A sharp and prescient novel about women in the workplace, the power of Big Tech, and the looming threat of foreign espionage from Kathy Wang, āa skilled satirist of the northern California dreamā (Harperās Bazaar)
In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when sheās recruited by Russiaās largest intelligence agency. By 2018 sheās in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of Americaās most famous technology companies. In between her executive management (make offers to promising startups, crush them and copy their features if they refuse); self promotion (check out her latest op-ed in the WSJ, on Work/Life Balance 2.0); and work in gender equality (transfer the most annoying females from her team), she funnels intelligence back to the motherland. But now Russia's asking for more, and Juliaās getting nervous.
Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted sheās working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad sheās slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial āfounderās girlfriendā. One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now sheās burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerineās privacy settings arenāt as rigorous as the company claims they are, and the person abusing this loophole might be Julia Lerner herself.
The closer Alice gets to Julia, the more Julia questions her own loyalties. Russia may have placed her in the Valley, but she's the one who built her career; isnāt she entitled to protect the lifestyle sheās earned? Part page-turning cat-and-mouse chase, part sharp and hilarious satire, Impostor Syndrome is a shrewdly-observed examination of women in tech, Silicon Valley hubris, and the rarely fulfilled but ever-attractive promise of the American Dream.