When Rachel Grey started working at Google as a software engineer in 2007, it was a good time to be a Noogler, or what the search giant called new employees.
At a two-week orientation at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Ms. Grey discovered a utopia of perks. The company’s cafeterias served steak and shrimp, kitchens were stocked with fresh juices and gyms offered free workout classes. Workers received stock grants on top of their salaries, a 50 percent match on their retirement contributions and a Christmas bonus that came in the form of $1,000 tucked in an envelope.
What also made an impression on Ms. Grey during orientation was that Google revealed how many machines were in its data centers. “I saw how transparent things were in the company,” she said about the normally hush-hush information.
Over the years, though, her experience changed as she became a software engineering manager. The Christmas bonus shrank. Employees were no longer provided a fire hose of corporate information. The company abandoned a pledge that its artificial intelligence would not be used for weapons. The budget for promotions dried up, pressuring Ms. Grey to lower performance ratings, which she said was “stunningly painful.” In April, just shy of 18 years, the 48-year-old quit what was once her dream job.
Life for workers at Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies is different. Very different.
Gone are the days when Google, Apple, Meta and Netflix were the dream destinations for tech workers, offering fat salaries, lush corporate campuses and say-anything, do-anything cultures. Now the behemoth firms have aged into large bureaucracies. While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate.
It’s the shut up and grind era, workers said.
“Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”
“I suppose it’s better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death, but I don’t know if it’s good for you to be there,” she added.
A Google spokeswoman said that many employees had been promoted and that the company had changed its performance management system to better reward high performers. The company has introduced policies meant to encourage employees to focus on their work while also staying true to Google’s goals and culture, she added.
As the tech companies became hulking entities with work forces larger than many towns — and costs to match — scrutiny increased, too. Meta, Google, Apple and others were driven to make changes as workers and the public questioned their power.
The turning point came in 2022 and 2023, when Elon Musk bought Twitter (renamed X) and shed three-quarters of its employees, while Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, cut thousands of jobs during what he called “a year of efficiency.” Google and Amazon also conducted mass layoffs. Many of the companies blamed the pandemic for their overhiring during lockdowns as more people turned to digital services.
Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized.
“This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.
Some would say the changes have simply aligned tech workers with the rest of corporate America, where employees are accustomed to fulfilling corporate priorities.
But the shift in tech was compounded by the rise of generative artificial intelligence, which executives say has already made some jobs redundant. In January, Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed A.I. would replace some midlevel engineers this year. Mr. Musk went further, predicting last year that A.I. would eventually eliminate all jobs.
“The tide has definitely turned against tech workers,” said Catherine Bracy, the founder and chief executive of TechEquity, a nonprofit that pushes for economic inclusion in the industry. “Companies have even more leverage to use against workers, and A.I. is supercharging that.”
Liz Fong-Jones, the field chief technology officer at Honeycomb, a San Francisco company that helps engineers find and debug problems in their code, said A.I.’s effect on jobs was overblown. But that could change five years from now, she cautioned.
Tech workers could stop A.I. from taking hold, said Ms. Fong-Jones, a former Googler, adding, “but we’re all afraid enough to go along with training our own replacements.”
For some tech workers, the change in the workplace was abrupt. Adam Treitler, 32, a human resources strategist who worked at Twitter’s New York office before and after Mr. Musk’s acquisition, said the company’s moves under its new owner were startling.
“From the day before Elon to the day after Elon, it pivoted overnight from ‘how do we improve H.R. management’ to ‘what are the fewest number of steps involved and the fewest number of people needed to pay our employees,’” said Mr. Treitler, who joined Twitter in 2021 and left in January 2023. He now works for the music streaming service Pandora.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
Others said the shift had played out more slowly. Ava Sazanami, a designer in her 40s in Seattle, joined Meta in 2022 to make tools to help users with their privacy settings. The mother of two said she had felt empowered to help solve some of the tech concerns that worried her as a parent.
Meta also allowed a flexible schedule so she could accompany her children to appointments, and L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly policies made her feel welcome because she had gay family members, she said.
But over time, Meta curtailed its family benefits, Ms. Sazanami said. In January, the company killed its diversity programs and social media policies against hate speech targeting L.G.B.T.Q. people. A month later, she was laid off when Meta cut 5 percent of its work force.
“We’re seeing right now why tech needs unions,” said Ms. Sazanami, who is looking for a new job. “The current culture has disempowered workers.”
A Meta spokeswoman declined to comment. In an earnings call in January, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “We operate better as a leaner company.”
Some workers are leaving big tech companies to join the A.I. fray. Jason Yuan, 28, started as a designer at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., in 2021. It felt like a lucky break to work for a company that he revered for its design, he said.
Yet after the A.I. boom arrived with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, Mr. Yuan said, he yearned to get involved. In 2023, he left Apple to start New Computer, a company that makes a personal companion chatbot. He hopes to work more speedily and make more money, as A.I. is likely to replace him in his lifetime, he said.
“We’re reaching the end of our economic life span,” he said, adding, “There’s a feeling of, I have to make whatever I do now count.”
Apple declined to comment.
For Ms. Grey, Google’s exhilarating early days seem like another lifetime. The work was not always easy, she said, but the company’s culture made it easier to power through. One day, she recalled, she and her co-workers arrived to find Nerf guns on their desks. When a power outage hit, shutting down computers, they grabbed their Nerf guns and broke into a friendly fight.
“Google had such a glow about it then,” she said. “There was an institutionally approved playfulness to it all. I loved that.”
Now “the future of the whole industry seems very shaky,” said Ms. Grey, who is taking time off from tech.
Mike Isaac contributed reporting.
Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].
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