Can Tech Workers Stop the Layoffs?
At a time of mass layoffs in Silicon Valley, tech workers urgently need to organize. The myths those workers have come to believe about themselves can make that organizing difficult — but those myths aren’t insurmountable.
Mass layoffs have hit the tech industry. Can workers organize to stop them? (David Odisho / Getty Images)
“About to be great furniture deals on Craigslist,” the tweet reads. Accompanying it is a spreadsheet detailing the thousands of employees laid off by Silicon Valley tech companies in recent weeks.
Each line lists deep layoffs: Twitter fired half its seven thousand full-time staff; Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, let go of eleven thousand workers; a range of other valley companies have laid off hundreds more. “510 ads for Aeron chairs already,” another user replied. A screenshot shows a glut of Craigslist ads, each with rows of the distinctive, streamlined swivel chairs ubiquitous in tech offices.
Derisive tweets about the thousands of workers losing their jobs reflect a familiar antipathy for tech workers. Techies have a reputation as a highly compensated class of workers with strong market power and a deep socioeconomic disconnect from the people who live and work around them. Tech work is seen as a sure bet: computer science degrees are increasingly popular, supposedly paving the way to high-paying jobs in an ever-growing industry.
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