Every time a developer gets told to ship a dark pattern, an addictive notification loop, or a feature that erodes user privacy, they face an impossible choice: push back and risk your job, or comply and sleep at night knowing what you built.
The discourse around surveillance capitalism almost always targets the executives signing off on these decisions, but the actual machinery runs on the labor of thousands of developers who had no seat at the strategy table.
We need to stop treating individual tech workers as innocent bystanders while simultaneously ignoring the power asymmetry that makes meaningful resistance career suicide for most people.
Unions in tech are not just about wages - they are one of the few structures that could give developers enough collective power to say no to harmful features without facing individual retribution.
Ask yourself: when was the last time you blamed a construction worker for building a building designed to trap the poor, rather than the system that designed and commissioned it?
The same moral clarity we apply to other forms of labor should apply here.
#TechWorkers #SurveillanceCapitalism #LaborRights #SoftwareEngineering
just did an interview. a small firm. lots of clients. i asked specifically if engs get to deny working on projects they are morally against. was told “nothing we do goes into war, just maybe commercial airlines but also support systems in mil clients, and we gotta eat.”
For context, my local transit authority has decided to do away with monthly passes and instead give you a fare cap if you use a debit/credit card to pay your fare. They’re tracking who is taking what bus, and when.
By your logic, the bus drivers are also at fault for the surveillance state.
Ask yourself: when was the last time you blamed a construction worker for building a building…
The same moral clarity we apply to other forms of labor should apply here.
the construction worker can’t addict you a building nor enable you to become addicted to buildings; unlike developers… lol
