[...] Tech writer Jon Evans wrote a eulogy for the Silicon Valley of yesteryear, in which he lamented that:

The tech industry used to be home to a disproportionate number of misfits and weirdos. Geeks. Nerds. People who needed to know how machines worked; needed to take them apart, make them better, and put them back together again. People who existed a little apart from society's established hierarchy ... and often saw that hierarchy as another machine to be deconstructed and improved ...

That is no longer the case. Now that technology is the dominant cultural and economic force of our time, and startup execs have become rock stars, the establishment is flocking to the tech industry. Rap stars and movie stars want to be tech investors ... Tech is becoming the finishing school and springboard for the upper-middle-class, the way law and finance were a decade ago. Now that the tech industry is cool, the pretty people are taking over, flooding out of top-tier universities with MBAs and social graces and carefully-coiffed hair, shouldering the misfits and weirdos out of the way.

IBM was rushing the production of their IBM-PC, and was in a hurry to find a suitable operating system for it. After negotiations with another company fell through, IBM turned to Microsoft's Bill Gates, who bluffed his way through negotiations with IBM management about having an operating system ready for them (he didn't). Microsoft acquired an already-existing operating system from Seattle Computer, named QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), modified it to suit the IBM-PC, and rechristened it simply DOS.

Microsot's innovation wasn't designing an operating system - they simply bought one that already existed, and which was derivative of CP/M, another company's operating system. And it wasn't creating a great product - as its original name suggests, DOS was by no means the best operating system in existence. Rather, the most innovative Microsoft decision, and one which would set its future, was Gates' insistence that Microsoft would be free to license DOS to other hardware companies, not just IBM.

[...] It used to be that software was something you installed on your machine; now, many software-makers have moved towards software as a service (SaaS), which involves accessing software through one's browser, without having to install anything. [...] companies like Microsoft can now 'leverage the gratis work of the open-source community to run the servers' that power SaaS services. 'As a result, it is beneficial for [companies like Microsoft] to rehabilitate their image in the open source community,' in order to 'garner goodwill from the community and attract talented developers,' Robinson added.

In terms of the white-collar employees of Silicon Valley, their lack of labor unions is to be expected. Because their wages are comparatively higher, white collar professionals are historically less likely to see themselves as part of an oppressed class of laborers whose work makes money for wealthy CEOs and investors - even if this is technically true. John and Barbara Ehrenreich [...] coined the term 'professional-managerial class' to describe the class of employees who, though performing the same kind of wage-labor, feel a kinship with the rich owners, bosses and managers rather with than [sic] the blue-collar class more likely to be performing manual labor. 'Historically, the [Professional-Managerial Class] have designed and managed capital's systems of social control, oftentimes treating working-class people with a mixture of paternalism and hostility,' they write. [...]

There are many historical examples of professional-managerial class workers at tech companies who were left behind during boom times, while those at the top got rich. One of Apple's earliest employees, Daniel Kottke, was Steve Jobs' 'soul mate' in college, and shared a house with him in the early Apple days. Kottke had worked for Apple when it was still based in a garage. Yet because he was an hourly employee, he was never granted stock options. Prior to Apple's IPO, Kottke pled with Jobs on this topic - Jobs could have very easily granted him 'founder's stock' - but Jobs refused to do anything for his friend. A fellow engineer, Rod Holt, saw the writing on the wall for Kottke and went to Jobs' office to press him on the issue. As Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson documents:

'We have to do something for your buddy Daniel,' [Holt] said, and he suggested they each give him some of their own options. 'Whatever you give him, I will match it,' said Holt. Replied Jobs, 'Okay. I will give him zero.'

Kottke's labor was important in building the company's fortune, though he was one of many left behind. If he had any inclinations that his interests and his former best friend (now boss)'s interests were aligned, his experience with Jobs likely dissuaded him of this notion.

Today, too, Silicon Valley is a highly segregated place - at least, when you compare the professional class to other categories of workers. The contract workers who make up its service sector are more likely to be Hispanic: 'While eight percent of direct-hire workers in the tech industry are Hispanic, the number is 35 percent of workers in potentially contracted industries,' wrote reporter Lydia DePillis in the Washington Post. DePillis added that a majority of Silicon Valley blue-collar contract workers - 52.9% - were Hispanic.

Many Silicon Valley tech companies, including Google and Facebook, use the time-tested strategy of employing contract laborers to handle menial labor. Such tactics save the corporations money and preclude them from paying benefits, while keeping the contract worker underclass comprised of precarious, mobile, easy-to-lay-off workers with low wages and high job insecurity. In 2016, 'subcontracted' workers, as they are known, made '70 percent of the salary that in-house workers in similar occupations make, or an average of $40,000 a year compared to $113,300 for directly-hired tech employees,' according to a Washington Post profile of these workers. The former Google subcontractor I spoke to, Danielle, described the gap as even wider, and mentioned some Google employees doing the same work as contractors yet making as much as 3 times what the temps made. 'The subcontractor company ... reserved the right to terminate at any time or for any reason,' she said, adding that she and others were afraid to speak out about their conditions.

Back in 1983, an Associated Press article titled 'Labor Unions Are Absent in Silicon Valley' painted a bleak picture of labor in the tech goldmines that is equally true today. [...] The writers quote a labor lawyer who comments that 'the Valley is union free because its companies are very sophisticated in preventative labor relations.' The 'competitive pay and benefits package' of [...] are mentioned as another preventative: as a result of this paternalism, employers feel that their needs are already respected and hence that they have no need for a union, even though their salaries, working conditions, and benefits could be enhanced by unionization.