this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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So Long to Tech's Dream Job: It’s the shut up and grind era, tech workers said, as Apple, Google, Meta and other giants age into large bureaucracies. (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 day ago by FenrirIII@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34411807

While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate. [...] “Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”

Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized. “This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.

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[–] onion_dude@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I wonder if it's inevitable that anywhere with enough humans working together will reach this point eventually?

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

From what I’ve seen it starts with a few people who abuse the niceties, or the first downturn, or both, and suddenly they’ve got an excuse to strip it all back.

It’s always one or the other that starts it. You have an office game console and someone brings their kids who spill pop on it or they take the games home. You get that guy who takes a box of snacks home and the CEO complains for like 2 years about it. You get someone who orders pay per view on a business trip. Etc.

Once you get to like 300 employees this threshold starts getting reliably exceeded.

[–] DireTech@sh.itjust.works 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Since when is a 300 person company a startup? I feel like you lose any claim to that long before you hit 100.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 1 points 16 hours ago

Yeah, but that’s the size where things definitely start dying.

50 is probably my ideal company size.

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

No, not really. Where I work now is fantastic and we have great leadership. The moment your original visionary leader leaves and someone with an MBA gets in their place, it all goes to shit. This is LITERALLY what happened to Google and to Apple. Both super dynamic companies with great culture who were then gutted to generate shareholder value.

[–] Devmapall@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

When money and power are funneled to the few then yes. Something more cooperative or democratic probably wouldn't have the same intensity of the problem.

I think it's only inevitable because of how our society is structured.