The Big Tech takeover is not predestined, we really should fight back - Cory Doctorow

So you know, tech workers used to be the princes of labor, right? There’s a National Bureau of Economic Research study that pegged the average contribution of a Silicon Valley tech worker to their employers’ bottom line at about a million dollars per worker per year. That’s why tech workplaces were whimsical campuses with free kombucha and a ball pit and massages and dry cleaning and daycare and a surgeon who’ll freeze your eggs so you can work through your fertile years. It’s not because bosses like tech workers. It’s because tech workers were really valuable and because they were in short supply. Bosses hated this because tech workers would mouth off to them, and they couldn’t fire them. Tech workers who were maltreated or corralled into doing things that violated their moral senses would quit their jobs and find a job somewhere else. And because this was all happening in California, where the state constitution bans non-compete agreements, there was nothing you could do to stop a worker from walking out the door and going to your direct competitor that afternoon. And so you see this kind of insatiable horniness to tame the tech workforce. I think the AI bubble -- one of the reasons it’s become so potent is because tech bosses just love the idea of firing programmers and replacing them with chatbots.