It’s a dark time to be a tech worker right now

It's a dark time too be right now.

Executives: We’re doing more with less!

grinding, screeching noises coming from the engine room

Executives: Better profits! Lower costs!

"It's a good time to unionize tech workers right now..."

Best time to form a union was yesterday. Next best is today.

When it was a dark time for the empire the shogun cut off the heads of 141 lords... Maybe we should start there.

Dotcom bubble. 2008 crash. Covid. Now this.

We've all been through these. Buckle down. Ignore the outliers. It's a chance to rethink and do what matters to you.

Also, ALWAYS have a Plan B, C, and D.

I work at a large tech company, and the feeling here is unlike anything I've ever felt before. There are a few camps:

• Workers on visas that are utterly petrified of losing their jobs, and are struggling to plan for anything long-term, since companies that lay people off can't file green cards for employees.
• Workers that are just numb to everything. They don't give a fuck, they are jaded with the bullshit their employer pulls, and work is just work.
• People that would happily take a voluntary layoff to GTFO, spend some time with family, and potentially move to something better.

What seems to be the dominating feeling that everyone has, is that they no longer support their leaders. They feel there are too many middle-managers, they realise that their C-Suite staff are fucking useless, and the CEO's are almost universally awful as leaders. Sundar has caused Google to nose-dive in popularity, Jassy is so ineffective that no one even knows he is CEO, Musk is a known sociopath going through a mental breakdown, Zuck bet everything on VR to mask huge privacy/product failings, and alongside all of this are dozens of CEO's that forced employees back to the office or laid people off for bullshit reasons.

My hope from this dark time is that companies arise that focus on the employee first, learn from the mistakes made by big tech, and purposefully manoeuvre around FAANG until they are relegated to boomer tech. Until then, like most SWE's, I'm just hoping things get better soon...

Sorry everyone, I made the mistake of trying to better myself and get out of this blue collar hell hole existence I live in and started learning web development last year. Naturally this has to happen then lol

:P

Interesting trend in the comments - technology veterans who went through the dotCom crash have quietly moved to union jobs, and aren't sweating this iteration.

Worth keeping in mind.

1k job applications since June I'm ready for the inevitable end

We need a tech workers union.

I understand other workforces have it worse. however we could get there if we don't push back now.

always been

Learn plumbing, poo will always flow.

So they’re juicing their profit margins for a couple years. Let’s see what happens in another couple years when they failed to invest in the next things because they laid everyone off.

I wouldn't be too concerned. 300k is not really that many compared to the size of the industry. And there is a ton of aging software that is falling apart due to a lack of investment. Like the airlines. And all the utilities that keep getting hacked. And hospitals. With governments starting to hold companies responsible for getting hacked, there will be jobs to rebuild hold software a plenty.

Explain me like I’m five - why?

And seeing what mass copyright infringement corporation OpenAI just dropped we can expect it to be a million more by the end of the year.

but the Fed is reporting that unemployment is at record lows? I don't get it

So you are telling me that there is now 300,000 tech workers now able to focus on open source projects to keep their foot in the coding door while they drive forklifts or serve McDonald while waiting on the AI hiring bots to read their resumes?

Speaking of copycats, I have a feeling this all might have started with Elon showing Twitter "can do the same with less."