Cover ArtThe author left her job in publishing, where she was underpaid and lacked a clear path ahead, to work first with an e-book start-up and then relocated to San Francisco to work in start-ups for data analytics and an open source community. As a non-technical woman working in customer support, the author provides a fast paced, engaging perspective of an outsider working inside the world of start-ups. She observes the differences from her prior work experiences, including among other things, the tech-bro culture and the emphasis on snacks and company hoodies, and ultimately questions whether having financial security is enough to keep her in the start-up world when she doubts the value of her work.
 
Publisher's description:
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial—left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress. Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. This memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power.