A veteran coder turned against the tech industry’s growth ethos

Evidence

Or consider Nick, a programmer and coding instructor living in Denver. Nick’s path to Attention Activism began when he signed up for a web development program right at the beginning of the 2000s’ coding boom. He was there at the start of it all: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter were hiring, and anyone with decent programming chops was virtually guaranteed a place in an industry that aspired, without irony, to “infinite growth.” Nick bounced around, designing apps like Angry Birds and games like Mass Effect 3 and building software for pharmaceutical companies. He was at the center of the tech world—or, as he began to see it, in the belly of the monster. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 405

Categorization

• XREF: The insider-defector arc rhymes with The Reluctant Fundamentalist’s narrator leaving the elite American system he helped build. — connects to: Teaching developers the industry’s techniques triggered his reversal — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 406; Tech’s meritocracy rhetoric contradicts its actual demographics and practices — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 645; Tech firm self-mythology of benevolent flat capitalism masked toxic work culture — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 504 (+2 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Teaching developers the industry’s techniques triggered his reversal — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 406; Tech’s meritocracy rhetoric contradicts its actual demographics and practices — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 645; Tech firm self-mythology of benevolent flat capitalism masked toxic work culture — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 504 (+2 more)