Doctorow is an expert at stirring the pot. However, I disagree with the overall premise of his piece.<p>He frames most of his thesis on how FAANG companies tightened the screws since their "college campus" era during their scrappier days.<p>While he isn't wrong about these workplaces having become less surreal over the years, these actions are a consequence of going public and becoming huge megacorps. Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe, IBM and many others went through the exact same thing. Tale as old as time.<p>Furthermore, SWEs are, by and large, still paid multiples over the median _before_ considering hours worked, and they still get excellent benefits that other professions that leverage "vocational awe" wouldn't even dream of providing. Heck, SWEs/SREs have the benefit of (theoretically) being able to choose whether to work fully remote or not and have a high chance of getting highly paid either way.<p>To wit, there was a thread on Blind the other day wherein someone at a non-FAANG was asking if chasing money meant anything anymore after clearing their first million USD. This is _despite_ bigwigs like Benioff boasting about freezing all software engineering hires now that generative AI is "good enough" (which I don't think they actually did?).<p>There is NO OTHER INDUSTRY wherein "normies" that didn't go to highly-regarded school for years and years on end have a realistic shot at this kind of compensation.<p>Software is still a high-skilled, highly-niche profession. Generative AI "simplifies" writing software, but that's only 20-40% of the job, IMO. As long as that remains true, and as long as margins on software remain astronomical, demand will remain high and SWE/SWE-adjacent professionals will continue to be paid well.
Capital has gotten too cocky and has forgotten that all profits are created by labor.<p>It is time we change that. We need to unionize, strike and shut down production. The tactics of the industrial revolution still work in the digital age.