this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2024
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There was a series of completely non-threatening sit-ins (like a couple hours, out of the way of any work) like five years ago, and Google immediately shat itself and started making concessions before any demands were even made. Interesting to see the difference.
tech labor market right now is the weakest it has been since dotcom bubble (other than covid which recovered after literally a few months), even worse than the great financial crisis since that didn't really hit tech, while 5 years ago was the strongest it has been in decades
By and large, tech workers specifically are some of the least amenable to class consciousness I have ever seen- believe me, I've tried. We gave up the single largest leverage white collar labor has had in living memory in order to...sit in an office? Waste hours a day on a commute? They had it all; workers demanded to be remote, until apparently they remembered they had wives and kids they hate and now we need to make up bogeymen about how sitting at home for 8 hours a day makes you fat and unhealthy and unattractive while doing just that at the office magically doesn't (shocker!). I will never get it, and I will never forgive them for just rolling over. The owning class is responding as expected- ruthlessly and with the knowledge that they can get away with anything, because they can.
Same here. I swear, working in tech as a communist will drive you insane sooner or later. All the colleagues I've worked with range from grindset hustlers, "work hard" types who gladly chug the corporate koolaid, liberals who conscientiously read mainstream media to "stay informed and not fall for propaganda" i.e. they tow the US line on Ukraine, Palestine, China etc - all the way to manosphere chuds, anti-communists and ancap cryptobros and, presumably, crypto-fascists.
I've tried spreading a little class consciousness here and there, but it's hard and if you use a word that sounds just slightly socialist, the discussion is over most of the times.
The incentives to radicalize are just not there. The pay is relatively good, KPIs and decent raises and title changes give you the impression of meritocracy, the job tends to be mentally draining, and often tech workers are passionate about tech and have it as a hobby in their free time. So this usually means less paying attention to current events beyond the easily accessible mainstream news (because it's easier to stay in the same tech context in your spare time, or just chill), and more belief that the system is working and that the poors can be disregarded because it's their failure, not a systemic issue.
This thread is about a bunch of them getting fired from great jobs over anti-imperialism. That's a lot more of a commitment than most people have made (probably even most here).
This just isn't accurate. Tons of people insisted on keeping WFH, changed jobs over it, turned down higher pay to keep it, etc., and the companies that really pushed people back to the office had to use all sorts of carrots and sticks to make it happen.
I have been working in this field for almost two decades- I know what they're like, and the ones doing the sit-in are a fraction of a fraction.
How many more are just like this? Or worse? (hint: it's a lot!) https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/4083280
The bosses are correcting for '20-'21, and they are having their way with a crowd of yes-men all the way down. That is the reality. Tech workers will not unionize- that is a tree I've been barking up for just as long as I've been in this industry and of something like five jobs I've had in that time none of them wanted it. There is no solidarity in this income bracket.
Only one of the big 5 does it anymore, last I checked, and it was hybrid- since 2022 they've been pushing RTO, and now (as of early last year at the very latest) they have been requiring full time in-office participation again. The rest of the industry follows whatever they do. Very few people had or have the luxury of "just switching" to remote work when the big players decide non-negotiable RTO and the smaller ones continue to follow. Despite the popular narrative, frequent job hopping is not actually that easy unless you subscribe to nepotism or chronic schmoozing; "the hustle" is not very radical, as it turns out. You have a romanticized view of what happens at the ground level of tech and the type of people working there, and it isn't true.
It's that way in most industries. Leftists, especially ones willing to get fired over anti-imperialism, are rare everywhere in the U.S.
I broadly agree there's less potential for radicalization in the tech sector compared to many industries, it just might not be as comparatively bad as it looks, because it's not great most places.
This is what I'm saying -- people didn't roll over, they had to be forced back to the office. You still have people clinging to whatever WFH time they have left.
Over these last four years I saw more “we should be given the choice” and “if you work from home efficiently that’s fine but I don’t” from my colleagues & peers than making remote-only the red line it should have been for all of us. There is no choice if the line is crossed even once. The owning class didn’t have to force anything, not really. There were enough “compradors” holding the door open for them when they decided they’d played the game long enough. That’s what I mean by “rolling over”; that should not have been allowed to happen, but it was.