9780063093188
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Impostor Syndrome audiobook

  • By: Kathy Wang
  • Narrator: Lauren Fortgang
  • Category: Fiction, Satire
  • Length: 10 hours 35 minutes
  • Publisher: HarperAudio
  • Publish date: May 25, 2021
  • Language: English
  • (5954 ratings)
(5954 ratings)
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Impostor Syndrome Audiobook Summary

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, “a skilled satirist of the northern California dream” (Harper’s Bazaar)

In 2006 Julia Lerner is living in Moscow, a recent university graduate in computer science, when she’s recruited by Russia’s largest intelligence agency. By 2018 she’s in Silicon Valley as COO of Tangerine, one of America’s 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 Julia’s getting nervous.

Alice Lu is a first generation Chinese American whose parents are delighted she’s working at Tangerine (such a successful company!). Too bad she’s slogging away in the lower echelons, recently dumped, and now sharing her expensive two-bedroom apartment with her cousin Cheri, a perennial “founder’s girlfriend”. One afternoon, while performing a server check, Alice discovers some unusual activity, and now she’s burdened with two powerful but distressing suspicions: Tangerine’s privacy settings aren’t 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; isn’t she entitled to protect the lifestyle she’s 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.

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Impostor Syndrome Audiobook Narrator

Lauren Fortgang is the narrator of Impostor Syndrome audiobook that was written by Kathy Wang

Kathy Wang grew up in Northern California and holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two children.

About the Author(s) of Impostor Syndrome

Kathy Wang is the author of Impostor Syndrome

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Impostor Syndrome Full Details

Narrator Lauren Fortgang
Length 10 hours 35 minutes
Author Kathy Wang
Category
Publisher HarperAudio
Release date May 25, 2021
ISBN 9780063093188

Subjects

The publisher of the Impostor Syndrome is HarperAudio. includes the following subjects: The BISAC Subject Code is Fiction, Satire

Additional info

The publisher of the Impostor Syndrome is HarperAudio. The imprint is HarperAudio. It is supplied by HarperAudio. The ISBN-13 is 9780063093188.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

Goodreads Reviews

Jessica

April 12, 2021

While there is spy stuff here, it's less a thriller and more a dive into character and setting. All the extra trappings of the spy story are a great way to draw you in to a story that's really about Silicon Valley corporate culture and how it plays out specifically for women. Julia is the center of the novel, she survived a harrowing childhood to get recruited by a Russian intelligence agency and installed as the head of a tech startup. But it's been a long time since then and now Julia has gotten comfortable as the COO of Tangerine, a massive tech conglomerate a la Facebook or Google. Her role as a spy has been simple, paying attention and passing along information she hears, but now her handler Leo is making bigger requests. It's time to pay her country back for what they've given her, but it will also require putting herself at risk in a way she never has before.On the other side of the tech success spectrum, we have Alice. Brought up by her ambitious immigrant parents, she worked hard to set herself up for a future in Silicon Valley. Despite being smart and capable, she has fallen down the ladder rather than climbed it, relegated to a job in Tangerine's IT department, and she's barely holding on to it. But Alice's tedious work also means she's the only one who notices unusual server activity and traces it back to Julia.While we move the plot forward to see what Julia and Alice will do, this is more about the journey than the destination. Getting to see how the women present themselves inside and outside of the company, how Julia's role as an executive is vastly different than the men around her, how Alice's female boss sets her up for failure rather than success, all of that is the real good stuff.I liked FAMILY TRUST a lot and this is more ambitious in taking on some big themes. There aren't enough work novels so I loved getting that, and this manages to have a lot to say about high-placed women and the deal with the devil they end up making to stay there. Wang writes readable and interesting books and I am excited to see what's next.

Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany)

July 04, 2021

Imposter Syndrome is a slow-burn espionage thriller about women in Silicon Valley. The story and characters really grew on me and the ending was exactly what I wanted. Julia Lerner was abandoned as a child in Russia, studied computer science, was recruited as a Russian spy, and then climbed to the top of her game as a foreign asset and the head of a tech company in Silicon Valley. Alice Lu is a Chinese immigrant working in Julia's company when she notices some strange patterns in data transfer and decides to investigate....This book balances espionage and competing loyalties with issues of marriage, motherhood, and sexism in the tech industry. I wasn't sure how I felt about it at first, especially because some of the men at the margins of the story are truly reprehensible, but I became quite invested in the twists and choices of these two women. It's a nuanced story with excellent characterization, a quiet sort of thriller. Something I would love to see more of.

Vanessa

October 28, 2021

Though some might say her being here was a cheat, Julia thought it was really everyone else who were the cheaters. The born rich, the parentally educated and loved-who went from private high schools to Ivy legacies to jobs with friends of the family. Who said they "hated the word 'privilege'" and insisted that they were who paid their mortgage each month. Yeah, but who put forth the down payment, Julia wanted to ask, how much did they give?My reading muscle is flabby and weak and it hasn't helped I've read a few sort of "meh" books in a row but this gem may have broken my slump.Although I don't typically gravitate toward espionage stories, I was immediately sucked into this tale about Silicon Valley immorality and voluntary ceding of privacy to big tech. The two main characters are Julia and Alice. Julia is second in command at Tangerine (clearly meant to be Facebook) and as such is one of the most powerful women in the world. She's also a Russian plant who's been asked to start doing more to earn her keep and she's chafing at the leash. But she also loves the money and the prestige of her job and American life (along with a husband and infant daughter) and knows what happens to those who defy Mother Russia, so she reluctantly agrees.Alice Lu, on the other hand, is a low level help desk employee at Tangerine. Depressed, newly single, and hated by her boss, she works late one night and inadvertently stumbles upon unusual server activity that eventually leads to Julia herself. But Alice has no idea what to do with this information.And if you hate technobabble, rejoice! For a story centered around software, there is a minimum of technical exposition.This isn't a pulse-pounding spy thriller, more of a twisty tale that contemplates motherhood, privilege, immigration, and women fighting for their place. It sounds like the book tackles too much, and yet it's just right because Kathy Wang can write with such economy and punch:She felt her heartbeat slow. A cool tranquility moved over her; she was in control again. She hadn't known any better before-had let them take it from her, use her life as a tool. But things were different now. As with any conflict, there would be difficulties, and she would likely struggle, but what was a life anyway, no matter how perfect, if a man could just come and steal it away? I had no idea where this was going until the final page and let's just say I was surprised by the ending. I wanted to find some details unbelievable (like keeping employee passwords in a text file-really ? Is their root password "system"?), but how many data breaches has Facebook had? The most recent one was just in April. It also made me appreciate at least a little the mandatory security and privacy training that is drilled into us at work every year. (Also, seriously, FUCK FACEBOOK.)Thank you, Kathy Wang, for punching my reading slump in the face.

Hilary

March 30, 2021

I really enjoyed this book -- the plot of the book, the multiple POVs, and the pacing. It's difficult to characterize where this book "fits" -- it's not a thriller, but it involves spies; it comments on current society in Silicon Valley but isn't too trendy. I always like when something isn't the same song-and-dance of current literature, and I think this book qualifies. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the way Wang weaved the immigrant experience and the ways of America into the book. The only thing I didn't love was it felt like she jumped onto the trope train -- I especially saw this in Julia's sections when she tears other women down and talks about her views of the C-suite. That felt like an easy way out. Overall, though, I was engaged throughout the entire book and didn't feel like it was obvious how the book would end, two things I always appreciate.

Olivia

May 19, 2021

Here’s what I’ll say...I don’t really know what genre this book falls into (corporate culture, spy, general character development, who knows), but regardless, I was hooked from the first sentence and practically read the whole thing in a day. Really liked the characters and the pacing regardless of what the heck genre this book is supposed to fit into.

BookBagDC

May 10, 2021

This is a really interesting read, a mix of a thriller, an examination of the role of tech companies, and an exploration of the pressures faced by female executives in today's society.  The book focuses on Julia, a foreign intelligence asset who is sent to Silicon Valley to burrow into an American tech company.  Just a little over ten years later, she is the number two at one of the world's top technology firms, Tangerine, running the company and feeding key intelligence back to her home country.  When her work is inadvertently uncovered by Alice, a low level Tangerine staffer, it triggers a series of events that threatens to upend not just Julia and Alice's lives, but bring down one of the world's most powerful technology companies and fundamentally alter relationships between several world powers.  This book is a great read.  All of its elements -- the thriller, the character studies, and exploration of some of the most pressing social issues today -- work well individually and come together to form a timely and highly engaging story.  This ambitious work is sure to be one of the top books of 2021.Strongly recommended!

Victoria

June 01, 2021

This book kept me hooked from the first page until the very last sentence. The dynamic between the Tech World, mega-successful business people, Russian espionage, and the simple struggles of everyday life, were truly engaging and so fun to read! The chapters rotate between different characters’ perspectives, which allows the reader to empathize with each character. I thought this gave the story a unique and entertaining lens. I found myself cheering for each of the main characters, although there were many moments where I found myself disliking each of them, especially Julia. However, it’s clear that this was one of the goals the author was trying to achieve, and it worked!To me, there was a conspicuous parallel between Julia Lerner and Sheryl Sandberg, who is the COO of Facebook (I wondered what she would think about this book...). I loved how this book addressed sexism and portrayed the shame and hostility that women are more prone to face in the workforce. However, Julia’s private thoughts made her look like she couldn’t care less about female empowerment, which I thought was a shame. But Jula is hyper-competitive and extremely selfish, which made me wonder if that’s the kind of ego, grit, and ambition that is needed to make it to the top as the first female executive (again, curious what Sheryl Sandberg would think ;) ).I also thought it was fascinating to read how Russian intelligence was able to discreetly weave themselves into America’s society. This is obviously fiction, but it made me reflect on the recent controversies around the U.S. elections and how we truly don’t know how our data is being used on the internet. All in all, I loved this book! Highly recommend this book if you’re in the mood for fun and daring spy fiction that involves complicated and powerful characters!

Karl

February 18, 2023

A clever, modern take on the spy thriller. Here, Julia is a deep-cover agent working for the Russian security service. And she's a big-shot in a billion-dollar social-media company. This provides a treasure trove for the Russians. But Alice, a low-level tech, sees something odd going on with the servers and tracks it to Julia.The book is rich with the stilted process of success and failure in the tech world, infused with sexism even as the companies proclaim their commitment to equity.The book is not marketed as a spy thriller, probably because 'spy thriller' evokes Robert Ludlum and Daniel Silva, where the spies shoot at each other from speeding cars. Those stories are fun, but not realistic. This book has the realistic feel of a John Le Carre novel, albeit with the fun, sass, and irony of the California tech industry.

Twins.reading.books

June 15, 2021

Kathy's exceptional literature is so outstanding with a remarkable performance of intrigue and satire in IMPOSTOR SYNDROME, this book has it all - Russian espionage, women in large tech world, business people... I loved how the book addresses sexism, it really is a thought-provoking novel and it portrays some powerful topics that Kathy elaborates them in a fascinating manner! The story has captivated my mind within the first chapter, I love the fast paced suspense that immerses throughout the chapters, from some very funny scenes to the thriller actions this book is nuanced to a unique genre that only Kathy could bring and still be a masterpiece in all its form!.Impostor Syndrome portrays the story of two women in Silicon Valley, Alice and Julia are different characters but their connection is so unexpected with a fabulous entertaining ride!The twists that I highly enjoyed and they blew me away with the unexpected turns were so thoughtful and very researched from the Author's perspective! From the past moments of the main characters to the details of the present this is crafted in a very insightful and compelling prose that I loved so much! A book filled with tensions, intrigue moments, and characters development in its finest I highly recommend you to read this tremendously entertaining and enthralling book written by our favourite Author! .Kathy has merged immigration, women stereotypes in large companies, family relationships in a visceral and very profound sense! Everyone's story is so rich and special and really astonishingly intriguing, Kathy's prose has always been amazing and her satire in this book was outstanding and probably my favourite part! The story is structured in a huge amount of details that I found very intelligent connected in some suspicious circumstances! A 5/5 and definitely one of our favourite read of 2021!

Brittany

April 15, 2021

I read this one in two days, and it definitely got me out of my post-vacation reading slump. The Impostor Syndrome gives an in-depth and captivating look at the CA tech industry and the Russian spy network. Julia grew up in an orphanage in Russia, but now she is COO of Tangerine, the fictional Facebook-like social media giant. She is living the American dream: her Instagram-perfect life is marred only by her husband's infidelity and the spying she is still obligated to do for her Russian handlers. Alice, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, works at Tangerine in the tech department, and she inadvertently stumbles upon Julia's spying while doing a routine scan of the network. The rest of the book is full of tension, and I couldn't stop reading until I learned Alice and Julia's fates. I definitely plan to re-read this one in order to savor the writing, which is so darn good. Kathy Wang has a way of writing biting satire that goes down easily, but it's the expert character development that makes this one a must-read! Many thanks to Netgalley and William Morrow/Custom House for the library preview.

Corrie

May 11, 2021

So I had read and enjoyed Kathy Wang's first book "Family Trust" last year and was super excited when BOTM picked "Impostor Syndrome" for May! "Impostor Syndrome" tells the story of two women in Silicon Valley, Alice - a Chinese-American low level employee at Tangerine (aka made-up Facebook) and Julia, the COO of Tangerine and also Russian spy. After Alice notices some abnormal server activity and links it to Julia, we get to see the complex relationship between the two take form and it was difficult to put down the book until I was able to find out who would ultimately win.The character development of Julia and Alice was extremely well done, neither of them was particularly likeable, but you were able to see how their childhood and male-dominated workplace had shaped them into who they were. Loved the backdrop of Silicon Valley for this to bring up all of the side issues there about user privacy and the power of big tech in the US.

Anne

May 12, 2021

I thoroughly enjoyed this book once I got into it. Not sure why it didn't grab me right away as it took a few chapters before I was hooked. The pace is quick, the plot easy to follow and characters are enjoyable and likeable (not all but some). There are several twists and turns that I didn't see coming. It's hard to put a genre on this. While it is about espionage, it is also a look at powerful people and their lifestyles in Silicon Valley and the challenges women go through to succeed. The voices of Julia and Alice are quite different. You could hear their uniqueness.

StorytimeWithShelbs

August 29, 2021

Again and again I am reminded not to judge a novel by its cover. Something about this cover combined with the summary had me convinced that this would be a dry read. I loved this and devoured every page.

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