
We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better - jseliger
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html?smid=tw-nytmag&_r=1&
======
psn
I'm a employee of a large tech company that's being parodied here, and I found
this really disconcerting. The scenes with the boss and HR are completely
different to my experience. No one cares what I do at the weekend. No one
cares about my social media presence. No one cares if I use the company's
products or not.

A few clear examples: one of my grandparents passed away, and the company was
as supportive as possible. I asked if I could work from my parents house to be
with my grandmother, and I got back "You can work from another country for an
open ended period. If you aren't getting anything done, let me know, and we'll
call it compassionate leave". There are people who go out socializing, but
I've never felt pressured to go along. There are people who work long hours or
the weekend, but again, I've never felt pressured to do that either.

Edit: When the company was newer, the employees worked very long hours and
weekends. They worked, mind you. Everyone I know from that era is remarkably
well off. The vast majority of the early employees have retired to spend more
time with their wealth. I'm much more concerned, as a person, about either the
big companies that do massive crunches (see ea spouse) or the startups that
fails despite everyone working really hard, the employees don't get the 100
million dollar payday.

~~~
g8oz
Exaggerating reveals the point. That is the satirical technique in action. And
this is about poking fun at a) the enthusiastic self regard that many tech
companies have for their "culture" and b) the notion of the unlimited benefits
of self-surveillance, which is a value social networking has explicitly and
implicitly promoted.

------
creamyhorror
Perfect. A much friendlier, much more social, much more _corporate_ 1984.

(Another heartbreaking work of staggering genius?)

edit: Yes, it's pretty transparently a reference to Google. Zings sound more
like tweets, though. And monitoring everything has turned out to be primarily
the NSA's job, but I guess he finished the book before that scandal came to
real light.

~~~
theoj
It seems to be a subtle critique of Google. I read it as Circle = Google, ad
business where Mae works = AdWords, tablets = Android, zings = tweets /
Google+ shares, new camera = Google Glass.

~~~
kazagistar
You don't even have to work for a social media company to see the "community
building" pressure; any modern, web-friendly, "agile" firm is trying to get
its employees to invest themselves into the company. If you are part of the
community, its harder to switch jobs.

~~~
elwell
If you write or know of a blog post about this, I would be interested in
reading it.

~~~
visakanv
Me too.

------
hjay
Wow, I could never write this well in a million years, but as I was reading, I
couldn't help but feel that this was a blog post that I've been wanting to
write for a while.

Without going on a rant and hi-jacking this thread, replacing "Participation
Rank" with "consumption of beer/alcohol", "gathering" with "late night beer
party", "Dad had a seizure" with "Mom was very sick", "kayak" with
"badminton", "profile" with "LinkedIn", and you have 100% of my story give and
take a few breaks in flow and sentence structure errors that are bound to
happen with simple string replacement.

Guess it's time to finally go write that blog post.

~~~
droithomme
Please do and report back if you have a chance, it sounds like it will be a
good one and I'd love to read it.

~~~
hjay
Hmm, since the demand is > 0 now, I guess I will! Not too sure how to get
reply notifications on HN though, I always lose track of responses.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Just in case you see this: consider
[http://hnnotify.com/](http://hnnotify.com/) keeps you connected to all your
friends on HN. You don't want us to miss you, do you?

(It really is quite useful, though.)

------
troymc
If this story has gotten you down, wondering if we've created an inescapable
dystopia, then this page may brighten your spirits --- an existence proof of
another option --- the one that's worked well for Donald Knuth (whose
contributions to the tech industry are indisputable):

[http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html](http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html)

~~~
pfortuny
Well, there is a tiny detail: "I have a wonderful secretary." Not all of us
can afford that...

~~~
mjcohen
Another tiny detail: He is Donald Knuth.

------
ds9
This is very close to reality. Looking at tech news today, just after this
story, my next tab was a report on businessinsider.com [1] that Google is now
making bonuses partly dependent on the success of Google's social netowrk
effort - and encouraging employees to use G+ and recruit friends and family to
it.

Clearly we have a minority of the population concerned about the erosion of
privacy, colliding with a culture of sharing everything (openly with friends
and family, invisibly with the online services and governments). The story and
the news article (like previous hints that employers are suspicious of anyone
who's not on Facebook) point up an additional new element of "soft" coercion.

1\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-
employee...](http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee-
bonuses-to-the-success-of-the-googles-social-strategy-2011-4)

------
cldr
"All that happens must be known."

Wow. So much insidiousness packed into six little words.

They conveniently forget to mention _by whom_ it should be known.

~~~
brown9-2
It's almost like maybe that will be a theme of the novel!

------
brown9-2
There are some accusations that the plot of this adaptation are very similar
to a real memoir published by Kate Losse:

[https://medium.com/p/bf1a7c77873b](https://medium.com/p/bf1a7c77873b)

~~~
wallflower
I read Kate Losse's book in preparation for reading this one.

The general schema of her book is she became obsessed with Facebook while just
a user. So she applied when she saw a job ad for Facebook (on Facebook).
Started out in customer service (later renamed to something else because
customers are people who pay for a service). The engineers and the engineering
floor was the place to be. She managed to make it to their domain through a
clever side project of her own. Facebook started to grow up once Sheryl
Sandberg came in. She made it all the way to the inner sanctum (ghost writing
for MZ).

It really is a quick read. The parallels that I will be looking for - does
DE's character protagonist start to reject the 'cult' culture gradually over
time - all the while jumping and up the ranks.

The supporting details of the story are what matter: Since FBers all had
inside knowledge of FB and couldn't manage to slip up and spill projects under
development in casual social encounters, they started close-circling their
social lives until they just basically hung out night-and-day with other
fellow FB employees. And there was a nice passage where she described an
ephemeral experience and how it could not be FB'd. Also, a widely reported FB
anecdote - female employees had to wear shirts with MZ's face on it and male
employees had to wear sandals on MZ's birthay (she called in sick - it was
_too_ much). All FB company events were _professionally_ photographed - not an
accident they looked good (so as to project the best FB brand - smiles, we're
all having young young fun fun fun)... There was a pivotal moment with a co-
worker where they did not go forward (romantically, in the moment) because of
what would all their co-workers say when it was FB'd... The summer pool house
was her idea - and she ruled that domain pool-side with her fellow non-geeks.

I have a lot of respect for what Eggers has done with 826 Valencia, The
Writing Center. If he has co-opted Kate's personal story (including some
details, like above - even if slightly refactored), I will be sad.

[http://826valencia.org](http://826valencia.org)

~~~
brown9-2
_The parallels that I will be looking for - does DE 's character protagonist
start to reject the 'cult' culture gradually over time_

To be honest, it's hard to see how any work of fiction on a topic like this -
on a trajectory like the one the excerpt here sets up - could not have this
trait, "plagarized" or not.

------
arh68
> _All that happens must be known._

Yeah, okay :D. What a lie. We have film for every Super Bowl, every World Cup,
probably every 6 o'clock news since 1960. But who's seen it? Who goes back on
old recorded video when there is a live feed? I've met none.

Who won the tenth Super Bowl? The first World Cup? Normal people don't know
these things. First response is to google it. The computers remember, but
nobody knows anything.

There is a huge difference Encylopedia Brittanica (or perhaps a downloaded
Wikipedia) and this millions-of-cameras-recording-everything. With live
coverage, nobody watches old tape. A set of EB is finite, open for static
inspection, colocated with your living room. An ever-growing dataset of
millions of camera feeds (colocated 3 states away) is, to the human brain,
useless. The magnitude's far too large. Why write anything down if you can
pull up the feed? Why record anything with a DVR/VCR when it's online? Why
'know' anything at all when the computer can tell you?

 _WINSTON SMITH enters stage right_

------
straws
What an oddly responsive page

------
001sky
The editors note

[http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/this-sunday-
who...](http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/this-sunday-who-put-the-
fiction-in-my-nonfiction/)

------
ZirconCode
"Each generation is best defined by its fears"*

*butchered, don't know the original author of the quote I was trying to find and can't find it via google, but I know it's there somewhere

------
jamesaguilar
I don't recognize my workplace, or that of my friends, in this story. It is a
great _fictional_ story. But hopefully you guys are aware that this is not
what working at Google (or, I assume, Facebook or Twitter) is like. And I say
that as someone who is IRL married to a consumer experience specialist.

------
JosephHatfield
Can't possibly be a reference to Google--they don't have a customer service
department! (do they?)

------
_greim_
Good grief. What an awful placement for a Flash ad. The 'x' button is
inaccessible, presumably because it got accidentally layered behind the
masthead.

~~~
elwell
adblock?

------
elwell
The illustrations are great. And, I learned a new word:

preternaturally - in a supernatural manner

------
aridiculous
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