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I do wonder how we'll look back on this era in future generations. My theory is that COVID lockdowns in 2020 had a lasting impact few of us have really reckoned

I do wonder how we'll look back on this era in future generations. My theory is that COVID lockdowns in 2020 had a lasting impact few of us have really reckoned with. I think one understated impact is that the tech billionaire class disappeared (even further) into their own world and they haven't come back since. A lot of the stuff mentioned in the article feels downstream of that. They're all in their own private chats frothing themselves into a storm over a crazy array of reactionary things and there's no-one in the room saying "hey, this sounds kind of nuts to me?". It's notable that Andreesen cites the summer of 2020 was an inflection point. The BLM protests are framed by these folks as an overcorrection of anti-racism or something like that. I see it differently: it was a large scale, somewhat cohesive social movement that came from the ground up. This terrifies Andreesen and his ilk and they see it as a personal affront. Couple that with the competition for hiring tech workers in the same era that gave engineers more power than they used to have... I'm convinced this even extends to the current hysteria for AI, too. They want to permanently reduce worker power in tech.

toss1 1y ago
Yup Possibly what terrified them most was the Work From Home movement and Quiet Quitting. Both were real workers asserting their needs for a sane un-exploitated life and a fair deal. Both of those emerged from COVID, with the hard proof that commuting daily to an office was not only not required, it is actively counterproductive for profitable business. It was proof that RTO was at best an outmoded model preserved primarily as a means of control over the workers, even "respected" educated knowledge workers. To people with $billions who see both their wealth and their personal identity as being able to exploit people and extract their resources to their own purposes at will, this is an existential threat. So, yes, their self-victimization is bullsh*t, and merely another play in the Oligarch's playbook. (Edit: clarifying by inserting missing words)
UncleMeat 1y ago
Bang on. It is no surprise that we saw one of the largest increases in worker power (especially in tech) between mid 2020 and 2022 and that the bosses went nuts in reaction to this. Remote work. Compensation increases. Tons of new benefits. The bosses tried to push back against this with the "quiet quitting" stuff and crying that everybody was actually working two jobs and stealing from the bosses based on a small number of anecdotes. But this didn't really stick. Then came AI. Finally, a way to stick it to those noisy workers. Magical. The bosses can do all of the stuff they want without paying people (or by paying people in vastly cheaper regions by augmenting them with AI). This is why the narrative around AI is "we need to lay people off to pay for training AI" and "we need to lay people off because people should be more efficient by using AI" rather than "now that our workers are more efficient we can do more and hire more." You see this now with CEOs saying in public that AI is going to completely upend job markets.

toss1 1y ago

Yup Possibly what terrified them most was the Work From Home movement and Quiet Quitting. Both were real workers asserting their needs for a sane un-exploitated life and a fair deal. Both of those emerged from COVID, with the hard proof that commuting daily to an office was not only not required, it is actively counterproductive for profitable business. It was proof that RTO was at best an outmoded model preserved primarily as a means of control over the workers, even "respected" educated knowledge workers. To people with $billions who see both their wealth and their personal identity as being able to exploit people and extract their resources to their own purposes at will, this is an existential threat. So, yes, their self-victimization is bullsh*t, and merely another play in the Oligarch's playbook. (Edit: clarifying by inserting missing words)

UncleMeat 1y ago

Bang on. It is no surprise that we saw one of the largest increases in worker power (especially in tech) between mid 2020 and 2022 and that the bosses went nuts in reaction to this. Remote work. Compensation increases. Tons of new benefits. The bosses tried to push back against this with the "quiet quitting" stuff and crying that everybody was actually working two jobs and stealing from the bosses based on a small number of anecdotes. But this didn't really stick. Then came AI. Finally, a way to stick it to those noisy workers. Magical. The bosses can do all of the stuff they want without paying people (or by paying people in vastly cheaper regions by augmenting them with AI). This is why the narrative around AI is "we need to lay people off to pay for training AI" and "we need to lay people off because people should be more efficient by using AI" rather than "now that our workers are more efficient we can do more and hire more." You see this now with CEOs saying in public that AI is going to completely upend job markets.