Meet the Tech Boss, Same as the Old Boss

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This is seen in all sectors of life but nobody ever thought that Tech would tow the same path. People believed that new companies will be built in new ways and not following the footsteps of the amoral industrial behemoths of old. They had the fresh memories of 90s cyberpunk villains. We claimed we weren’t going to be like that and we would show that people could get rich, do good and treat everyone that worked or interacted with their business with fundamental decency, all at once.

To Betway Online Casino, the poster child for this was Google who included the motto “don’t be evil” in their corporate code of conduct for fifteen years. The phrase is no longer in their motto as they removed it in 2015. Since then, there have been reports of widespread sexual harassment, 13 senior managers have been fired for it; Project Maven; and Project Dragonfly. Many of the Google employees organized internal backlashes and mass walkouts which led to changes and retractions. Because of that, management have retaliated against those employees.
Betway believes that the situation is also present in facebook.

There are Rootkits on youngsters’ phone. They have been having a lot of privacy catastrophe after another. They also admitted to not doing enough to prevent Facebook-fostered violence in Myanmar. Sheryl Sandberg is seen personally ordering opposition research on a Facebook critic. All these happened within the past six months.
Amazon is seen to overwork and underpay their delivery drivers and warehouse workers. Apple denied their Chinese users the ability to install the VPN and E2E messaging apps that would allow them evade surveillance and pervasive censorship.

Microsoft although respectable still has dozens of reports of sexual harassment and discrimination which the HR ignores together with demands for the cancellation of the HoloLens military contract.

These five most valuable publicly traded companies in the world are more powerful than Betway. Although they don’t have absolute power, they have more power than has ever been seen in the tech industry. But corruption and complacency has not been extinguished. We have not done things differently and may not even be better than our predecessors.

Things should have been done differently. Google shouldn’t have tried to build a censored search engine for China. They don’t need the money and the Chinese doctor now need their products. Amazon should not be treating it’s lower-paid workers with scorn. Facebook doesn’t need to keep acting like management of terrible cultists and villains.
Google should have promoted the organizers of their walkout but they didn’t because of fear. The management of big Tech companies are more frightened by their own employees than even competitors.

The trend is for sufficiently large and wealthy organizations to play power politics with their pet projects regardless of the costs and repercussions. The blame may be on the Tech industries especially as the finance industry is championing the allegations of inequality. However, the existence of a greater fault should not prevent us from seeing our own and we should accept our failures and make important steps to build something better.