The stories about tech layoffs keep coming. In the midst of this dramatic turn I’m noodling anew on a theme I explored last year I kicked off this Substack: what is the point of our jobs?
You’d be forgiven for playing the world’s smallest violin while reading about the 23-year-old computer science graduates denied FAANG employment and the primrose path it once guaranteed. But in a country where so many basic privileges rely on corporate beneficence, severance of any sort is significant. Health, housing, and the ability to live in the country legally depend on one’s employment, and so sympathy is warranted – even for software developers who will likely soon be employed elsewhere. But once again, the chatter around this news story has focused solely on the numbers and not the deeper philosophical questions. The solution to the dilemma of tech layoffs is not to guarantee tech jobs for CS majors but to guarantee these essential privileges for everyone.
During the 2010’s tech boom, the FAANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) served as little city-states, with benefits provided for their employees in the way some countries provide for their citizens.1 Being at one of these employers in the United States was like having private access to a mini-Denmark, where wealth was distributed generously and living conditions were fantastic. Due to supply and demand and massive profit margins, workers with specialized skills and opportunities were living the utopian fantasy of AOC’s Green New Deal (while voting for Hillary Clinton). The myth of meritocracy provided the palliative justification necessary to assuage cognitive dissonance.
I make this point not minimize the layoffs or poke fun at tech employees for enjoying these benefits. But again, the focus on employer-sponsored welfare misses the real issue. Any worldview that sees these benefits as inherently good is reinforcing the politics of private sector domination. The benefits are good, and they should be provided by the wealthiest entity of all, the federal government, at the broadest scope possible.
Elon Musk’s management style is having an effect. A group of activist investors have called on Google to slash employment, saying that margins aren’t high enough and the workforce is too bloated. Some in the media have even argued that Musk’s ferocious style is a breath of fresh air after years of platitudinal tech-speak about “saving the world.” I tend to agree.
Musk is a vile human for a variety of reasons. I would not want to be within 10 feet of him. But he is what he is. The idea that any of the tech CEOs are functionally more egalitarian is our delusion, one we’d do well to move beyond as quickly as possible. Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Tim Cook certainly seem like nicer guys than Musk, but their impact is the same. The nice guys of tech have maintained a facade of benevolence due to favorable market conditions. At least Musk is being honest.
The honesty blends quickly into trolling, which is then amplified and becomes the context in which most people encounter him. But for a certain subset of tech workers, Musk’s appeal lies in what they see as a brutal honesty about how tech companies are currently run. This is what he’s tapping into when he calls for a more “hardcore” work environment. Tech people think of themselves as doers, as builders. Musk, to this class of programmers, is stripping away the complex social gunk that has accumulated over the last 10 years as tech has become more a part of mainstream social discourse. He is returning things to their basic roots. The tech optimists are coming up for air. Sam Altman has revealed a great leap forward for AI. The true nerds, freed from the constraints of design thinking and DEI, are assuming their rightful place at the helm once more.
I don’t prescribe to this view, but there is something to be said for getting things done. Remote white collar work is the most extreme version of what Marx might have called estranged labor. We arise each day and pour energy into a keyboard, or a front-facing laptop camera, and the result can be very intangible. We feel busy all the time, but have very little to show for it. At the end of a typical workday, we’ve hardly built a chair, or made a meal, or helped someone with a thorny personal issue. The feedback we get for our efforts is often so faint. It’s easy to see why some people thirst for work that has a little more friction to it.
But if we are going to be hardcore about work, let’s complete that worldview. We deserve basic human provisions, and those provisions should be doled out equitably. Privately, Elon can run whatever type of business he likes, and workers can choose to participate or ditch his ass with no strings attached.