Ask HN: What is a tech worker, really? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is a tech worker, really?

10 pointsmydriasis9 comments

I'm not being facetious, I promise. Especially over the last months, there have been tons of articles about "tech workers", and I've noticed that it seems to be a blanket-y, nebulous term that seems to have replaced "white collar". What am I missing? How do you define it?

I'm a programmer -- I think I'm a tech worker, but that seems pretty obvious. I'm wondering about perhaps less-obvious roles, too.

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In my experience a "tech worker" is any employee working for a company that produces a "tech" product. I know accountants and lawyers that say they "work in tech" despite not doing anything technical.

I'm not saying I agree with the above necessarily but that seems to be the consensus. The gatekeeping, disgruntled programmer in me suspects it's a way for non-technical staff to inflate their salaries by sneaking into the tech bubble.

If a software engineer leaves a Tech company and then goes and works for a oil company are they a tech worker still? Or are they now oil workers?

I don't think mainstream media would consider that example as "tech worker" when the software person might be doing the exact same work. Mainstream media will likely use the words "tech worker" when referring to the 10,000 people at Meta that will be let go. There could be some food service people in that layoff. I bet articles with the words "tech worker" get more clicks than if they said a bunch of accountants or HR people were let go.

Labels are mostly meaningless. Its like a couple homeowners arguing about what type of grass they have in their lawn.

I'm not sure. Does it refer to the nature of the job for the person? Or the industry in which the company is in? Maybe it means "employee of tech company" as opposed to "employee doing tech-related work". I guess it could mean both depending on the context.

Everyone in the office has a computer, a tech worker is the one who is good at the computer

Anybody who's employed full-time at a tech company is a tech worker. That's how regular people would see it.

When we hear about banks shedding jobs in a recession, we don't really distinguish between equity research, sales and trading or capital markets employees. Correspondingly, the general public doesn't distinguish between FE, back-end, devops, PMs, HR, admin and all the other types of people that got the sack. It gets rolled up into one big headline number. That's what people remember.

> Anybody who's employed full-time at a tech company is a tech worker. That's how regular people would see it.

Pretty sure regular people don't see cleaners as tech workers even if they are full time at a tech company.

It's meant to be more inclusive than "programmer" so you can wrap in everyone else who works for tech companies. This is primarily useful from a labor perspective point of view, which had a big moment in prestige media a couple of years ago.

Feels like a thinly-veiled symbol of class status. Or maybe a proxy for salary.

The IT guy at an auto garage - not a tech worker

A janitor at a software company - not a tech worker

A data analyst at software company - now THAT is a tech worker

Any worker that supports the usage of technology for other workers.

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