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Nitasha Tiku wrote about the remarkable fact that most people who have been vocal organizers at Google have now left the company. There are two kind of opposite ways to interpret this wired.com/story/most-goo…
One is the kind of standard story of a large corporation making life uncomfortable for internal dissenters, trying to get them to leave. But there's a second dynamic, in which vocal internal critics of tech companies are a hot commodity. There's not many of them!
So intentionally or not, being an internal critic puts you on an upward career trajectory. You work at a big tech company, make some noise, and then graduate to a career somewhere else where your ethical stand at the previous employer is a big part of your new identity
Anyone who's tried to organize stuff at tech companies has experienced the shark-like media vortex of journalists hungry for any sign of life in this sector. After the journalists, the NGOs come calling, and various foundations and so on. The tech labor leader is a rara avis.
But this push/pull of resistance within the company, and attractive options outside it, also serve as a pressure relief valve for organizing energy. So Google management benefits from people leaving, the people themselves benefit, but the wider world is left worse off than before
Part of this is just the reality of a very, very tight labor market. You can't reasonably ask people to be miserable for years at work when they can find much better options. I wonder how successful organizers in other high-paying industries have handled this problem
There's a mirror world of venture capitalism in the form of foundations (funded by the same wealthy people). When I was doing Tech Solidarity, I wrote up a proposal at one point for funding and got asked to re-submit it for 10x the amount, because that would be easier to approve
At that point I decided to give up and return to my true passion, high-quality online bookmarking at a reasonable price, offering unbeatable value
