[BBB#7] Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

I've always been fond of reading books about the workplace environment I'll be most likely to enter when I graduate. Despite its idealistic charm to many of my peers, perhaps even to the degree of a cultish following, I cannot find it within me to refute the grave shortfalls of the technology industry. Through her memoir, Anna Wiener talks about these issues which she has experienced personally, and of which has prompted me to pause and reflect on my own beliefs.

When I hear of sexism, misogyny and objectification of women and minorities in the workplace, I often default to the thinking that these were issues which plagued the western society and are perhaps not so relevant here in Singapore. Then again, as I thought about the words of Dr Pragya Agarwal in her interview on Unravelling Unconscious Bias hosted by Intelligence Squared, which goes something along the lines of "it is precisely the people who think there isn't a problem with unconscious bias who should read my book" (non verbatim - I couldn't find the full transcript), I thought to myself that my ignorance was exactly the reason I needed to think more about these issues. I have observed instances of these in my own personal life too, perhaps even to the extent of being complicit myself. To anyone reading this post, if you have been a victim to my biases, I sincerely apologize. I am really concerned with this possibility of expressing unfair biases when I enter the workforce, precisely because of their "unconscious" nature. I must remember to be careful and conscious of my words and actions moving forward.

Another issue which Anna Wiener contends with in her book was on meritocracy. The society I live in - Singapore, is similar to the technology industry in that it prides itself on its meritocratic values as well. Yet meritocracy has been widely criticized. As Harvard political philosopher Michael Sandel explains, the danger of sorting people by merit is that it creates hubris among the winners and imposes harsh judgement on those that are behind. I recall a conversation with a friend in college, who asked if there the differences in the national A levels examination scores indicated inherent differences in intelligence among the people who had taken it. For me, the answer was clear no. I was fortunate to have been born into a middle class family that could have afforded my exorbitant tuition fees, and without these resources, I knew that it would have been almost impossible for me to have gotten to where I am today. Given such criticisms of meritocracy, why do we continue to tout its ideals then? Why was it that in the technology industry, we continue to promote interviews that require IQ tests even though we already know that it does not reflect future job performance? As Anna Wiener shares, "the meritocracy narrative was a cover for lack of structural analysis. It smoothed things out. It was flattering, and exculpatory, and painful for some people to part with."

In her book, This Is What Inequality Looks Like, Teo Yeo Yenn states: "The respect I am accorded are conditional on my participation in society as an economically productive and relatively wealthy person. It has little to do with my inherent right to respect as a human being and  member of this society." In many ways, these sentiments are shared by Anna Wiener as well. Many times in her book, Anna Wiener ponders on why society seems to value certain qualities over others. This reminds me of a quote from whom I cannot quite place, which goes something along the lines of: "If half of the world's net wealth belongs to the top 1%, then when it comes to economic compensation, whose interests are we really expressing?" Anna Wiener eventually concedes by describing these qualities as not any more or less valuable than others but different.

Throughout the book, Anna Wiener suggests that many programmers come across as being oblivious to the global system which we are contributing to. While I cannot give a definitive answer to the truth of the statement, I feel compelled to at least share my perspective as a programmer myself. I think a large part of why many of my fellow programmers aren't willing to think about these issues is that we operate in an industry where technical expertise seems to be valued above all else. This encourages a mindset of narrow thinking; it doesn't matter whether you understand the implications of your actions, what matters is that you know how to solve these brain teasers and say the right things and you're set for life. "Punitive", as Anna Wiener would describe such interviews. But getting there isn't easy. Along the way, we unconsciously lose sight of these important issues, just so we can continually build upon our "technical expertise". As an undergraduate student in my final year, I feel this very acutely. There are times when I feel I must sacrifice my time in the literary world to work on a project or to practice mindless programming problems. "Nobody was guaranteed any future", as Anna Wiener shares. And perhaps for the sake of pragmatism, this is the path that some of us have chosen to follow.

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