Featured
Part 2: Behind the Big Tech Facade
Performative Allyship and the Future of Democracy
As a woman and mom who walked the corporate hallways of the tech industry for over a decade, my connections to it still linger. Most of my LinkedIn connections are former and current tech employees, so it’s no surprise that my LinkedIn feed has been saturated in the last few days with pictures of Big Tech CEOs — Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos — all sitting together during the inauguration, behind the First Family. Smiles, excited hand waves, and laughs exchanged, as if acknowledging an emerging inside joke.
, including TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew, Apple CEO Tim Cook, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. .
The pictures came against the backdrop of federal agencies and several Big Tech companies announcing the cancellation of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Adding to tension were
A sense of familiar queasiness had already taken root in my stomach earlier in the week. Seeing the gaggle of male CEOs together in the Capitol Rotunda, acknowledging each other like old friends do, only worsened my unease. A sour taste of shame and anger filled my mouth — a reaction not unlike the one I had when Google, a company I once loved working for, just days after my daughter was born via an emergency c-section.
Shame because I spent years of my life designing and developing products for Big Tech, driven by a sense of blind loyalty and a need to prove myself. I played my part. Although no excuse, anger because of my now awareness that this loyalty was carefully cultivated through corporate messaging that preyed on just the right mix of my ideologies, insecurities, and fears.
When I joined Google in 2014, the company’s infamous old motto, Do No Harm, still echoed its halls. I equated the company’s success with altruism. It was easy to overlook the cracks in the façade.
I looked the other way when my team . Just an accident, I told myself. I brushed off being sexually harassed at an offsite when an engineering director encouraged me to down shots and then dance with him. Just part of being Googley. I didn’t question it when after my boss started making negative comments about a mother on my team. Just a misunderstanding.
But eventually, like a crescendo, the growling in my increasingly uneasy stomach became louder than the corporate rhetoric that once rang in my ears. My accumulating experiences and observations became impossible to ignore, and the veil lifted. to protect my conscience and my ability to co-provide for my family well into the future.
The transition hasn’t been easy, . Sometimes the harder path paves the way for what’s best in the long-term.
Now I’m in law school.
Facebook was my last Big Tech employer. I left the company in 2020. It’s hard to remember the exact moment in which I knew definitively that I was done with being a Big Tech lackey, but I can say it was revealing the company’s role in exacerbating political division and harming vulnerable populations, such as teenage girls.
Contrary to decisions being made inside the company when I worked there, Facebook was still at the time externally championing values like democracy, truth, and inclusion. , for example, the company celebrated an increased number of women and underrepresented groups in its staffing. ambitious goals to reach 50% of its workforce comprised of women and underrepresented groups by 2024.
Other Big Tech companies were setting similarly bold goals for this decade — until just recently.
What caused such a drastic and seemingly overnight shift in Big Tech’s values? From my observations of the tech industry over the years, the answer is clear: performative allyship, a phenomenon in which organizations opportunistically talk the talk about caring for the people, societies, and policies they impact while failing to walk the walk. Because saying the right thing at the right time makes money, no matter how genuine a company may or may not be.
This week marked the start of my second semester of law school. In my first Constitutional Law lecture, we discussed how the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, despite their differing political opinions, were united in one mission when founding the United States: to prevent extreme wealth, education, and power disparities. These and other principles of equality are the bedrock of our nation’s identity.
Regardless of your political affiliation, who you supported in this election, your unique struggles, I urge you to reflect on our country’s founding principles in the months and years to come. As you do so, notice how Big Tech billionaires — — are increasingly moving in and out of government with ease.
Before the election, I hinted at why women should be among those concerned about the Big Tech Revolving Door. But marginalized communities, women included, are far from the only ones affected.
We all suffer when our nation’s ideologies, insecurities, and fears continue to be exploited by self-serving, inconsistent platitudes of allyship. This behavior distracts people with polarizing, short-term dopamine hits while political and policy decisions are made to the long-term benefit of some of the wealthiest corporations and people in the world, including Big Tech CEOs.
As Ezra Klein discusses in , “Oligarchy isn’t mere corruption. It describes what happens when wealth becomes intertwined with rulership.” I fear that if we don’t pay closer attention, a consolidated power structure will continue to emerge to the threat of democracy. History has shown us time and again that once such a situation takes hold, an exit strategy becomes extraordinarily difficult to achieve.
Let’s not wait until things reach a tipping point, as I once did during my time as a Big Tech insider. Let’s please not let our country become the butt of a trillionaire inside joke.
Chelsey Glasson is the author of . Check out the book’s introduction,
