In her essay “Why I Left My Big Fancy Tech Job and Wrote a Book,” Powell says she’s not simply lampooning the industry she’s worked in for years, but rather urging it to “end the self-delusion and either fess up to the reality we are creating, or live up to the vision we market to the world.”

“Writing satire feels a bit like trimming a bonsai tree with a machete,” Powell writes. “But it felt like the right approach for an industry that takes itself far too seriously and its own responsibility not seriously enough.”

And as Farhad Manjoo writes in The New York Times, “While the events in Ms. Powell’s satire are purposefully and hilariously over the top […] her diagnosis of Silicon Valley’s cultural stagnancy is so spot on that it’s barely contestable.”