[...] I work as a product manager alongside a team of engineers and designers, eat lunch for free, socialize and discuss current events with my co-workers, and leave the premises late in the evenings. The work is immersive and all-consuming; every feature and bug is carefully triaged, every assumption and decision rigorously debated. This setup hearkens to the platonic ideal of the corporation--the idea that the corporation is, as the writer George Saunders once recounted, a "beautiful contemporary construct ... where if you just produce, you would be protected." In the model propagated by progressive tech companies, labor is reframed as talent that warrants nurturing, against the backdrop of a support structure that includes free meals, on-site health care, education stipends, generous vacation and parental leave policies, and yes, the double-decker bus that transports you to and from your office. There is nothing left to do but one's life's work.