Yeah, the author clearly did not have a good time doing maintenance in one of these buildings, and came to resent her co-workers (and the odds are good that the

Yeah, the author clearly did not have a good time doing maintenance in one of these buildings, and came to resent her co-workers (and the odds are good that the author was not employed by the same firm as the programmers, increasing the sense of class divide). Interestingly, the author eventually expresses some empathy for the programmers, seeing them as over-worked startup employees, too. Reading between the lines, I think the narrative here is that all workers are oppressed by The Man and being in an office is part of that. It's a bit of a meme to tell slightly spoiled SF engineers that they're being oppressed, can't they see it? When, realistically, it's a pretty darn good time for a lot of the engineers...