https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/the-great-tech-worker-revolution-has-begun/90996355 NewslettersSUBSCRIBE [] TOP STORIESTOP VIDEOS Money Presidential Betting Markets Are a Real-Time Experiment for Regulators--and It Could End Poorly Founder Friendly Investors How Venture Capital Helped This Founder Secure a 'Life-Changing Exit' Lead Why Are So Many Gen-Zers Fit to Quit? Lead Employee Happiness Is Bouncing Back After a 4-Year Low Technology Inside Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt's Vision for Solar Power Distributed From Space NewslettersSUBSCRIBE Technology The Great Tech Worker Revolution Has Begun Pushed too far, tech workers are pushing back, and it's a volcano waiting to erupt. * * * EXPERT OPINION BY JOE PROCOPIO, FOUNDER, JOEPROCOPIO.COM @JPROCO NOV 1, 2024 [tech-workers-revolution-inc] Photos: Getty Images. "I don't like my job. And I don't think I'm going to go anymore." That there is maybe the best line from the 1999 Mike Judge movie Office Space, the precursor to the even more on-the-nose Silicon Valley. Look at the four-digit-number in that sentence again. That line was uttered (checks watch) 25 years ago. Was it the first shot fired in the Great Tech Worker Revolution? Probably not. I picture dudes (all dudes) in short-sleeve-dress-shirts, clip-on-ties, and horn-rimmed glasses going all Falling Down (1993!) at IBMs and Honeywells in the 1960s and 1970s, but staying real quiet during the day and then mostly shouting about uncomfortable chairs and missing staplers at the dinner table later that night. This is probably where Judge got his Milton Waddams character. So the Great Tech Worker Revolution has been going on for decades, just... not very hard. That may have changed. FEATURED VIDEO An Inc.com Featured Presentation Venti Hypocrisy In August of 2024, the newly appointed CEO of Starbucks told everyone to return to the office and, to show that he too was down with the mandate, it was announced he'd be flying by private jet from his home in Southern California to the Seattle HQ to join the working ranks-- sometimes even more often than the required three days a week. I find it hysterical that most news articles about this announcement only focused on the environmental impact of the situation and not the fact that it was also just a total dick move. The kerfuffle kind of died down in the press because, election I guess. But that--that dick move right there. That will probably be viewed by future AI historians as the first shot fired in the Great Tech Worker Revolution. It's time to choose a side. Here's some propaganda. "I'm Quitting the First Chance I Get" That's not a line from a movie. That's something I hear almost daily from tech workers. And here's the thing. It's not coming from new hires. It's not coming from Gen-Z TikTok addicts. It's not coming from layabouts and pajama-wearing remote workers in Bali. It's coming from talented developers and other critical technical talent. It's coming from key players and trusted managers and even frustrated executives. It's coming from the exact people that the company is trying to protect while they attempt to thin the herd of all the whiners, layabouts, and pajama-wearing remote workers they hired when the labor market favored the job seeker. Tech companies are trying to fix a mistake by making the same mistake but backwards. Like Ferris Bueller trying to take the miles off a Porsche by running it in reverse. Yeah, fine. I was there in 2021 and 2022. It was next-to-impossible to hire talented people, certainly not at salaries and benefits that could be deemed reasonable. But rather than lower expectations and put a pause on growth while growth was prohibitively expensive, tech companies just could not help themselves. There was too much money flying around, thanks to low interest rates and Covid relief shenanigans. What they should have done, what they've always done in times when the job market was working against them, is hire the absolute best people at the rates they were asking for, let them work where they wanted to, and then figure it out later. Instead, what they did was hire anyone who showed up for the interview at the rates they were asking for, let them work where they wanted to, and then figured it out later. See how similar those two strategies are? It's an easy mistake to make, right? Fixing the Glitch The problem now is that tech companies have gone so far into dick-move territory that they've beaten their best down, at least the ones they haven't flushed out with the bathwater. And what does one do when one has to admit an absolute and soul-crushing defeat? One goes into exile. The best of the best in the tech industry have relegated themselves to hiding in plain sight. They're not quitting en masse. They're not starting that venture they always talked about. They're not holding Slack protests or union vote meetings or--taking a page from Mike Judge--planning Superman 3-style bullshit revenge heists. They're not even moping. This has hit them so deep to their core that their inner robot--the thing in them that makes them so good at cajoling increased productivity out of machines in the first place--has taken over. They're putting on poker faces. They're doing their job. They're biding their time. I've talked to them. A lot of them. Here's what they're thinking. You've Got AI, I've Got Access to Your Social Security Number Software developers are not afraid of AI taking their jobs--at least the good ones aren't, or at least not permanently. They're willing to wait out the shine on this latest shiny object, and they're making mental notes as to how deeply their employer is willing to contemplate their replacement by what is essentially a money-grab-fueled aggregation of a lot of other software developers' stolen code. Why? Because they know how to unplug the AI. Metaphorically. Ask any good software developer and they'll tell you, the rest of the software developers are all morons. Now, this is the necessary bravado of any top athlete, but in this case, what it speaks to is that--unlike baseball, where the rules are the same everywhere, every time--the best software developers are the ones most aware of the complexity of the company's problem and the elegance of the company's solution. But to repeat, the revolution won't be about stealing fractions of pennies or leaving security back doors open or any of those hijinks. Remember, much like their shirt-sleeved forebears, these folks don't like to make a big fuss. Not the good ones. They're waiting. For the right moment. This Has All Happened Before And again, the good ones--the ones who are good enough not to have been forced out into sales or support or some other pasture when they got too expensive--they know their history. Like any top athlete. I don't know why I'm stuck on this analogy. I just like to imagine software geeks dunking or pole-vaulting or whatever. Anyway, it's a history that goes all the way back to the IBMs and Honeywells and Hewlett-Packards and Univacs. It's a history that, at this scale of suckery anyway, looks a lot like the dot-bomb crash that happened (checks watch) 25 years ago. It's Hooli All Over Again That's when the Great Capital-I Internet Rush became a flushing of script-kiddies and bandwagon hype companies. It spawned a complete changing of the guard in tech. And do you really think Mark Zuckerberg coded Facebook on his own? Or Sergey and Larry built that search engine into the world's biggest advertising company by themselves? Or Jeff B. single-handedly built Amazon off the back of a napkin? They had help. Very talented help. Yes, tech companies, you've got the talent now--what's left of it anyway--and you can keep telling them they can quit if they don't like your rules. But the shot has been fired. Tech workers, the good ones, don't revolt, but they do eventually go where the winners are. It wasn't too long ago that Mike Judge, in his series Silicon Valley, turned his attention to the fertile comedic ground of tech startup Hooli (think Google or Yahoo) and its gourmet cafeterias and on-campus free bicycles and having to pay "Bighead" a fortune because no one could tell you if he was valuable or not. These revolutions are cyclical. And tech workers have long exabytes of memory. In the meantime, I'll be embedded with the resistance if you want to follow along. 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