Uncanny Valley

by Anna Wiener

At home, I wasted time scrolling through the photos and errant musings of people I should have long since forgotten, and exchanged endless, searching emails with friends, in which we swapped inexpert professional and dating advice.

increased, the previous winter, from twenty-nine thousand dollars to thirty—as a unit of measurement.

Privileged and downwardly mobile. Like many of my peers, I could afford to work in publishing because I had a safety net. I had graduated college debt-free, by no accomplishment of my own: my parents and grandparents had

As a full-time contractor, I would be paid twenty dollars an hour, again with no benefits. The money didn’t look like much up front, but I calculated the annual salary and was gratified to see that it would amount to forty thousand dollars.

Mostly, the fact that it functioned, and nobody had murdered me, seemed like a miracle.

The first time I looked at a block of code and understood what was happening, I felt like nothing less than a genius.

they whined that the women in San Francisco were fives, not tens, and whined that there weren’t enough of them.

We abided by what we jokingly called the ass-in-chair metric: our presence was proof. Slacking off was not an option. If someone was missing, something was wrong.

There were no unsolvable problems. Perhaps there were not even problems,

The food was low-carb and delicious, well worth someone else’s money, healthier than anything I ever cooked. I was glad to share another meal with my teammates. We sat happily at the lunch tables, shoveling it into our bodies.

The part of my brain that took some pleasure in coding also thrived on obsessive-compulsive behavior and perfectionism.

Around my two-month mark,

Rent was eighteen hundred dollars a month, about 40 percent of my monthly take-home pay. I didn’t expect to stay longer than a year: I

“Why would I thank you for doing your job well?” the CEO asked, frowning. “That’s what I’m paying you for.”

bloated payroll; we diluted lunchtime conversation; we created process and bureaucracy; we put in requests for yoga classes and Human Resources. We tended to contribute positively, however, to diversity metrics.

Those who were motivated by money could make more of it doing something else: finance, medicine, law, consulting. They already did.

Now, at twenty-five, he was responsible for other adults’ livelihoods. Some of my coworkers had families, even if they tried not to talk too much about their children in the office. Surely, he felt that weight.

The CEO had never had a full-time job; he had only ever held a summer internship.

She was vastly more experienced than anyone else at the company, and far too professional to gossip or complain. She left the office every day at 5:00 to pick up her kids, and I suspected she was penalized for this: marketing and communications did not grow with the rest of the startup.

They’d chosen cash over equity and, as such, were not to be trusted.

he didn’t know what it felt like not to have mobility, options, not to be desired. He loved what he did and could easily command three times my salary.

the unencumbered. Time to do nothing, to let my mind run anywhere, to be in the world. At the very least, they made me feel human.

Don’t put complaints about sexism in writing, she wrote. Unless, of course, you have a lawyer at the ready.

I was twenty-six years old and making ninety thousand dollars a year. I went on the internet and purchased a pair of five-hundred-dollar

To take it all much less personally, and not get too close.

“The best thing you can do is excel,”

“Just push through whatever boundaries you see in front of you, and be great.”

Don’t get discouraged, another implored—just keep working hard.

It was the city’s socioeconomic gap personified,

wonder whose it was,” he said. “We’re not supposed to give away the hoodies.”

Mostly, I wrote emails for a living. Mostly, I worked from home. The job asked so little of me, I might have forgotten I had it—except for the fact that it required me to be online.

I’d trolled him on the internet, and he’d taken the time to buy me lunch. He was the picture of grace, and I was lowly, unfocused, a rando with no goals. I wondered what kind of boss he was.

“996” work schedule: 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., six days a week.