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ejs_99's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
itsgg's review
2.0
I really wanted this to be better. After reading the excellent “Know My Name” and “Catch and Kill,” this story of sexism and injustice fell short, by comparison, for me. The facts of Fowler’s story are compelling, so it’s disappointing that she didn’t have a better editor or ghostwriter to help her tell it. And honestly, if you’ve read all the media accounts of her story over the past few years (plus her original blog post), you don’t need to read this book. It doesn’t add much that’s interesting or significant, and her self-righteous tone is surprisingly irritating, given how much she is clearly in the right!
If you do read it, you can skip the first 3 chapters, which is a lot of tangential memoir material about her background. Chapter 4 describes a grad school experience that becomes relevant later. Chapter 5 is when the real story of her experiences working in Silicon Valley starts.
If you do read it, you can skip the first 3 chapters, which is a lot of tangential memoir material about her background. Chapter 4 describes a grad school experience that becomes relevant later. Chapter 5 is when the real story of her experiences working in Silicon Valley starts.
vjy's review
3.0
3.5/5 (3 if giving full stars)
Susan Fowler has a very interesting life story (going from poverty and never having a formal education to studying physics at UPenn to pivoting to software engineering). However, she is probably best known for her blog post exposing the toxic culture at Uber, and that's why I read her book. Maybe I'm just biased, but I found the parts of her book that discussed her experiences in Silicon Valley the most compelling - because I knew that was what the book was leading up to, the exposition of her earlier life was less interesting, although she does a good job of trying to tie everything together.
There were times where I found the book repetitive - she has a tendency to repeat the same phrases again and again, like "being the hero of your story not the victim"/"being the subject not the object." She also quotes and references a lot of philosophy, which sometimes seemed out of place.
I think this book also falls victim to a common issue that I noticed in Crying in H Mart. Often times when a book is centered around or expands an essay, the entire book can seem superfluous. She does go into a lot more detail about her time at Uber, and he aftermath of her blog post was important to read about, so I feel like at least those parts justified the book.
Ultimately I thought the book was eye-opening and I appreciated it as a female SRE at a tech company who (thankfully) has not experienced any of the things she has.
Susan Fowler has a very interesting life story (going from poverty and never having a formal education to studying physics at UPenn to pivoting to software engineering). However, she is probably best known for her blog post exposing the toxic culture at Uber, and that's why I read her book. Maybe I'm just biased, but I found the parts of her book that discussed her experiences in Silicon Valley the most compelling - because I knew that was what the book was leading up to, the exposition of her earlier life was less interesting, although she does a good job of trying to tie everything together.
There were times where I found the book repetitive - she has a tendency to repeat the same phrases again and again, like "being the hero of your story not the victim"/"being the subject not the object." She also quotes and references a lot of philosophy, which sometimes seemed out of place.
I think this book also falls victim to a common issue that I noticed in Crying in H Mart. Often times when a book is centered around or expands an essay, the entire book can seem superfluous. She does go into a lot more detail about her time at Uber, and he aftermath of her blog post was important to read about, so I feel like at least those parts justified the book.
Ultimately I thought the book was eye-opening and I appreciated it as a female SRE at a tech company who (thankfully) has not experienced any of the things she has.
michellex's review
5.0
"I'd taken all the bad things that had happened to me, and I'd turned them into something good."
It was hard to read what Fowler went through at Penn and at the 3 Silicon Valley startups she worked. The tech industry continues to be harsh for women. Hopefully, one day, this will change.
jodilasky's review against another edition
5.0
You know when you read a book and you finish and you want to know MORE? Like, I know the story ended, and I know what Susan is doing now, but I want MORE.
Yeah, that's this book.
And I'm pretty confident that, in the future, there will be MORE. And we just have to wait for it.
Yeah, that's this book.
And I'm pretty confident that, in the future, there will be MORE. And we just have to wait for it.