Bookforum interviews Anna Wiener, about the limitations of start-up ideology, power, and the interchangeable nature of the great men of tech. Anna Wiener's new memoir of working for start-ups, 'Uncanny Valley' is out now. "I wanted to tell the story of an average employee: someone who had bought in, then bowed out. My goal was to write about this time and place from the perspective of someone that’s not particularly special in this industry, which is one that tends to focus on people around whom capital and power are pooled. There’s a mystification happening there that doesn’t really serve anyone except those individuals. I hope my book is a counterweight to a lot of the literature about Silicon Valley that was published in the last decade." "and I remember one conversation in which I pitched her my theory that Mark Zuckerberg’s goal was to become a great man of history. What else could the endgame be? I’m not sure she disagreed, but she sort of smiled, and rolled her eyes, and said, dryly, “If Mark Zuckerberg didn’t exist, the industry would invent him.” I think about that all the time."