it's annoying that solutions outside quitting your current job don't seem to be addressed, but my little sister found it in her high paying tech job and it's been shaking her belief in liberalism lately
How could someone in a high paying tech job lack faith in liberalism? I get that many hate capitalism, but doesn't it benefit her to an amazing degree?
Because it's still alienating as fuck and even highly paid tech workers are only a few paycheques away from the street and total destitution.
How could someone in a high paying tech job lack faith in liberalism?
Direct exposure to the very fast pace at which large companies consume smaller companies and make them worse (everyone knows someone who worked for a startup that got acquired and destroyed, if it hasn't happened to them personally; good software getting acquired by atlassian or sales force and then abandoned and/or ruined; license fuckery and software being turned into SaaS subscription products)
Profession that requires a high degree of systems thinking, which results in a lot of asking why something happens and what the side effects of decisions will be
Fairly large FOSS, software freedom, and privacy activist community within tech — likely to have close exposure to members of these groups or the work that they do
everyone knows someone who worked for a startup that got acquired and destroyed, if it hasn’t happened to them personally
This is a fucking huge part of it. Everyone walks in thinking like a libertarian. Get some startup off the ground, get that bag, and you will be independent. But to get that VC money you have to dance like a little circus monkey. Then once you have investors you have a fiduciary duty to them and you gotta keep on dancing like a little monkey. If you try to be good, deliver a less exploitative product, you will be undercut by the next startup. Your investors will pull out and move their money to greener pastures. Even doing the whole entrepreneurial capitalist shit by the book, you're still bound to dance for peanuts. You might make more money, but freedom and autonomy is never the outcome no matter what role you play.
this is interesting to hear about, thank you. I hadn't thought about those kinds of things and they sound like they would be very frustrating + lead people to question things.
http://generalintellectunit.net/e/058-abolish-silicon-valley-with-wendy-liu/
I lucked my way into a tech career. Idk I’m just not the type of person who can close their eyes and say fuck you, I got mine while still seeing others struggle.
I was always vaguely left leaning but one thing that really helped was realizing how fucking little work you actually have to do the higher the position - how can someone bust their ass for 12 hours a day and make not even enough money to eat or pay rent, while someone behind a desk dicking around all day on the internet can?
Before tech I had plenty of experiences, I will never forget the month we starved when our landlord schemed and lied away our deposit, and I will never forget the day cops were beating my friends face in for no reason at all, I’ll never forget my grandpa rationing his insulin and dying.
I lucked out, enough to have a decent quality of life and stability, but this shit isn’t merit based and never has been, maybe I’d be different if I hadn’t seen things up close and ugly before and lived in a nice bubble beforehand. I’ll continue to fight and hope for a better future because ghouls inflicting pain just to make more money than they’ll ever need is a sadistic system.
