought as well! My
theory is that a lot of us human beings manufacture strife and struggle,
because that is the Hero's Journey that everyone wants to be able to tell to
their grandchildren. In the absence of "real" conflict (war, poverty, abuse),
we shine the dark light on things like this. "I have a well paying job with
great benefits and live in an awesome city...but I'm sad because, like, what
does this all mean, man?" I'm not discounting the deep sadness that
existential crises can saddle your daily life with, but I've seen this trend
time and time again. Just pay attention to modern rap music, like Kanye.
Listen to his lyrics. That dude has minimal "real world" problems in his life
right now, from what I can tell, yet his music is one of "me against the
world." That's because he knows what a story arc is supposed to be like, so
he'll play that out for us, regardless of its actual truth.

/random rant

~~~
mbrock
Joseph Campbell's idea of the hero's journey was, I think, partly inspired by
the myth of the Buddha, whose problem was (excuse me) the same as Kanye's: he
had everything, yet he was unhappy.

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
Correct. However it's at this point of the story (both of their stories) that
the roads drastically separate.

------
dcposch
Great writing. It definitely hits on some truth and calls out hypocrisies and
absurdities that deserve to be called out.

Overall, though, I think this is unnecessarily negative.

I think you've got to keep some perspective. There are about eight billion
people in the world. 7.9 billion of them would probably give almost anything
to enjoy the lifestyle she so eloquently disparages.

> I lean in and go to a panel on big data. There are two venture capitalists
> onstage, dressed identically. They are exceptionally sweaty. [...] It’s like
> watching two ATMs in conversation.

> The food is served in sturdy tinfoil troughs, and people race to be first in
> line for self-serve. [It's] well worth someone else’s money, and every
> afternoon I shovel it into my body

So you viscerally dislike VCs, but you're cool with VC-funded startup perks.

> My roommate works down on the Peninsula, for a website that everyone loathes
> but no one can stop using.

So you also dislike Facebook, and you assume the other billion people using
Facebook dislike it as well. You disapprove of your roommate's choice of job,
you think they're wasting their time working on "a website that everyone
loathes". Everything is terrible.

\--

Her writing reminds me of Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky -- two other
writers that I respect, but who share a bad habit of hating on anything
connected to money, ambition, or technologically driven human progress.

~~~
twooster
Just because it's a lifestyle that many people would kill to have doesn't mean
it's actually worthwhile. It just means it's well marketed. Like living and
working in Hollywood, or being a banker in London.

If you drink the koolaid AND you get really lucky, you get to have a
profitable business that changes the world for the better. For most, it's
actually a job like anything else, just with the added expectation of utter
devotion and unwavering belief.

I think her point is that despite the perks, she's just "shoveling it into her
body", all of it, and can't quite get over the uncanniness of it all.

Also, I thought Facebook at first too, and thought it was a bit strong, then
realized she was talking about LinkedIn.

------
keyle
I'm not from the valley or the US and don't know the accuracy of those words,
but it feels really real.

If anything, it's stunningly well written. Great post.

------
scelerat
> “Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.”

This quip about investing in property in Oakland hits home. I had some
reservations about crossing the Bay a few years ago to buy a home, but one I
did _not_ have was about moving to a place where people who had attitudes like
this were uncommon.

Several months ago I ran into an ex-coworker who triumphantly told me how he
had cashed out some of his options to buy some units in Oakland, evicted the
existing tenants under some owner/family move-in loophole, vacated, remodeled,
and was now raking in the rent. All the while explaining that he would never
actually live there. I wanted to vomit.

I'm a lucky dummy romantic, I moved to SF because I like trains, and LA didn't
have any. I have some skills which have helped me land excellent jobs. I don't
hide my disgust for baloney very well and this has enabled me to walk away
from some jobs. My brushes with the proto-corporate startup world have been
fleeting, but proportionally every bit as soul-sucking as the author makes it
out to be.

Excellent piece.

------
jtfairbank
“Oakland,” one of them says. “That’s where we want to invest.”

“Too dangerous,” says another. “My wife would never go for it.”

“Of course not,” says the first, “but you don’t buy to live there.”

I live in Oakland. So glad these people aren't coming here.

~~~
rrdharan
Even if they're not gonna be your neighbors, from the last quote it sounds
like they'll be your landlords. Not sure if that's much better?

~~~
jtfairbank
They already are my landlords... :(

Actually my landlords are pretty dope. They're techies (me too) but they live
upstairs so they're ok by me. But yeah, the absentee landlord for profit thing
kinda sucks. I get a bit of schadenfreude when chinese investors buy their
appartment complex in the city and raise their rents.

~~~
alanh
Are you saying you saw absentee landlords themselves experience a rent hike at
the hands of foreign investors? That would indeed be a nice bit of
schadenfreude…

------
chezhead
Wow. That hooked me from the beginning to end. Thanks for posting this

------
phantom_package
That was phenomenal. I constantly struggle with a lot of this - trying to
distance myself from many aspects of the culture, without getting too cynical
about it.

I think most of all, I just appreciate knowing that there is someone else
kicking around in this city that feels the same way I do.

------
pcmaffey
We used to be adults when we left home for college or a job. Then, college
became an extension of our youth... Now, that's not enough either. We need our
jobs to be our next day care...

We're growing up slower. It's not a problem, so long as we're equipped as a
society for longer maturation cycles, longer lifetimes, etc. The real world
always finds its way in.

Better to accept the new paradigm, call it what it is, and adapt accordingly,
than to judge.

Anna's story would make a great movie, btw.

------
markbnj
Great piece. Love her style. It hit home with me as well for several reasons.

------
roghummal
>“I feel sorry,” he says, his breath moist against my neck. “Everyone’s going
to hit on her.”

------
ivanca
So, what is this? A rambling of everything around you portrayed in a negative
light; I'm sure it's a formula that could work in a about any other city or
any other job. Heck, I was sure at the end of it she would tell us she joined
a fight club and has an imaginary alter ego called Tyler.

If we discarded every item you mentioned for being juvenile or immature the
office of your dreams would look like this: [http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/cub...](http://www.nimlok-chicago.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/12/cubicles.jpg) But that's not the office of your dreams
right? To know the office of your dreams you would have to tell me _what you
want_, not what you-do-not-want, which is missing in every paragraph of this
piece.

------
sdrothrock
Since the site seems to be down, here's a Readability mirror I made using the
Google cache version:
[https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn](https://www.readability.com/articles/j04a6pwn)

------
MuncleUscles
Reading this made me profoundly sad, in the best possible way

------
derwiskinator
I'm in love with this article, and my SO is reading it right now. It reminds
me perfectly of books like J-Pod and MicroSerfs, as well as some of the recent
Gibson novels.

I work at a company that has just morphed out of "startup" and into
"contender". I didn't start early, I was hired by the guys who were hired by
the founders (so that makes me a 'C' I guess by some old adage), and I've seen
the company change so much even in my short time there.

But this article nails so many perfect details. The plastic tubs of goldfish
and trailmix, the Mid Century modern-esque furniture.

Also, the bar referenced is probably OddJob.

------
kafkaesq
_A MEETING IS DROPPED MYSTERIOUSLY onto our calendars, and at the designated
time we shuffle warily into a conference room. The last time this happened, we
were given forms that asked us to rate various values on a scale of 1 to 5:
our desire to lead a team; the importance of work-life balance. I gave both
things a 4 and was told I didn’t want it enough._

Clearly, the only acceptable answers to this question (if indeed one wants
that team leader position) are the numbers 5 and 1.

And if you don't implicitly understand this, then this definitely isn't the
right industry for you.

------
jryan49
Fantastic writing!

------
moron4hire
That is, after all, the conceit of utopian stories: they are all dystopian.

------
_98fj
<Sarcasm> StartUps were the boys' loophole for not having to learn to deal
with their fathers. (/fathers' companies, structures, power games) </Sarcasm>

------
frenchie4111
This is fucking amazing

------
felix_thursday
Are there any other articles in this same vein that people would recommend?

------
whatever_dude
Beautiful.

------
venomsnake
Are modern teambuildings really that lame as she described them? Glad I didn't
choose big corporate as career.

~~~
alanh
I had to laugh. I think I applied to be the roommate of the folks behind the
teambuilding exercise company she mentioned.
[http://ClashSF.com](http://ClashSF.com)

------
SocksCanClose
Morozov would say, "I told you so".

