Laid-off techies face 'sense of impending doom' with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash
Laid-off techies face 'sense of impending doom' with job cuts at highest since dot-com crash
2000, 2008, 2023: The boom-bust cycle is a constituent feature of capitalism.
Tech workers, the best time to unionize was 15 years ago; the second-best time is now.
second-best time is now
Which is why big companies (incl. big tech) are going all-out to remove the practical ability, or even the legal ability, to do so. ex: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/10/starbucks-trader-joes-spacex-challenge-labor-board
Worse still, organizations that we thought were our allies are now showing their true colors: Why Is the ACLU Waging Class Warfare?
Incidentally, this cycle was originally identified by Marx and Engels, and it's been consistent since then.
Hmmm and I was thinking all these companies are the JoB cREatOrS
Of course they are, all they need are more tax-breaks and gov't handouts! Here, there are private jets flying over, in, and out, all week long, hustling those JoB cREatOrS to and from their Elite Retreats where fellow JoB cREatIoN masterminds convene to plan how to share wealth and improve the lives of their fellow Americans. Corpo jets are expensive to buy/lease/operate, it's only fair that they be subsidized by the taxpayer, isn't it? And no, you're not getting a ride on one, looking like you do, not without a written reference from a billionaire anyway.
Anecdote: I have been a software dev in networking/internet/web/databases &related since before there was an internet. I occasionally get recruiter spam still, and was shocked to see spams recently from contractor agencies in the Seattle area (meaning, the agency hires you W-2 and pays your salary but you labor at the company they place you at - they bill the client X$ and you get, maybe if you're lucky (X * 0.7)$), offering hourly rates that are less than I was getting (non-inflation-adjusted) as a W-2 contractor in the region back in the 90s. Not only that, but the work was on-site and required the software developer employee be "on call" for long periods. Really shitty-sounding work (client = a rather large, well-known, union-hostile retailer) at a really shitty rate in a super-expensive metro. Yeah, no.
If only we could, like, not be fired at any time for no reason. There's no reason for any of it, because any cost savings to a company like Google are infinitesimal. They just do it because shitty consultants tell them that's the road to higher profit margin increases.
I find it hilarious how techies always thought that they were too good for unions.
I'd be down with a project managers union?
Maybe stop letting companies buy other companies and firing anyone they want.
The enshittification cycle started when we legalized stock buybacks.
Socialism!!
/s