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The bitter irony of being 'Too Expensive' [1]

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Date: 2025-01-29

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. My family has been here for generations. Like many people here, I work in the tech industry as it is one of the few that will pay a living wage. But I use the term ‘work’ loosely, as I was just laid off yet again. And it will probably be many long months before I can find another position. I seem to spend almost as much time looking for work as I do actually working.

When I was laid off a couple of jobs ago, a co-worker and I who had become friends would talk, commiserate, and try to provide moral support for each other while we were both searching for work. We sometimes wondered about why we were let go, as the company wasn’t struggling financially, and it didn’t appear to be related to our performance. We speculated that it might have been due to where we live, as many of the people who were laid off were located in California, and the company was fully remote employing people all across the Americas.

One day we met up for lunch and she told me a story that confirmed those suspicions. She had a friend who knew someone that was a C-level executive at a software company. The friend had passed along her resume to him. He looked it over and said, “Wow, she’s great. Excellent skills and experience, but I would never hire her”. “What? Why?”, asked the friend. His reply was this, “Because I can get two of her in Ireland or Poland for the same price”.

I used to wonder and speculate as to why. Now I know. It’s because I’m ‘too expensive’. Could they afford me? Absolutely. But saving money by hiring cheaper remote workers living elsewhere, or bringing in H-1B visa holders who then become like indentured servants, means more money for executives and shareholders. And ultimately that’s all they care about.

People used to say that technology would save the world. Well, it’s become apparent that not only is it not going to save anything, it’s playing a huge role in ruining our world by causing or expanding fractures in our societal fabric, and upending our economic system. The tech industry was built on American ingenuity, investment, and hard work. Yet instead of reinvesting back in this country and its workers, they have become parasites that only exist to enrich a select few.

So, I sit here pondering the ironic fact that they won’t hire me because I’m too expensive. And that they are the very ones who’ve made that so. Because of the tech industry, the Bay Area has become increasingly unaffordable for most people. I plan to move to a different state in the near future, and I’m working on getting into a new career and out of tech entirely. The ‘American Dream’ seems to be mostly dead now, and the greed of industries like tech have played a substantial role in its demise.

Like so many things, technology is whatever you make it to be. It can be a force for good or evil. Unfortunately, evil seems to be more profitable. And so it goes…

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