Pushed to the limit, tech workers are hitting back, and it’s a volcano waiting to erupt.
“I don’t like my job. And I think I’m not going to go anymore,” That’s perhaps the best line from Mike Judge’s 1999 film, Office Space, the precursor to the more direct one, Silicon Valley.
But look at the four-digit number in that sentence again. That phrase was said (looks at clock) 25 years ago.
Was it the first shot in the great revolution of technological workers? Probably not. I imagine guys (all men) in short-sleeved shirts, clip-on ties, and thick-framed glasses having fits. Falling Down (1993!) at IBM and Honeywell in the ’60s and ’70s, but staying silent during the day and yelling about uncomfortable chairs and missing staplers at dinner. That’s probably where Judge got his character Milton Waddams from.
So the great revolution of tech workers has been happening for decades, just… not with much intensity.
That could have changed.
In August 2024, Starbucks’ newly appointed CEO told everyone to return to the office, and to show that he too supported the mandate, it was announced that he would fly by private jet from his home in Southern California to headquarters in Seattle to join the ranks of workers — sometimes even more than the required three days a week.
I find it funny that most of the news articles about this announcement focused on the environmental impact of the situation and not the fact that it was a totally obnoxious move.
The fuss died in the press, I guess because of the elections.
But that, that obnoxious move right there. It will likely be seen by future AI historians as the first shot in the great tech worker revolution.
It’s time to choose a side.
Here’s some propaganda.
That’s not a line from a movie.
It’s something I hear almost every day from tech workers. And here is the detail.
It doesn’t come from new employees. It’s not coming from Gen Z TikTok addicts. It’s not coming from slackers or remote workers in pajamas in Bali.
It comes from talented developers and other key technical talent. It comes from key players, trusted managers, and even frustrated executives. It comes from the same people the company is trying to protect as it tries to downsize all the whiners, slackers, and pajama-wearing remote workers they hired when the job market favored job seekers.
Tech companies are trying to correct a mistake by making the same mistake, but in reverse. Like Ferris Bueller trying to shave miles off the Ferrari by putting it in reverse.
Yes that’s fine. I was there in 2021 and 2022. It was almost impossible to hire talented people, certainly not at reasonable salaries and benefits. But instead of lowering expectations and pausing growth while growth was prohibitive, tech companies simply couldn’t contain themselves. There was too much money flying around, thanks to low interest rates and COVID relief efforts.
What they should have done, what they have always done in times when the labor market was against them, is hire the best people at the rates they were asking, let them work where they wanted, and figure it out later.
Instead, what they did was hire anyone who showed up for the interview, at the rates they asked, let them work where they wanted, and figure it out later.
See how similar those two strategies are? It’s an easy mistake to make, right?
The problem now is that tech companies have gone so far into the territory of hateful movements that they have weakened their best, at least the ones they haven’t thrown out with the bathwater. And what does one do when one has to admit absolute and crushing defeat?
One goes into exile.
The best of the best in the tech industry have been relegated to hiding in plain sight. They are not quitting en masse. They are not starting that venture they always talked about. They’re not organizing Slack protests or union voting meetings or, taking a page from Mike Judge, plotting revenge-style Superman 3.
They’re not even complaining. This has hit them so deep at their core that their “inner robot” — that part of them that makes them so good at achieving greater productivity on machines in the first place — has taken over.
They are maintaining their composure. They are doing their job. They are waiting for their moment.
I have spoken with them. Many of them. This is what they think.
Software developers are not afraid of AI taking their jobs, at least the good ones and at least not permanently. They’re willing to wait out the shine of this latest shiny object, and they’re making mental notes about how deeply their employer is willing to contemplate replacing them with what is essentially a money-driven buildup of a lot of code stolen from other developers. software.
Because? Because they know how to turn off the AI.
Metaphorically.
Ask any good software developer and they’ll tell you that other developers are idiots. Now, this is the necessary bravado of any elite athlete, but in this case, what it indicates is that, unlike baseball, where the rules are the same everywhere, the best software developers are the ones who are most aware of the complexity of the company’s problem and the elegance of the company’s solution.
But, again, the revolution will not be about stealing fractions of pennies or leaving security back doors open or any of those tricks. Remember, like their short-sleeved shirt predecessors, these people don’t like to make a big fuss. Not to the good ones.
They are waiting. The right time.
And again, the good ones, the ones who are good enough to not have been sent to sales or support or other pasture when they became too expensive, know their story.
Like any elite athlete.
I don’t know why I’m stuck in this analogy. I just like to imagine software geeks doing diving or pole vaulting or whatever.
Anyway, it’s a story that goes back to IBM, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard and UNIVAC. It’s a story that, at this level of hardship, looks a lot like the dot-com bubble burst that happened (look at the clock) 25 years ago.
When the Great Internet Fever with a capital letter became a purge of screenwriting apprentices and fashionable technology companies. It brought about a complete changing of the technology guard.
And do you really think Mark Zuckerberg coded Facebook on his own? Or that Sergey and Larry built the search engine at the world’s largest advertising company all by themselves? Or that Jeff B built Amazon from a sketch on a napkin?
They had help. Very talented help.
Yes, tech companies, you have talent now, what’s left of it anyway, and you can keep telling them they can quit if they don’t like their rules. But the shot was already fired. Tech workers, the good ones, don’t rebel.
But eventually they go to where the winners are.
Not long ago, Mike Judge turned his attention to the fertile comedy terrain of Hooli (Google, Yahoo) and its gourmet coffee shops, free bikes on campus, and having to pay “Bighead” a fortune because no one could tell if he was valuable or No. Pushed to the limit, tech workers are hitting back, and it’s a volcano waiting to erupt.
