Even though Joanne McNeil is a “technology” writer, she always writes first and foremost about people. In her non-fiction book Lurking, she used her own experience growing up online to explore how over time people became “users.” (Blech! I miss you, 1990s internet!) She starts close and human and then zooms out to larger cultural issues. I think that’s where the power of her insight comes from – the humanity of it. 
McNeil’s debut novel Wrong Way is fiction, but the author employs the same methodology – the individual human zoomed out to larger issues. Teresa, the protagonist, is a relatively anonymous forty-something in the Boston area. Like many Americans in the 2020s, she isn’t exactly in a financial crisis, but she is also never comfortable. Her career is a series of lateral moves between lower-level jobs. Sometimes she is an underpaid creative or assistant dependent on the whims of her manager, sometimes she is a temp, sometimes she is trying to navigate unemployment benefits (which is itself a precarious job). She shares an apartment, she house-sits, she’s at home with her mother for a little. Even though Teresa is a hard worker, even though she does the “right” things in terms of saving and striving, things are never settled for her.
A Craigslist ad for people who like to drive leads Teresa to an interview with a recruiter, and then a weeks-long training with AllOver, a tech company somewhere between Meta, Uber, and Apple. She gets the job, but a couple of very conformable experiences lead her to realize things aren’t what they seem at AllOver.
First and foremost, the book is about Teresa and her rich inner life. That’s what drives the book, and for me, those inner musings are where McNeil shines as a writer.
Of course, as a tech writer, McNeil has plenty to say about AllOver (the big tech company). The AllOver stuff is the zooming out and probably the point of the book. Why is the culture so obsessed with the tech messiahs? Why do we put any faith in them and their systems and philosophies? To me, the way our culture treats these guys (it’s usually guys) is similar to how people used to treat religious revivalists. I don’t know if that is intentional on McNeil’s part, but while reading this book I thought about those parallels a lot in terms of what we let certain people get away with. A 1980s capitalist is easier to ridicule for his naked love of money than someone preaching values of healthy ecology and economic justice. But the exploitation of the invisible working class is the same. The show of invincibility by the elite is the same.
Wrong Way is enjoyable and thought provoking. I’ll read any book McNeil puts out.