How #TechWorkers went from dreaming of starting revolutions, to dreaming of fake #startups, to dreaming of a job for life, to fearing layoffs to make way for #StockBuybacks.

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6?sk=6dc50e8e1afc9bbd523a2fee4959e5c0

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.

#Precarity #Financialization #EndStageCapitalism

**Cory Doctorow** @pluralistic · Sep 10, 2023

Sep 10, 2023

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic

There ain't no such thing as a free on-campus fitness center.

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6?sk=6dc50e8e1afc9bbd523a2fee4959e5c0

Tech workers spent a whole generation conceiving of themselves as entrepreneurs who bargained, nerd-to-nerd, with other entrepreneurs who needed workers as much as workers needed paychecks.

These workers allowed themselves to be convinced that being “extremely hardcore” — that is, working body- and mind-ruining hours (without overtime pay) was a badge of honor.

They let themselves believe that their bosses gave them gourmet cafeteria food, “on-campus” fitness centers and daycare because they were valued workers — and not because this created the conditions where workers could be induced to put in longer hours without additional pay.

They conceived of themselves as ascetic monks, a priesthood that labored every hour God sent to bring digitization to the world. Meanwhile, their bosses’ wealth soared, even as their own working conditions deteriorated.

Tech workers may be prone to the same rationalization and self-deception as the rest of us, but (like the rest of us), they aren’t fools. Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.

As conditions and prospects worsened, tech workers’ identities as workers emerged from a generation-long coma. They penned manifestos, walked off the job, and formed unions.

#TechWorkers #JanglingKeys #ExtremelyHardcore

Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr

The shrinking dream of the #TechWorker — from “maker of a #DentInTheUniverse” to “disposable source of free cash-flow for a #StockBuyback”

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers-ad0a6b09f7e6?sk=6dc50e8e1afc9bbd523a2fee4959e5c0

Today, tech workplaces are white-hot centers of labor organizing. Tech workers are reconceiving of themselves as workers first, techies second — and that’s leading them to connect their struggles to the “blue collar” workers who drive rideshares, pack boxes, label AI data and handle irate customers.

The shrinking dream of the tech worker — from “maker of a dent in the universe” to “disposable source of free cash-flow for a stock-buyback” —has goosed the already-surging rise of labor agitation in tech workplaces, turning a surge into a flood.

#Labor #Unions #TechUnions

Sep 10, 2023, 03:25 PM··Web

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