The author claims that "the only people acting in an entitled, reckless and ridiculous way have been venture capitalists and the most powerful people in tech", but the fact that a tech bubble existed and the excess couldn't last forever have been obvious to most people in the industry for a long time. There was an effort around 2017, catalyzed by Trump's election, to get tech workers to organize* while the times were still good in order to secure protections like a board seat for labor, or converting subcontracted work to full-time employment at name brand companies. People beat the drum at most of the tech companies, and at Twitter, to try to get high-wage workers there to take the tiniest steps toward collective action.

During most of 2017 you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a journalist writing a major article about how tech workers were organizing, shaking off their chains, etc. Major foundations were going hat in hand to anyone who even mentioned workplace organizing, begging them to take their money. (I got turned down by one such foundation because I asked for a ~$80k budget; they told me my proposal would be accepted if I found a way to make it ten times bigger).

The part of this effort that I witnessed was met with a mix of derision and complete indifference. Programmers and designers were eager to cheerlead their colleagues in food service unionizing, but didn't want to make the slightest effort to safeguard their own status as the most pampered workforce in the country. Arguments that the gravy train could not last, and that they were creating the tools to automate away their own very lucrative future, fell on deaf ears. I am a highly apathetic guy, and yet even I was astonished by the level of apathy.

Now the good times are ending, a future of limitless high-wage programming jobs seems less secure, and people are justifiably mad. But fairness demands some of the victims of the current round of layoffs also go look in the mirror.

(* 'organize' here means use the pretty robust framework of US labor law to achieve some shared goal. Many people take it as a synonym for 'unionize', but there is no requirement that concerted workplace action result in a traditional union. You might just organize to secure a specific goal, like a board seat for employees, specific rules for doing layoffs, or equal treatment of H1-B colleagues.)