The Damore thing is also interesting because it demonstrates how, as the conversations around diversity become bigger and more visible, people who are not from underrepresented groups start to join them. You see a lot of new voices coming in who don’t really have the context to participate constructively. They don’t really understand the situation, but they feel entitled to offer their opinions. So spaces that were previously smaller and more trusted are now being expanded, and it’s usually not for the better.
You can no longer use those spaces to vent. Instead, you’re being asked to defend your existence within tech on a larger stage. So a lot of women just back out of the conversation completely, because they don’t want to be put in the position of being the voice of all women.
So the conversations are louder. There are more people involved. But that doesn’t necessarily make them better.
3The Cook
The people who populate tech aren’t just software engineers, technical writers, and other white-collar workers. They’re also the security guards, shuttle drivers, janitors, and cafeteria staff who work on office campuses across Silicon Valley. Their labor is often invisible but completely indispensable: if they don’t do their job, nobody else can do theirs.
Tech’s blue-collar workers are overwhelmingly people of color, and many are immigrants. Despite working in one of the world’s most profitable industries, they earn very low wages: a 2016 study found that they make on average about twenty thousand dollars a year, less than the median annual rent in Santa Clara County, which encompasses Silicon Valley. In response to this punishing math, many of these workers have unionized in recent years, winning higher wages and better benefits. But even with a union, life is hard—long hours, long commutes, and the manifold hardships and indignities that come with sitting in the shadow of Silicon Valley’s wealth.
We spoke to a cook at a major tech company who knows this life well. This is someone with deep roots in the Bay Area, with vivid memories of the first dot-com boom and firsthand experience of the industry’s local imprint. We talked about what it’s like to cook food in tech, what it’s like to organize a union in tech, and what the future might hold for the region.
Where did you grow up?
I grew up in West Oakland, California, with my mom and dad, brothers and sisters. It was fun. It was hard. It was poor. We had a Texas Instruments calculator and used to play a game called Lode Runner on it. That’s the most tech we ever had. But I had good family, good friends. Oakland was the best place ever to grow up.
At some point, I started making really, really, really, really, really poor decisions—the kind of decisions that your parents tell you not to make. This led to discipline by my father. I got kicked out of the house when I was fifteen or sixteen. I started doing little side jobs, and staying with friends. Ultimately, I ended up having a son. That’s when I realized I had to start doing things super different. So I started working in the irrigation industry, which was a hot industry back then.When was that?
That was right around when CNN ran a special called Silicon Valley: The New Gold Rush [1999]. That’s when I started working in irrigation. It was like boom—you could see it. All around this area: Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose. Irrigation was good business because everybody was having money around here. You can tell the economy’s doing good when people are taking care of their yards. It was a beautiful time. Irrigation was hard work, but it paid well.
Then around 2008, the irrigation business started going bad. That’s when we had the housing crash. People couldn’t afford to get their houses done. In fact, they could barely afford to keep their houses—and a lot of people had bought their houses on fake-ass Wells Fargo bank loans and whatnot. That just, like, shook up the whole world. Suddenly, everybody was vulnerable. Even the irrigation company I was working for wasn’t able to keep up their payments.
So I ended up going to culinary school. It was my dad’s idea, before he passed away. He knew I liked to cook. Me and him had butted heads just my whole upbringing—I never wanted to do anything he felt like I should do. But I ended up going to culinary school. Which was bullshit—I swear that culinary school is the biggest bullshit ever.Why’s that?
Because they charge you so much, and you don’t even get the job they tell you that you’re gonna get. It does teach you how to cook. I’ll give them that: if you go to culinary school, you will learn how to cook. I did. I thought I knew how to cook, but I didn’t know shit. When I got out, I went to work for one of the biggest tech companies in the area, as a prep cook making twelve dollars an hour. That was around 2010 or 2011, I think.Were you hired directly by the company?
No. As cooks, we’re contract workers. We’re not direct employees of those companies. We have to go through a staffing agency. A lot of people I went to culinary school with went through those agencies, too.What was your first impression of tech? What was it like working for that company?
It was … hella wack. The people at that company … they were different. They really weren’t that cool. At the time, the tech workers thought they were the shit. They were getting all the perks and bonuses. They were at a fresh-ass company that was about to take over everything, and they knew it. I ain’t gonna be mad at them, but they were snobby as hell. You saw the Benzes, the
