Only ten years ago, the public perception of Silicon Valley was far more optimistic. Time magazine named Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg their person of the year in 2010, after Aaron Sorkin's film “The Social Network” became a blockbuster hit. In part due to the popularity of the iPhone 4, 2010 was also the beginning of the mobile app boom. App developers were becoming overnight millionaires. And Uber was then known as “UberCab,” a small San Francisco startup trying to get its rideshare app to stand out from the noise. Startups were still considered a desirable place to work, and the general public was enamored by quirky tech office perks like ball pits and office kegs.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Unless Zuckerberg repents and becomes a Luddite, it is unlikely he will ever be perceived as anything more than a robotic boy-CEO. Sorkin, who was once captivated by Zuckerberg's story enough to make a movie out of it, has described Facebook's policy on allowing politicians to lie on its platform as “assaulting the truth.” Uber is now a multi-billion company whose rise has been tainted by sexism scandals, sexual assaults, and obscene exploitation of their workers. Working at a startup is no longer as novel as it used to be. Rather, workers at Silicon Valley companies, big and small, white collar and blue collar, have started to feel less coddled and more exploited, an energy they have channeled into an uprising — and one that has only just begun.
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