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Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do--and How They Do It
From FSGO x Logic: anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, providing a bird's-eye view of the industry
In Voices from the Valley, the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff take an unprecedented dive into the tech industry, conducting unfiltered, in-depth, anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, including a data scientist, a start-up founder, a cook who serves their lunch, and a PR wizard. In the process, Weigel and Tarnoff open the conversation about the tech industry at large, a conversation that has previously been dominated by the voices of CEOs. Deeply illuminating, revealing, and at times lurid, Voices from the Valley is a vital and comprehensive view of an industry that governs our lives.
FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.
In Voices from the Valley, the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff take an unprecedented dive into the tech industry, conducting unfiltered, in-depth, anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, including a data scientist, a start-up founder, a cook who serves their lunch, and a PR wizard. In the process, Weigel and Tarnoff open the conversation about the tech industry at large, a conversation that has previously been dominated by the voices of CEOs. Deeply illuminating, revealing, and at times lurid, Voices from the Valley is a vital and comprehensive view of an industry that governs our lives.
FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.
178 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 13, 2020
19 people are currently reading
736 people want to read
About the author
Moira Weigel
25 books27 followersMoira Weigel is a historian and theorist of media technologies and a founding editor of Logic magazine. Originally trained in modern languages, including German and Mandarin Chinese, she now studies digital media in a global context, focusing on vulnerabilities and opportunities that arise from the translingual and transnational movements of texts, images, information, and human actors. She also has a strong secondary interest in feminism, gender, and sexuality.
Moira’s first book, Labor of Love: the Invention of Dating (2016), countered widespread claims that the rise of mobile phones and social media were bringing about the “death of romance,” showing that modern courtship practices have consistently coevolved with consumer capitalism and other forms of gendered work. Labor of Love has been translated into five languages and appeared in dozens of outlets including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, and HBO. In the process of talking about it in public, Moira developed a keen interest in online misogyny, racism, and disinformation, that led her to her current book project. Tentatively entitled Politically Correct: The History of an Accusation, it tracks the rise of “PC” as an early meme and the role that debates about it played in the formation of a surprising range of digitally mediated counterpublics worldwide.
Alongside her academic research, Moira is a cofounder of Logic magazine and Logic Books and co-editor of Voices from the Valley (2020), a collection of interviews with anonymous workers from across the Bay Area tech industry. She received her PhD from the joint program in Comparative Literature and Film and Media Studies at Yale University and spent 2017-2020 at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is currently a Sociotechnical Security Fellow at the Data and Society Institute. In 2021, she will join Northeastern University as an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies.
Moira’s first book, Labor of Love: the Invention of Dating (2016), countered widespread claims that the rise of mobile phones and social media were bringing about the “death of romance,” showing that modern courtship practices have consistently coevolved with consumer capitalism and other forms of gendered work. Labor of Love has been translated into five languages and appeared in dozens of outlets including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNN, and HBO. In the process of talking about it in public, Moira developed a keen interest in online misogyny, racism, and disinformation, that led her to her current book project. Tentatively entitled Politically Correct: The History of an Accusation, it tracks the rise of “PC” as an early meme and the role that debates about it played in the formation of a surprising range of digitally mediated counterpublics worldwide.
Alongside her academic research, Moira is a cofounder of Logic magazine and Logic Books and co-editor of Voices from the Valley (2020), a collection of interviews with anonymous workers from across the Bay Area tech industry. She received her PhD from the joint program in Comparative Literature and Film and Media Studies at Yale University and spent 2017-2020 at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is currently a Sociotechnical Security Fellow at the Data and Society Institute. In 2021, she will join Northeastern University as an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
January 31, 2021
hell yeah. wish it was longer.
December 2, 2020
Why couldn’t this have been 20x longer? Inject directly into my veins, this is it.
December 14, 2020
I’m ready to read thirty more volumes of this. Five stars for the iOS developer who confessed to never learning Swift (all my Objective-C real heads STAND UP!)
October 22, 2020
There's a lot of passive voice in Tech™, and Voices from the Valley doesn't like it. "Tech companies have many reasons to pretend that their products run themselves," the very first page says. "This book will introduce you to the people behind the platforms." And it does—Voices' seven anonymous interviews (which might be familiar if you've read the "Anonymous Conversation With" series in Logic) are all rich provocations.
The book's central theme is the diversity of the "tech worker," a term that is coalitional almost by definition. One interview explicitly cites the union meetings that brought cooks and PMs in the same space, and organizations like the Tech Workers Coalition have been explicit about building this kind of cross-functional power. And while Silicon Valley often wields the term “technical” to exclude people, it's “technique” that ties together the engineer who wrote reCAPTCHA, the massage therapist kneading knots from her coworkers' backs, and the writer preparing instruction manuals for complex software. All labor is skilled, and all labor exists on a spectrum of precarity and humiliation.
Voices presents Silicon Valley as simultaneously a place, a mindset, a collection of multibillion dollar corporations, and the people who comprise it. This expansive frame—of an assemblage, not a monolith—becomes especially salient when skimming tech's latest headlines. Microsoft's decision to make remote work permanent is no longer just about Zooms—er, Teams—and lost perks, but rather losing the workers who provided those perks in the first place. The fact that the pandemic has sent Uber and Lyft stocks into a tailspin provokes concern for the hundreds of thousands of contract drivers choosing between their health and their income.
Yet while Voices implores readers to acknowledge Silicon Valley’s hierarchies, the authors' obfuscation of their own identities can feel like the view from nowhere that plagues modern journalism: How much does this founder represent all founders? What was cut from the interview, and why? What do Tarnoff and Weigel want us to do, exactly? Without this context, it becomes too easy to read the interviews, check our privilege, and go — to fall into what New Yorker writer Katy Waldman dubs the reflexivity trap: the "idea that professing awareness of a fault absolves you of that fault—that lip service equals resistance." So certainly, pick up a copy of Voices. But keep asking: Where do we go from here?
originally written for Reboot here - subscribe for author events, book reviews, and original writing :)
The book's central theme is the diversity of the "tech worker," a term that is coalitional almost by definition. One interview explicitly cites the union meetings that brought cooks and PMs in the same space, and organizations like the Tech Workers Coalition have been explicit about building this kind of cross-functional power. And while Silicon Valley often wields the term “technical” to exclude people, it's “technique” that ties together the engineer who wrote reCAPTCHA, the massage therapist kneading knots from her coworkers' backs, and the writer preparing instruction manuals for complex software. All labor is skilled, and all labor exists on a spectrum of precarity and humiliation.
Voices presents Silicon Valley as simultaneously a place, a mindset, a collection of multibillion dollar corporations, and the people who comprise it. This expansive frame—of an assemblage, not a monolith—becomes especially salient when skimming tech's latest headlines. Microsoft's decision to make remote work permanent is no longer just about Zooms—er, Teams—and lost perks, but rather losing the workers who provided those perks in the first place. The fact that the pandemic has sent Uber and Lyft stocks into a tailspin provokes concern for the hundreds of thousands of contract drivers choosing between their health and their income.
Yet while Voices implores readers to acknowledge Silicon Valley’s hierarchies, the authors' obfuscation of their own identities can feel like the view from nowhere that plagues modern journalism: How much does this founder represent all founders? What was cut from the interview, and why? What do Tarnoff and Weigel want us to do, exactly? Without this context, it becomes too easy to read the interviews, check our privilege, and go — to fall into what New Yorker writer Katy Waldman dubs the reflexivity trap: the "idea that professing awareness of a fault absolves you of that fault—that lip service equals resistance." So certainly, pick up a copy of Voices. But keep asking: Where do we go from here?
originally written for Reboot here - subscribe for author events, book reviews, and original writing :)
December 11, 2020
This is a quick, cheap introduction to issues of labor in Silicon Valley from a couple different perspectives.
There are a couple of details that stand out (the way buyouts are a chance to kill competition, using asset purchases to circumvent anti-discrimination salary bands, the way tech companies outsource to avoid liability but those workers can still unionize), but otherwise it's as you would expect. If you've worked in Silicon Valley or read enough news interviews about it, I don't think you'll get much out of this. I particularly chalk it up to the interviewing style, which in some cases lead interviewees on or seemed to elide meaningful details by encouraging the respondents to talk about their work as they always talk about it. I would say more but the introductory note is so prompt that there's little else to comment on, method-wise. I wanted to like this more, because I appreciate the project, but I just can't really recommend it.
There are a couple of details that stand out (the way buyouts are a chance to kill competition, using asset purchases to circumvent anti-discrimination salary bands, the way tech companies outsource to avoid liability but those workers can still unionize), but otherwise it's as you would expect. If you've worked in Silicon Valley or read enough news interviews about it, I don't think you'll get much out of this. I particularly chalk it up to the interviewing style, which in some cases lead interviewees on or seemed to elide meaningful details by encouraging the respondents to talk about their work as they always talk about it. I would say more but the introductory note is so prompt that there's little else to comment on, method-wise. I wanted to like this more, because I appreciate the project, but I just can't really recommend it.
December 3, 2020
Really great but alarmingly brief, only 162 pages long and probably shorter still if you consider the padded margins and extra line breaks. This could easily have been three times the length and profoundly eye opening. Give us more!
October 27, 2020
really enjoyed the inclusion of roles that you don't normally think about when you think about the tech industry, like massage therapists, writers, and storytellers. really enjoyed hearing from the cook on union organizing and the data scientist on roasting fintech hype. a good way to get different unfiltered accounts of the industry's development in the last 10-20 years. :-)
October 12, 2020
Most books about the tech industry focus on big corporations and famous founders, so it's easy to forget that there are many more people needed to run these well-oiled machines. People like those interviewed here: engineers, cooks, massage therapists. Thanks to the editorial decision to include not so obvious characters, the authors achieved exceptional insight into this world and created a kind of oral history of Silicon Valley. The anonymity of their interlocutors allows them to be more open and straightforward. My favorite was the data scientist, who in harsh words criticizes the current AI hype.
The book is a part of a very interesting series, FSG Original x Logic, which dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives.
Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
The book is a part of a very interesting series, FSG Original x Logic, which dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives.
Thanks to the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
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January 8, 2022Kind of an ancilliary book, no? It's like narrative journalism without the narrative. I don't know. Not to be, like, a bitch or totally unreasonable or whatever: it's possible that I just had the wrong expectations. But a book of just interviews feels a little empty, to me.
I think the best parts of this book are the ones discussing the tech workers we rarely think of as tech workers -- the masseuse, the chef, etc. I would read a book just about them. Mostly because their perspectives are interesting and a book that centers those voices would truly cut against the grain (someone's grain, at least, I don't know). I am also getting a little tired of technopessimism, at least the kind of technopessimism suggested by this book. I just feel it doesn't have nuance. But that's another thing.
I think the best parts of this book are the ones discussing the tech workers we rarely think of as tech workers -- the masseuse, the chef, etc. I would read a book just about them. Mostly because their perspectives are interesting and a book that centers those voices would truly cut against the grain (someone's grain, at least, I don't know). I am also getting a little tired of technopessimism, at least the kind of technopessimism suggested by this book. I just feel it doesn't have nuance. But that's another thing.
July 5, 2021
I really enjoyed the interviews with the data scientist (discussing the issue of racial discrimination within algorithms) and the founder (discussing the Stanford-to-Startup pipeline).
The other interviews are too short, and unfortunately end before they can discuss anything deeper than surface-level details.
The other interviews are too short, and unfortunately end before they can discuss anything deeper than surface-level details.
November 15, 2020
A very thoughtful book consisting of anonymous interviews of people who serve the high tech industry at all levels — founders, engineers, publicists, technical writers, data scientists, an artificial intelligence expert, even a cook and a massage therapist. This gives a unique perspective on these important companies and the people who work there, particularly their ideologies and how they view the public policy and government’s role, with my take away being that these people really are in a kind of a intellectual bubble, with one interviewee advocating government regulation on a transactional level and another advocating universal income as a means to assuage the technological displacements of workers. From the founders, you get a sense of how these young people with considerable technical skills in coding but limited life experience and little to no meaningful mentoring are placed in situations much like professional athletes, where they have to negotiate complex employment packages. The cook, who is employed by a subcontractor, is essentially immersed in that environment but is paid little, wants to unionize, and how such contractors are received with false empathy of the Silicon Valley overlords — but will never get a cut of the action, and are subject to an unspoken caste system, which is described in detail by the massage therapist.
There is some profundity in this book. This book is best when read alongside other books which discuss venture capital and the formation of these dynamic enterprises. The deficiency in this book is that the authors ignore the role of ownership of intellectual property, which is the key to continued wealth formation, how the ownership of intellectual property is leveraged, and to what extent the creators of processes may or may not in the end have ownership over their work product.
There is some profundity in this book. This book is best when read alongside other books which discuss venture capital and the formation of these dynamic enterprises. The deficiency in this book is that the authors ignore the role of ownership of intellectual property, which is the key to continued wealth formation, how the ownership of intellectual property is leveraged, and to what extent the creators of processes may or may not in the end have ownership over their work product.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2022
I did not expect this book to be one of my best reads of this year. I picked it up in a secondhand bookstore, thinking that it perhaps was time to revisit the world of big tech after a longer period of feeling exhausted from Black Mirror-esque all-or-nothing perspectives on various online privacy issues.
This book is not that. It is not predicting the future of algorithms in a way that creates a fog of paranoia around the death of democracy (yes, I am looking at you Jamie Bartlett).
The book consists of seven in-depth interviews with various (anonymous) actors within the Valley. This chosen format enables direct dialogue between the outsider perspectives of the journalists and the various insiders (who within the larger systems, are outsiders in relation to each other). The authors are serious about challenging bias and giving space for a wide range of arguments. The interview with the tech story teller in chapter 7 on ‘balancing acts’ is a clear example of a masterful discussion on the incentives of the tech industry and the argued impossibility of satisfying everyone’s perspective on what tech platforms should responsible for.
This book is perfect for people who are (even slightly) curious about the fast-paced development of and current structures of the tech industry. It is filled with contradicting perspectives rather than one overarching message of consent or warning. Read it today.
This book is not that. It is not predicting the future of algorithms in a way that creates a fog of paranoia around the death of democracy (yes, I am looking at you Jamie Bartlett).
The book consists of seven in-depth interviews with various (anonymous) actors within the Valley. This chosen format enables direct dialogue between the outsider perspectives of the journalists and the various insiders (who within the larger systems, are outsiders in relation to each other). The authors are serious about challenging bias and giving space for a wide range of arguments. The interview with the tech story teller in chapter 7 on ‘balancing acts’ is a clear example of a masterful discussion on the incentives of the tech industry and the argued impossibility of satisfying everyone’s perspective on what tech platforms should responsible for.
This book is perfect for people who are (even slightly) curious about the fast-paced development of and current structures of the tech industry. It is filled with contradicting perspectives rather than one overarching message of consent or warning. Read it today.
December 20, 2020
rlly quick read that reveals the glaring hierarchical structure of silicon valley. it points out the exclusivity of "technical" work (through which the industry loves to put down other skilled labor with), why unions amongst contractors (like chefs, janitorial staff, and masseuses) need to be formed, and the increasing disparity between what employees want to do versus what makes money for the company. it deconstructs the notion that tech is solely a monolithic culture of coders, bringing forth the other moving parts that are often overlooked in the tech machine.
but although this book claims to shed light on the "voices from the valley," it misses quite a bit of these aforementioned voices. what about the product designer? or the recruiter? or the manager? how representative of their roles are the people interviewed in this book? how were the roles mentioned in the book even selected by the authors? from an optimistic perspective, maybe this book left holes in the narrative to implore us to listen to the voices that we come across in our own lives. solid read, but the book could've probed even more.
but although this book claims to shed light on the "voices from the valley," it misses quite a bit of these aforementioned voices. what about the product designer? or the recruiter? or the manager? how representative of their roles are the people interviewed in this book? how were the roles mentioned in the book even selected by the authors? from an optimistic perspective, maybe this book left holes in the narrative to implore us to listen to the voices that we come across in our own lives. solid read, but the book could've probed even more.
July 13, 2022
Interesting angle to look at Silicon Valley culture by interviewing people who participate in the ”game". While the interviews are very revealing of the different roles involved in what is perceived from the outside as a unitary "tech culture", the people interviewed sound a bit more like typologies rather than real humans. It makes me think they are actually a "collage" of real individuals, rather than a specific person that held all those views - which in a way makes it more relevant but also a bit deceiving.
The data scientist was perhaps the most interesting one, as they described AI and the buzz around it, as well as how far we are to getting REAL artificial intelligence, even in the broadest sense of the term.
The data scientist was perhaps the most interesting one, as they described AI and the buzz around it, as well as how far we are to getting REAL artificial intelligence, even in the broadest sense of the term.
February 8, 2021
The fourth quick read in this collection, and also an interesting one.
A series of interviews with people at every station in Silicon Valley, from a cook to a masseuse to a data scientist. Several very interesting nuggets of insight in this book.
All in all I can't recommend the FSGO x Logic series enough. In another era, these would be published as Quarterly Editions of a magazine or something (each are barely long enough to be published as books). The books are only loosely related but each have some serious food for thought.
They were impactful enough to send me down a rabbit hole of the individual authors to see what else they're up to, and seek out more stuff in this vein.
A series of interviews with people at every station in Silicon Valley, from a cook to a masseuse to a data scientist. Several very interesting nuggets of insight in this book.
All in all I can't recommend the FSGO x Logic series enough. In another era, these would be published as Quarterly Editions of a magazine or something (each are barely long enough to be published as books). The books are only loosely related but each have some serious food for thought.
They were impactful enough to send me down a rabbit hole of the individual authors to see what else they're up to, and seek out more stuff in this vein.
December 20, 2021
An okay-ish book. Very short, thus not deep at all. The most insightful interviews are the engineer's and the data scientist's, and those insights are not "in"-sights when compared with some other STS books... (Mind you, the engineer is clearly not your ordinary engineer working at an average tech company; the engineer is somebody you can effectively find out who they are by just one Google search.) I didn't learn much new stuff other than how Google becomes what it looks like now. Also hope the interviews for those who work at "non-tech" positions could go as deep as the other ones.
October 27, 2020
It's a very interesting read as it show a different face of the Silicon Valley, the face of the worker at all level, not only the founders or the bllionaire.
It's interesting to listen to these anonymous voices that talks about their experiences and their ideas.
I think it's one of the best books I read about Silicon Valley and it's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
It's interesting to listen to these anonymous voices that talks about their experiences and their ideas.
I think it's one of the best books I read about Silicon Valley and it's strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
June 12, 2021
I quite enjoyed this book but it was way too short. Presenting just 7 interviews is way too little to be able to draw a picture of such a diverse and complex industry. Most of the interviewees were also already out of their jobs, so it's a very unrepresentative sample of especially upset people. I think a book that talks about "voices" should ensure that it reports enough of those voices to show more varied opinions and to try to avoid stereotyping.
June 29, 2024
"Voices from the Valley" blasts tech companies for downplaying the human effort behind their products. It showcases the diverse, skilled workers powering Silicon Valley, from engineers to massage therapists. The book argues all these jobs deserve respect, and critiques news that ignores the impact on this workforce. While the book's interview anonymity raises questions, it's a valuable call to see beyond the tech hype and consider the human cost.
February 8, 2021
If you're into technology or someone deeply elated with the Silicon Valley thing, read on! This one's for us.
Up until I picked this up, I didn't know voices like the ones in this book exist. Sure, I'm aware that no place really is all sunshine and roses, but not to this extent.
It's dumbfounding. Now I'm second-guessing if what I'm up to is a worthy destination.
Up until I picked this up, I didn't know voices like the ones in this book exist. Sure, I'm aware that no place really is all sunshine and roses, but not to this extent.
It's dumbfounding. Now I'm second-guessing if what I'm up to is a worthy destination.
February 10, 2021
Enjoyable quick read. Gives space to voices in the tech industry that are rarely heard but actually prop the whole thing up (the chef, the masseuse, army of contract workers). The book paints a picture of an industry at war with itself from the inside out and reveals the messy inner workings of everything required to maintain the myth of “autonomous” and utopian tech companies.
July 18, 2022
Too good. loved reading through each of these firsthand accounts with the tech industry. gave me so much to think about, especially as someone who grew up so close to silicon valley. certainly questioning what so many of us glamorize and wondering where to go from here — already look forward to rereading. my only critique is that it should be longer.
January 23, 2023
Short, somber, and thought provoking.
- I particularly like the parts Engineer and Story Teller. I felt like their sharings are close to my own thoughts and feelings.
- I didn't like the Data Scientist part. Bit snobbish. And quite funny because ChatGPT has stirred up a big storm in just a month after its launch.
- I particularly like the parts Engineer and Story Teller. I felt like their sharings are close to my own thoughts and feelings.
- I didn't like the Data Scientist part. Bit snobbish. And quite funny because ChatGPT has stirred up a big storm in just a month after its launch.
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April 14, 2021Talks about gender pay discrimination.
If women truly got less pay for the same value of work wouldn’t all men be unemployed because women are better “value”?
This is the “small-sample-size” bias at work. Taking a small group who are in that position and generalising.
If women truly got less pay for the same value of work wouldn’t all men be unemployed because women are better “value”?
This is the “small-sample-size” bias at work. Taking a small group who are in that position and generalising.
July 4, 2021
Well written, kinda interesting, but nothing new or surprising if you've got your ear to the industry already. I do quite enjoy hearing the side from the blue collar workers though. A good reminder that not everyone treats them well.
June 7, 2022
Listened on audiobook and really enjoyed; short analytical introduction but other than that the interviews are presented without analysis. Most enjoyed the discussion of unions and the critique of data science; also liked they used different narrators for the different interviews.
September 12, 2023
the stories i actually wanted to read were the ones were by people you don't usually hear from, e.g. the masseuse, the chef, etc. turns out they were the shortest stories here. the rest, by the more technical-adjacent workers, were just things you've heard many times before.
February 11, 2024
four stars for highlighting things you’d absolutely not know if you don’t work in tech, but in my heart it’s barely three stars for not going any deeper than what’s very visibly obvious if you work in tech and have at least two brain cells.
November 14, 2020
an interesting but short collection of interviews from silicon valley
January 5, 2021
My primary complaint would probably be that I could easily read a version of this book that's at least 2x as long. It's a great inside look at Silicon Valley.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews