> [!info]- meta > **Author**: [[Cory Doctorow]] > **Full Title**: Pluralistic: The Enshittification of Tech Jobs > **Category**: #articles > > **Summary**: Tech workers once enjoyed high salaries and great perks, but their power has diminished as companies cut benefits and lay off staff. The shift in labor dynamics has made tech workers feel overworked and undervalued, similar to other industries. To regain their strength, tech workers need to unionize and advocate for better working conditions. > > **Source**: [Original URL](https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/) ## 🔦 Highlights & Commentary - "Vocational awe" describes the feeling that your work matters so much that you should accept all manner of tradeoffs and calamities to get the job done. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy8ps4mkqs1rw3v5c42yk20)) - Tags: [[#concepts]] - But for tech bosses, this vocational awe wheeze had a fatal flaw: if you convince your workforce that they are monk-warriors engaged in the holy labor of bringing forth a new, better technological age, they aren't going to be very happy when you order them to enshittify the products they ruined their lives to ship. "I fight for the user" has been lurking in the hindbrains of so many tech workers since the *Tron* years, somehow nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that "I don't need a union, I'm a temporarily embarrassed founder." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy8rs6fnk3035snht6p0wrm)) - Tech bosses don't actually *like* workers. You can tell by the way they treat the workers they don't fear. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy8rzt9y8xa1n1v798k95wz)) - It starts with Meta, who just announced a 5% across-the-board layoff – on the same day that it *doubled* executive bonuses. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy8v1h8fjcema34bncdckb2)) - a coder who picks up their fired colleagues' work load by pulling 60-hour work-weeks isn't "more productive," they're more *exploited*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy8vwnyf9f67m79xd0erw0x)) - Then there's a Meta recruiter who got fired and then immediately re-hired, but as a "short term employee" with no merit pay, stock grants, or promotions. She has to continuously reapply for her job, and has picked up the workload of several fired colleagues who weren't re-hired. Meta managers (the ones whose bonuses were just doubled) call this initiative "agility." ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy8x3zd0w5tk65q4475fq26)) - Trump's new gangster capitalism pits immiserated blue collar workers against the "professional and managerial class," attacking universities and other institutions that promised social mobility to the children of working families. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy902a5smkpw5bb2eaprz2v)) - Re-shoring industrial jobs to the USA is a perfectly reasonable goal. Between uncertain geopolitics, climate chaos, monopolization and the lurking spectre of the next pandemic, we should assume that supply-chains will be repeatedly and cataclysmicly shocked over the next century or more. And yes, re-shoring product *could* provide good jobs to working people – but only if they're unionized. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy9117bfn95gxxmsfesqzc0)) - Trump doesn't want to bring good jobs back to America – he wants to bring *bad* jobs back to America. He wants to reshore manufacturing jobs from territories with terrible wages, deadly labor conditions, and no environment controls by taking away Americans' wages, labor rights and environmental protections. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy91r70vj6r5mkm31tah7vk)) - In other words, the workers in re-shored factories and tech workers need the same thing. They are class allies – and tech bosses are their class enemies. This is class war. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01jsy931thf7fb5epf9m4qeav5))