The tech industry has always had bosses and workers, of course, but until a few years ago, most coverage of the sector suggested otherwise. Silicon Valley was the epicenter of libertarianism, we were informed. A techno-utopianism powered a twenty-first-century gold rush, driven by software engineers huddled over their computers, only taking breaks to play ping-pong or sip kombucha in the office. “Will this app change your life?” headlines asked. Readers were told to marvel at the latest hack dreamed up by the geniuses out West. This was the future, we were told.

It’s too neat to say that Donald Trump’s election in 2016 changed all that, but it was an inflection point, opening the sector to greater scrutiny. Workers had long criticized their companies, particularly when it came to matters of racial and gender discrimination, but that year, they gained a broader hearing.

Why did this shift take place? On the one hand, there was Trump and the growing politicization that followed in his wake. When the president violated the behavioral norms whose existence had once reassured much of the middle classes of the general goodness of the state, everything around him was fair game for criticism, and that included some of tech’s most well-known companies.