Anna Wiener

Anna Wiener is an American writer, best known for her 2020 memoir Uncanny Valley. Wiener currently writes for The New Yorker as a tech correspondent.

Wiener, who grew up in Brooklyn, began working in tech in New York City, later moving to San Francisco. She chose the tech sector in an attempt to find a career path with more "momentum" than the book publishing industry, where she was previously employed. Wiener was likewise deeply interested in data, particularly the way in which it could be used to tell stories. In San Francisco, she ended up working for an analytics startup and GitHub, and befriending Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Her book, Uncanny Valley, never mentions the names of the companies she worked at or interacted with, though she often describes their products and corporate cultures in sufficient detail for the reader to deduce what they are. After several years in San Francisco, she chose to leave tech industry for several reasons, including its lack of response to the classified information released by Edward Snowden and a wider disillusionment with the corporate culture and sexism present therein.

• Uncanny Valley (MCD Books, 2020) ISBN 9780374719760