Futureproofing in Unethical Times

I came across a tweet that asked developers “What are you doing to stay valuable and future-proof your career?”

Before we begin, this tweet is written by a person who makes content around programming and navigating the tech industry. Much of their timeline is discourse around the trends therein. In fact, following this tweet is a “hey, let’s get together and talk through some things that might help alleviate this” post. I don’t assume to know the intent of the OP here because I don’t know them as a person.

I do have thoughts about this tweet, though.

This tweet exists in a time where there have been multiple years of layoffs across industries despite making record profits in those years for the last four years. 

This tweet exists in a context where people are finding out via social media that they are no longer employed. 

This tweet exists in a time that people are being told that their material contributions to their workplace are irrelevant unless they are physically present in their workplaces in spite of all evidence suggesting that people have been just as (if not more) productive working from home and in a climate where corporations are consuming unspeakable amounts of resources to power artificial intelligence learning models while simultaneously firing the humans that their learning is modeled after.

The wording here is passive almost as if to suggest that people aren’t actively being undermined at every turn and the only real barrier here is some individual responsibility; as if it is or could be the responsibility of any individual below the C and V levels of a company to proof themselves against a future that companies are working – seeming without fear or remorse – to destroy in an effort to make the money they feel entitled to.

Read that again. Entitled to. As in, “Yeah, we made record profits to the tune of billions, but we could have had more billions, so we’re gonna have to trim the fat I guess…” which somehow rarely if never applies to the CEO.

What does valuable mean if not throwing several dozens or hundreds of people under a metaphorical bus? As if the people working there are not, in and of themselves, the value? As if any of these things would exist without several peoples’ worth of labor to make and maintain those things? 

What does future-proofing mean except molding yourself to navigate increasingly unethical business practices in order to stay housed and fed? Where is the accountability in this toward the companies that fight tooth and nail to maintain the privilege and power to continue doing this to people?

It’s been one year since that CEO guy said that unemployment needs to jump up to some ridiculous percentage to put workers back in their place and be made to understand that it is a privilege to work for a company and not the other way around.

Nah.

The only future-proofing and value-creating thing I can see moving forward is organizing, striking and unionizing. Beyond that, we need to think about the way we phrase these questions.

Let me say this plainly: future-proofing won’t save us. It is not real.

Being more “valuable” isn’t a guarantee of anything when there are fast food workers with whole doctorate degrees.

We have to push back against the notion that our efforts should be spent with trying to insulate ourselves from an increasingly hostile environment individually and lean into the idea of us working together collectively to say “enough of this absolute bullshit” in whatever ways we can.

We have to deal with the material realities we are in, but as we do, let’s remember than when talking about how we move toward the future, our language matters.