Tech Destroys Families. Women and Children are the REAL Victims of Workaholic Culture.
When the new CEO of Twitter took over under Elon Musk’s reign, he had his wife and his newborn child setting up shop in the offices immediately. Sleeping there. In a conference room. On a mattress someone dragged in.
This was celebrated as the CEO “getting” the culture and as a form of egalitarianism: look, even the CEO is doing this, so you’re not in this alone! This isn’t worker exploitation… it’s just… exploitation!!
The Twitter CEO having his newborn wife and child in the office sleeping on a fucking mattress in a fucking conference room, is absolutely morally repellant. Even if this was a PR stunt on their part, the culture this creates subordinates women and children to the appalling degree that, if it serves the benefit of the man’s career, women and children themselves, even newborns, can be enlisted into the “hardcore” culture and be expected to make these sacrifices as well.
This woman had just had a fucking baby, and instead of the parents focusing on that, most critical moment, and taking that time to focus on the health of the child and the mother during the critical postpartum times, they were enlisted into this disgusting show of “hardcoreness” that speaks to how brutally the tech industry as a whole treats, not just its workers, but their families. This was one of the most appalling cases I’ve seen out of the industry when it comes to familial neglect and a culture of familial and partner neglect. The utter callousness and disrespect that tech has towards women and children was well on display.
But wait!!! Apparently she too was “Leaning In”, using the opportunity to advise on real estate strategy to the company during the transition.
YOU JUST HAD A BABY YOU SHOULD BE FOCUSING 100% OF YOUR TIME AND ENERGY ON YOUR, AGAIN, NEWBORN BABY WHAT PART OF THAT IS NOT GETTING THROUGH TO YOU?!?!!?!?
Lean In is where we can see the hatred of women and children being acted out through women in a corporate environment. Even the women in the industry are inculcated into this culture to such a violent degree that a newborn child is not prioritized above some dumbass fucking job. There was absolutely no need to do this; it was done for the purpose of doing it and for the message that it sends to people around the industry. While she might have been happy to do it, she is screwing over other women and their children who DONT want to be in a fucking office after giving birth, by allowing herself to be the image du jour of the startup wife/startup leading lady. This set a reprehensible example, a reprehensible bar for women and mothers, and everyone involved in that bullshit should be fucking ashamed.
Newborn children deserve better than being hauled into fucking offices for whatever show of blind obedience to the invented crises of tech fascists is called for that day.
For additional context on how deep the sidelining of families in tech goes, Justine Musk has herself written about her abhorrent treatment by Elon Musk.
“I told Elon, in a soft voice that was nonetheless filled with conviction, that I needed our life to change. I didn't want to be a sideline player in the multimillion-dollar spectacle of my husband's life. I wanted equality. I wanted partnership. I wanted to love and be loved, the way we had before he made all his millions.
Elon agreed to enter counseling, but he was running two companies and carrying a planet of stress. One month and three sessions later, he gave me an ultimatum: Either we fix this marriage today or I will divorce you tomorrow, by which I understood he meant, Our status quo works for me, so it should work for you. He filed for divorce the next morning.”
The families of men in tech from the lowest level to the highest level are sacrificed again and again and again, in an industry that actually sees abandonment of partners and family as some kind of badge of honor and encourages and supports them in treating families as disposable, and assists them in disposing of them. In fact, it is seen as good and right to discard your family and all of your obligations outside of the industry, period. That is what is called the “sacrifice you make” — but really, it’s the “sacrifice you take”. The ones who are experiencing the sacrifice aren’t the men in these situations. It’s their partners and their children.
Tech has left a trail of broken families and relationships that have made women and children, much more so than the men, the systemic victims of labor exploitation. This has not been included in the calculus of tech’s engagement with women and children and with the consequences of the workaholic culture.
Within the industry, the attitude is that women are gold digging whores and they should feel lucky to be with a tech executive or “hacker” or “10x engineer” — literally every level of the industry, even those that are not “important” executives, treats women as lucky gold diggers who should be happy to be treated like animals and have a chance at the “startup lotto”. This is the attitude of Lean In: “if you get asked for a spot on the rocket ship, you don’t ask which one”. Women are conscripted into this absurd standard without even knowing that their partners will actually be supported and celebrated for abandoning them and treating them like dirt. The culture reinforces treating women like shit because after all, they’re “only there for the money”, as if the greedy fucks treating us like animals aren’t literally just doing it for the money, money far beyond what is needed to sustain their families.
Much of the conversation about the insane work hours in tech have focused on how it makes success in the industry prohibitive to women in tech, who are still left being the primary homemakers as well as child care, and thus unable to meet the absurd working hours required to win. This frames the issue around women’s careerism but leaves out the fact that the victims of the workaholic culture are often women and children that men insist on having despite putting their bosses, venture capitalists and their precious money ahead of them.
Partner and child neglect is extremely serious and it happens systematically across the tech ecosystem which actually serves to exacerbate as much as possible, the conditions for this neglect. This is another way we see the structural misogyny as well as anti-child nature of the industry play out. The fact that tech products disproportionately negatively affect women and children, is bourne out within the industry itself where women and children are disposable parts of the male’s life, and what he is expected to give up in order to fend for his position in a gross hierarchy of narcissistic sociopaths.
People also think that this is a SIDE EFFECT of the insane work hours, when in reality, I think it’s one of the fundamental aims and goals. While this does not excuse any man who neglects his partner or children for some stupid fucking startup, it is a testament to an industry that encourages men to abandon their girlfriends, wives and children over and over and again, and in which men actually bond with each other and establish a culture with each other that is based on abusive neglect of women and children.
It is often joked about the in the Valley that no relationship survives a startup.
Joked.
Who is this funny to? The thousands of women who are treated like garbage so some asshole can have his startup? The tens of thousands of children born to these men who are criminally neglected? The women who are left picking up the pieces of broken homes and lives while some piece of shit climbs over her, sometimes literally, on the way to some transient startup fame for some replaceable startup?
What about all the women and children who have been harmed by this? Do they think it’s so fucking funny?
At the end of the day, most of the women who are thrown onto the rocks, holding their partner up tirelessly until the second they themselves need something, do not share in anywhere near a fair share, if at all, of the money that is made during this process. They either do not have the legal rights, or they are scammed out of them. These men have teams of lawyers who, wouldn’t you know, are excellent at doing just that: making sure the man retains as much of his assets as possible after he has ruined his own family. Men sink to incredible lows to screw their own partners and children out of the money. Justine wrote:
“Eight years after I signed the postnup, I began to understand just what I'd done. I had effectively signed away all my rights as a married person, including any claim to community property except our house, which was to be vested in my name once we had a child.”
First of all, I highly encourage women who are partners with men in tech to make absolutely sure to set up financial arrangements that will ensure their wellbeing when these animals have finally fully abandoned them or when it has become unbearable or the family is irredeemably broken in other ways. You should be getting stock and cash, stock and cash, and you should have your own financial and legal advisors. If he doesn’t want to give you money as it comes, in your own name, under your control, fucking leave because way too many women sacrifice years of their lives and are treated like gold digging whores for all of it only to get none of it. Make sure you don’t get left with nothing while being used up into nothing in the pursuit of his fortune.
Many people are surprised to learn how many startup girlfriends and wives walk away with little to nothing. For male partners: money does not make up for, nor does it excuse, treating the people around you like shit. It is the partners and families of tech players who make the true sacrifices.
“No relationship survives a startup”. That is seen as totally fine and normal, but what is at the heart of it, is an industry that breaks relationships and families and even friendships, on purpose, over and over again. I can’t even imagine the number of families that have been ruined by this industry, the children that never see their fathers, the girlfriends and wives and mothers who are neglected, abused and abandoned.
This is one potential class of people that has been under-explored as a resistance cohort against venture capitalists and the tech elite. They are some of the first victims of these startups and of this brutal culture that men like Elon Musk love to promote despite having for themselves to show only broken relationship after broken relationship, broken family after broken family.