"[A] sharp literary thriller."
— New York Times
“Please Report Your Bug Here is an unexpected, inventive, heartfelt riff on the workplace novel—startup realism with a multiverse twist. Josh Riedel nails the cycles of self-doubt, self-importance, and self-delusion that come with working for a high-flying startup, while offering a moving meditation on work, identity, and the limits of the corporate technological imagination.”
—Anna Wiener, author of Uncanny Valley
Praise for Please Report Your Bug Here
"Please Report Your Bug Here is a gripping literary thriller that forces us to confront our complicity in the technologies reshaping human connections, and it asks how far we will go to maintain those connections. Dark, funny, and highly inventive, Riedel’s debut is as addictive as the apps it criticizes."
— Vulture
"This novel is a series of mysteries, played out in a well-paced narrative filled with frenetic energy. Riedel succeeds at capturing the intrapersonal dramas of a startup. . . . The novel has an alluring quality that keeps you turning pages."
—Chicago Review of Books
"A smart exposé of the tech boom imbued with a touch of weird fantastical elements . . . Riedel makes the most of his removed narrator, who has enough distance from the events to offer sharp insights on gentrification, workplace ennui, and the uncanny ways that tech has blurred his sense of reality . . . It's impressive how much Riedel packs into this."
—Publishers Weekly
"Riedel’s bio states that he was the first employee at Instagram and now holds an MFA, which explains his exquisite technical rendering of startup/app culture as well as his deeply romantic portrayal of contemporary San Francisco. The book is a great addition to the growing canon of literature examining the role and reach of Silicon Valley."
—Booklist
“Please Report Your Bug Here is a Silicon Valley gumshoe story that’s also a meditation on authenticity and connection in a world ever more mediated by technology. In this riveting and surreal debut, Josh Riedel explores the labyrinthine mysteries of Big Tech and of the human heart.”
—Helen Phillips, author of The Need
“Please Report Your Bug Here is disarming and inspired, unafraid of big questions and deep longings. Josh Riedel writes the topics of early adulthood—the search for meaning chief among them—with humor, heart, and vivid, lived-in precision. This is a book about technology that reminds me that writing is tech, too, and that, behind all technology, there are humans, only wanting to connect.”
—Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
“Like the electric-sheep dream of an Instagram bot, Please Report Your Bug Here is a vividly hyperspecific technotopian fantasy, portal-warping the reader to a parallel universe San Francisco eerily similar to the San Francisco IRL.”
—Matthew Baker, author of Why Visit America and Hybrid Creatures
“Compelling, assured, and brimming with incisive observations, Josh Riedel’s debut manages to explore so many of the major features and bugs of our contemporary existence—technology, art, capitalism, loneliness, the desire and search for connection—within a truly propulsive and highly imaginative page-turner. Reading Please Report Your Bug Here is an exhilarating and unsettling trip that, upon return, made me more awake to this world around us.”
—Alexandra Chang, author of Days of Distraction