The Burnout Machine

How Tech Became (or Didn’t Become) a Burnout Machine

• Some say big tech wasn’t this bad 10–15 years ago: less micromanagement, more autonomy, less stress.
• Others argue it was always a “hungry machine”; we just tolerated it more when younger and less encumbered by family and health.
• Many note that today’s dysfunction (politics, constant meetings, lack of real building) can be as draining as raw overwork.

Overwork, Burnout, and What’s Typical

• Multiple commenters dispute the article’s “80-hour week” framing; many report 40–45 hours with reasonable on-call or none at all, even at FAANG.
• Others verify occasional crunch (deadlines, papers, launches) but say that’s episodic, not constant.
• A recurring theme: burnout often comes more from lack of meaning, politics, or chaotic processes than from raw hours.

Tech Unions: Hopes, Models, and Examples

• Pro‑union arguments:
  • Collective bargaining to rebalance power, especially amid layoffs, offshoring, and AI hype.
  • Concrete wins in adjacent fields (games, media, Kickstarter, NYT tech guild): better pay, on‑call compensation, job security, remote-work rules, clearer review processes.
  • Potential to tackle tech-specific issues: equity structures, on‑call staffing, RTO, non‑competes, ethical constraints on what gets built.
• Some advocate trade-style or cross-employer unions (e.g., “web developers union”) that also certify skills and standardize titles.

Skepticism and Risks Around Unionization

• Concerns raised:
  • U.S. unions’ history of corruption, internal politics, “no-strike” clauses, and perceived capture by leadership.
  • Fear of ossified workforces, seniority games, and weaker individual negotiation for high performers.
  • Strong belief that unions would accelerate offshoring to cheaper labor markets and erode tech’s current pay premium.
  • Worry unions become vehicles for broad political agendas that divide rather than unite workers.

Global and Structural Context

• Europeans note many “union outcomes” (healthcare, parental leave, job protection) already exist via law, reducing the perceived need for tech-specific unions.
• Others argue U.S. workers underestimate how much existing labor rights owe to past union struggles and how quickly conditions can regress without collective pressure.

Alternatives and Counterproposals

• Common counter: switch jobs or sectors; many report stable, low-stress roles in “boring” industries (banking, insurance, government) without unions.
• Others push entrepreneurship/freelancing as real autonomy, while several respond that self-employment can be even more exhausting and risky.
• Another camp argues focus should be on antitrust (breaking up big tech) rather than organizing engineers inside giant firms.

Class, Privilege, and Solidarity

• Strong tension between “we’re incredibly privileged” and “we’re still workers whose surplus is captured by capital.”
• Some say other workers will see well-paid developers as enemies, not allies; others insist class is about relation to the means of production, not salary level.
• Several call for tech workers to use their relative privilege to raise standards for everyone rather than dismiss their own problems because “others have it worse.”

Meta: Quality of the Article Itself

• A noticeable subset believes the piece reads like LLM-generated “AI slop”: clichéd metaphors, generic rage, little specificity.
• Even critics of the writing still find the unionization and burnout discussion worth having independently of the article’s quality.