the essay about Silicon Valley that reads like fiction but is def not fiction
As in life, New Yorker print issues sure come at you fast, and while we for one are approximately 3.5 issues behind, make sure you do NOT miss Four Years in Startups, the total horror story of a tell-all essay by Anna Wiener in this year’s technology issue.
Reading about Wiener’s experience as a 20-something inside some of the early “golden years” of Silicon Valley arrogance is one thing, but the way she describes it — by never mentioning any startup or exec by name and instead, characterizing them with near-literary asides (“an online superstore, which had got its start, in the nineties, by selling books on the World Wide Web, was threatening to destroy publishing with the tools of monopoly power: pricing and distribution…”).
It gives you a pretty delicious shiver of recognition once you start figuring out exactly who she’s talking about, and as a result, the entire essay reads like a work of fiction or parody (depending on how you feel about startup culture in general). By avoiding name-dropping, we as the readers get to think about companies we all know/love/hate in a totally different context. And that’s as brilliant as the whole actual story is bleak.
(Anyone else wanna go this Halloween as a Silicon Valley startup founded by three 20-something-year-old guys named Tyler???? ‘cause honestly…I can’t think of anything scarier after reading this!!).