The New Ideology in the Software Industry

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The amount of money you make as a worker in our current society has so little to do with your individual worth in any sense like it. I don't think that this meritocratic narrative is going to have as strong a hold anymore because there isn't as much money being thrown at people. What I would hope would dawn on people instead is the sense that actually this meritocracy myth was always a lie. The thing that the industry does the tool it takes on people is that it does creep in in this very insidious way into their sense of worth. It warps their mind and makes them think, well, if I don't have a job or making a lot of money, then am I

Paris Marx is joined by Wendy Liu to discuss what it was like to work in tech in the 2010s and why structural changes in the industry are empowering an increasingly reactionary capitalist class to strike back at workers and upend the expectations of the boom period.

Wendy Liu is a writer and the author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism. You can follow her on Twitter at @dellsystem.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer wrote about how tech CEOs are inspired by what Musk is doing at Twitter
Mel Krantzler and Patricia Krantzler wrote Down and Out in Silicon Valley: The High Cost of the High-tech Dream
Jacob Silverman wrote about David Sacks and the reactionary turn of tech billionaires
Paris wrote about how longtermism is designed to justify the position of billionaires in society
Julia Black wrote about the embrace of pronatalism within the tech industry

Support the show