Regardless of the “dot-com crash” in 2000, the tech trade remained a horny profession vacation spot for a lot of who believed know-how represented the longer term. The digital age — outlined by international connectivity and computer systems — had firmly taken maintain, and over time, the tech trade emerged as a dominant pressure within the labor market. Excessive-paying jobs for engineers, designers, and professionals throughout a variety of fields grew to become more and more frequent.
MIT PhD scholar JS Tan SM ’22 was amongst those that, upon graduating from Brown College and Rhode Island College of Design in 2015, joined the tech trade.
“Numerous us had this concept that know-how, and particularly the applied sciences associated to the web, had the potential for bringing a few extra progressive model of the world,” Tan says.
Google echoed this ethos to its staff with its once-famous motto, “don’t be evil,” as their casual company philosophy and code of conduct guideline. They’ve since dropped the tagline.
However in time, significantly with the beginning of the primary Trump administration, some tech trade staff discovered themselves questioning if their employers had been actually intent on supporting insurance policies to help a extra democratic world. In line with Tan, their willingness to publicly oppose their employers’ actions — at first efficiently — is presently experiencing an anti-worker backlash.
Now, Tan and his former tech trade colleague Clarissa Redwine have revealed a e book on the rise and fall of the tech employee labor motion. “In opposition to Tech Oligarchy: Employee Resistance within the World’s Most Highly effective Business” (Haymarket Books, 2026) chronicles how tech staff organized themselves, the efficient methods they used, and the impact the motion had on Silicon Valley labor politics over the previous decade.
Documenting a motion from inside
In 2017, Tan was working for Microsoft and Redwine for Kickstarter, when President Donald Trump signed an government order suspending entry into the USA for nationals from seven predominantly Muslim international locations for 90 days, and suspending Syrian refugees from getting into the nation indefinitely.
“As a complete, I believe the tech sector actually pushed again towards this,” says Tan. “[OpenAI co-founder] Sam Altman participated in protests of this ban on the airport. In reality, the day earlier than he joined these protests, he wrote in his weblog that the tech trade wanted to take a stand towards the Trump administration, and significantly its immigration insurance policies.”
Altman’s Jan. 28, 2017, weblog put up learn, partially, “Tech firms go to extraordinary lengths to recruit and retain staff; these staff have numerous leverage. If staff push firms to do one thing, I consider they’ll must. At a minimal, firms ought to take a public stance. However speaking is barely considerably efficient, and staff ought to push their firms to determine what actions they will take.”
Tan says Altman’s phrases impressed tech staff throughout the trade to publicly voice their opposition and “push for the values they believed in.” For the subsequent a number of years, staff staged walkouts and protested their employers’ contracts with U.S. army and immigration enforcement companies, in addition to office insurance policies they thought-about sexist.
“That was a time through which numerous tech staff felt that their firms had been strolling again the values that they’d initially promised,” says Tan.
Their objections initially met with some success. In 2018, following protests by Google staff, the corporate determined to not renew its contract for Challenge Maven, a Pentagon initiative utilizing synthetic intelligence to research drone surveillance footage. Practically 4,000 staff signed an open letter to their CEO stating, “Google shouldn’t be within the enterprise of struggle.”
Quick ahead eight years. Earlier this 12 months, greater than 600 staff signed an open letter urging Google’s CEO to reject labeled AI work with the Pentagon, citing issues about potential makes use of together with deadly autonomous weapons and home surveillance.
“The way in which Google responded to them this time was to say, principally, ‘Too dangerous, we’re dedicated to working with the Pentagon,’” says Tan. “So, there may be this type of shift as to how Google is positioning itself politically, in addition to to their staff.”
What occurred to the tech trade worker leverage?
Tan’s e book outlines a number of occasions that he argues have negatively impacted their previously robust affect. First, following rate of interest hikes in 2022, the tech trade misplaced a whole bunch of billions in market valuation and got down to minimize prices, probably the most vital of them being the costly salaries of their staff. In different phrases, the labor market soured on tech staff, giving employers alternative to wrest again management, Tan suggests.
Second, he factors to the drastic impact of agentic AI coding programs on the character of their work, arguing that these instruments have deskilled staff and made everybody far more nervous about job safety.
“Tech staff needed to face these shocks on their very own. With a union or some skill to coordinate throughout staff and discount as a bunch, they could’ve had extra energy to really push again,” says Tan.
Documenting the previous to help the longer term
Tan enrolled at MIT in 2020, incomes a grasp’s diploma on the MIT Media Lab. He’s presently a doctoral scholar within the Division of City Research and Planning with a deal with the political financial system of the tech sector.
At numerous factors of their careers, Tan and his co-author had been concerned with organizing within the tech sector. Redwine was a outstanding organizer within the union drive at Kickstarter. She was fired from the corporate in 2019; Redwine mentioned her dismissal was retaliation for her organizing exercise, whereas Kickstarter denied that declare. One motive Tan and Redwine wrote this e book is as a result of they noticed that the bandwidth for labor organizing amongst tech staff had hit a brand new low.
“Tech staff need to have a say over the way in which their applied sciences are designed,” says Tan. “They need to have the ability to push for the best guardrails round applied sciences that they’re constructing. We wished to make use of this e book as a chance to research why it was that, inside eight years, the tech employee motion had form of fallen into this state of paralysis.”
They started writing the e book in 2024, reliving the highs and lows of the previous decade. That is Tan’s first e book. He says writing it was an “exhilarating expertise” and one which he profoundly loved.
“It’s why, partially, I’m drawn to academia. To a big extent, I consider within the energy of analysis and of writing. To have the chance to do that a few topic that I care deeply about has been an incredible expertise.”
A e book launch and dialogue about “In opposition to Tech Oligarchy,” co-hosted by the Division of City Research and Planning, will happen on Oct. 26.
