Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?
Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.
Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.
And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.
We deserve better than this. We can get it.
It’s absolutely necessary to improve society. You have way more in common with that Deliveroo driver than with the wealthy C-suites that “run” Google or the company that you work for. Those people could stop “working” tomorrow and would have enough capital to coast the rest of their lives, their children’s lives, their grandchildren’s lives, etc. You, that driver, and I all have to continue working, because if we don’t, there’s the imminent threat of poverty, homelessness, and ultimately death.