https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/technology/tampons-silicon-valley-workers-protest.html?unlocked_article_code=1.s04.nDhE.HSryABCQbDj6&smid=url-share
As Mark Zuckerberg and other tech titans have embraced President Trump and muffled internal dissent at their companies, their mostly left-leaning employees have objected with subtle acts of defiance. Quietly but unmistakably, the tampons, liners and pads reappeared in many of the men’s bathrooms at Meta’s offices. Days earlier, Mark Zuckerberg ( https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/technology/meta-mark-zuckerberg-trump.html ) , Meta’s chief executive, had made a series of changes at his company, aligning with President Trump’s new administration. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/us/politics/mark-zuckerberg-trump-meeting.html ) As part of the moves, Mr. Zuckerberg eliminated diversity initiatives in the workplace — something that Mr. Trump had criticized — and removed sanitary products from the men’s bathrooms, which had been provided for transgender and nonbinary employees who may have required them. To protest Mr. Zuckerberg’s actions, some Meta workers soon brought their own tampons, pads and liners to the men’s bathrooms, five people with knowledge of the effort said. A group of employees also circulated a petition to save the tampons. The sanitary products were emblematic of the quiet rebellions that Silicon Valley workers have staged as they grapple with the rightward shift of their bosses. In a major departure for a tech industry that has typically leaned left and liberal, Mr. Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Apple chief Tim Cook and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have embraced Mr. Trump, including by appearing at his inauguration ( https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/business/dealbook/billionaires-trump-zuckerberg-bezos-musk.html ) last week. Their support for Mr. Trump has caused consternation across tech workforces, which have generally been pro-immigration and supportive of diversity and inclusion efforts. Yet rather than make loud, public protests to oppose the shift, many tech employees have instead carried out more subtle acts of defiance. At Google, an employee was recently asked to approve an animation of fireworks for the company’s search engine to help mark Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The employee made it clear in a coding system that they did so reluctantly because it was mandated by Mr. Pichai, two people with knowledge of the incident said. Google denied Mr. Pichai’s involvement. At Amazon, some employees commiserated over Mr. Bezos’ attendance at Mr. Trump’s inauguration — “father is at the inauguration,” one person joked in an internal message that was viewed by The New York Times — but workers have mostly kept silent. At Apple, employees said it was surreal to see Mr. Cook on the dais with other tech leaders, especially after he made a rare political contribution of $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inauguration fund. The quiet dissent underlines who wields the power in Silicon Valley these days: the bosses. Tech workers once called more of the shots because of a competitive labor market and freewheeling workplace cultures, but Mr. Zuckerberg and other top executives have reasserted control ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/technology/layoffs-tech-industry.html ). They have raised performance expectations ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/technology/amazon-return-to-office.html ) , clamped down on employee discussions ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/24/technology/mark-zuckerberg-trump-politics.html ) and fired some ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/technology/google-firing-israeli-cloud-contract.html ) who they saw as activists. And with mass layoffs at tech companies in recent years — led by Elon Musk’s shedding ( https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/technology/elon-musk-twitter-takeover.html ) of more than three-quarters of the employees at X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022 — workers are now opting for muted subversion rather than rowdy protests. “The general feeling has been more anxiety among tech workers about their rights,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor lawyer who has represented tech workers in lawsuits against Uber, IBM, X and other firms. Meta and Amazon declined to comment, while Apple didn’t respond to requests for comment. José Castañeda, a Google spokesman, said the company’s product team was behind its animation on Inauguration Day and that Google marks other “highly searched events” in the United States and elsewhere in a similar way. The subtle resistance from tech employees these days contrasts with their much more vocal behavior during Mr. Trump’s first administration in 2017. When Mr. Trump ordered an immigration ban from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries that year, Silicon Valley workers held protests, circulated petitions and pushed executives to denounce the president. In response, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai issued repudiations of the administration’s moves. Mr. Brin showed up at San Francisco International Airport to protest the immigration policy, alongside other tech colleagues. In the years since, that balance of power has shifted — especially as the battle to recruit tech employees became less fierce. Since 2022, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has cut nearly a third of its work force and continues to do layoffs. Amazon laid off 27,000 corporate workers ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/technology/amazon-layoffs.html ) in 2022 and 2023, and has had some smaller layoffs since. Meta and Google also muffled worker dissent by deleting posts from internal message boards that deal with contentious political or social issues. The reassertion of power by top executives was particularly striking at Twitter, which Mr. Musk has reshaped. After buying the social network in 2022, he said employees needed to be “extremely hardcore” and work “long hours at high intensity.” Any low performers would be pushed out, he warned. That made it difficult for employees to speak up. “You can have a thousand people at the company come together and say they don’t like it, and it’s not going to change any minds when they really aggressively make that turn,” said Menotti Minutillo, a Twitter engineering manager who left in 2022. Last year, tech moguls began throwing their support behind Mr. Trump. Mr. Musk endorsed Mr. Trump in July and donated more than $250 million ( https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/us/politics/elon-musk-trump-rbg-election.html ) to his campaign. Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Pichai and Mr. Bezos visited Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the election, and their companies donated to his inauguration fund. Employees have found understated ways to demonstrate their objections. In the case of the special fireworks animation that Google workers were directed to create to appear alongside searches for “Inauguration Day,” it broke with the company’s tradition of trying to stay nonpartisan. The employee responsible for approving the change made it clear that it was the boss that forced their hand, two people with knowledge of the incident said. “With the understanding given to me from my leadership that Sundar Pichai has personally required that this team launch this feature at this time, I give my approval,” the Google worker wrote in the company’s system for tracking updates to its code. The post was widely viewable inside the company; a copy of the message was reviewed by The Times. Mr. Castañeda, the Google spokesman, said the employee was “mistaken.” Google employees also took to Memegen, an internal message board where workers share images and memes, on Inauguration Day to post messages such as “Sundar attended the inauguration,” two employees said. The posts were removed by internal content moderators, they said. “Something is deeply wrong when posting a clip or picture of an external event our execs attend violates internal policies,” one employee wrote in response. Mr. Castañeda said the company has “long not allowed political debate on our internal platforms to help keep our global work force focused on our work. ” The swing toward Mr. Trump was especially pronounced at Meta. This month, Mr. Zuckerberg promoted two top Republican executives to lead Meta’s policy division, and appointed Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and an ally of Mr. Trump, to the company’s board of directors. Mr. Zuckerberg then announced sweeping changes to Meta’s policies ( https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/07/business/meta-fact-checking ) , including loosening rules on speech and ending diversity initiatives. The shifts came in the midst of Meta’s performance review season, so workers feared that voicing opposition would jeopardize their jobs, two employees said. In recent weeks, some employees who criticized the company or questioned Mr. Zuckerberg’s changes in a way that broke Meta’s “Community Engagement Expectations” policy had their posts removed, two people said. The employees also received notes from the human resources department, which offered coaching on workplace issues and warned that further violations could result in termination. Meta also removed ways for workers to ask Mr. Zuckerberg about his actions. Ahead of a company Q&A session scheduled for Thursday, the company said it would “skip questions that we expect might be unproductive if they leak,” according to a message viewed by The Times. One question that employees were voting on to ask Mr. Zuckerberg was how women at Meta could bring “masculine energy” to the workplace, according to a poll that had been posted internally. The question was a dig at Mr. Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, in which he said companies need more “masculine energy.” Mr. Zuckerberg has previously announced that new layoffs would happen on Feb. 10. Meta’s workers have retreated to private groups on Signal and other chat apps that are not controlled by the company to discuss ways to push back. They also brought back the sanitary products to the men’s bathrooms. Yet after employees recently circulated the petition to return tampons, liners and pads to all restrooms on the company’s Silicon Valley campus, the signatories received an email from the vice president of workplace services. While it had “not been the intention of Meta leadership to make employees feel unwelcome or excluded in our offices, at this point we do not have plan s to revisit our on-site amenities offerings,” the email said. “But I will share your feedback with leadership.” Image -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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