To all the anti-tech leftists in the Bay Area and all the delusional tech workers who inspire their ire, I have bad news for both of you: tech workers are WORKERS.
The arcades, open bars, gyms and yoga rooms that seemed to be a feature of every tech office during the late 2010s, and all the ayahuasca and ketamine being consumed during this most recent AI boom can’t obscure that truth any longer..
It’s not 2016 anymore. Layoffs are hitting the tech sector as hard as NAFTA hit domestic manufacturing during the 1990s. Welcome to the struggle, white collar comrades. I knew you’d come down from the high of high salaries eventually.
For years the conventional wisdom held that tech workers did not need unions. Salaries were high. Skills were scarce because how could the general population ever acquire the skills needed to attend an all hands meeting hosted by someone on the autism spectrum? If conditions soured, you simply switched companies. That logic no longer holds, and it was never meant to last forever.
Since 2022, Big Tech has conducted repeated rounds of layoffs even while remaining highly profitable. Headcounts at the largest firms have largely flatlined after earlier expansion, yet tens of thousands of workers have been cut. Equity that once acted as golden handcuffs evaporated overnight for many of those laid off. At will employment means a company can end your job without cause. Performance review systems can be calibrated to produce the desired number of “underperformers.” AI tools are already being used both to monitor workers and to justify further reductions. The labor market for many roles has tightened; junior engineers in particular face steeper competition.
High pay does not equal security or power. When the company can eliminate your role, restructure your team, or rewrite the rules of promotion and severance without negotiation, individual leverage is fragile. Unions change that equation by converting individual vulnerability into collective rights written into a contract.
Tech claims to be all about ‘progress’ and ‘innovation’ but what the means in the real world is that they’re progressively looking for new ways to increase profit at the expense of both their customers and their workers.
Apps don’t change the applied economics of capitalism. Artificial intelligence flipped the Java Script on coders. Vibes coders cost less than software engineers. Which is tough because software nerds have always had a bit of a ‘vibe’ deficit.
So you’re newly getting cucked by capitalism? What do you do?
Recognize reality. Form a union.
Understand that you’re only a few missed paychecks from being an annoying agitator who constantly complains about what San Francisco and the Bay Area used to be.
Your golden era ended when covid produced the first cough and Downtown San Francisco’s offices closed faster than you could say “doom loop.”
It’s okay to admit you were left behind.
We all were. Even though we shouldn’t have been.
You know how to code Python. Cool. Now it’s time to bite like one.
Especially if the hand no longer feeds.
