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A review by vjy
Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber by Susan Fowler
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.