Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone

by Sarah Jaffe

The Silicon Valley workplace, created in the image of the boy king, seemed almost designed to erase the caring labor discussed in earlier chapters. No family, no friends, and no responsibilities outside of the office; within the office, all their needs are catered to, and toys are provided to make them feel eternally nineteen. (Facebook and Apple even offer egg-freezing to their employees, offering up a tech fix to the problem of work versus family, at least for a while, so that women, too, can abide by the “no families outside the workplace” rule.) It’s no wonder that the apps designed by all these man-children have been, collectively, dubbed “the Internet of ‘Stuff Your Mom Won’t Do for You Anymore.’” Need laundry done, dinner delivered, your house cleaned? There’s an app for that, and the app’s founders have no doubt been breathlessly hailed as technical geniuses, even though their real innovation is finding new ways to skirt labor laws.