The tampons, carrying and pillows came back in many of the men's bathrooms in the offices of Meta.
Days earlier, Mark Zuckerberg, Chief Executive of Meta, had made a series of changes to his company, in line with the new government of President Trump. As part of the movements, Mr. Zuckerberg eliminated diversity initiatives in the workplace – something that Mr Trump had criticized – and removed sanitary products from the men's bathrooms, which had been provided for transgender and non -Binary employees they might need.
To protest against Mr. Zuckerberg's actions, some meta employees quickly brought their own tampons, pads and performances to the men's bathrooms, five people with knowledge of the effort said. A group of employees also spread a petition to save the tampons.
The sanitary products were emblematically for the quiet rebellies that employees in Silicon Valley stood up while struggling with the right -wing shift of their bosses. In a large departure to a technical industry that has usually leaned on the left and liberally, Mr. Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, Apple Chief Tim Cook and Google co-founder Sergey Brin embraced Mr. Embraced Trump, including by appearing on his inauguration last week.
Their support for Mr Trump has caused dismay in technical workforce, which have generally been pro-immigration and diversity and inclusion efforts have been supported. But instead of making loud, public protests to resist the shift, many technical employees have carried out more subtle acts of resistance instead.
At Google, an employee was recently asked to approve an animation of fireworks for the search engine of the company to mark Mr Trump's inauguration. The employee made it clear in a coding system that they did this reluctantly because it was imposed by Mr. Pichai, said two people with knowledge of the incident. Google denied Mr Pichai's involvement.
At Amazon, some employees feel sorry for Mr Bezos' inauguration at the inauguration of Mr Trump – “Father is in the inauguration”, a person made jokes in an internal message viewed by the New York Times – but employees usually have sucked. At Apple, employees said it was surreal to see Mr. Cook on stage with other technical leaders, especially after he had made a rare political contribution of $ 1 million to Mr. Trump's inauguration fund.
The silent different opinion underlines that now uses the power in Silicon Valley: the bosses.
Tech employees once called more of the shots because of a competitive labor market and freewheeling workplace cultures, but Mr. Zuckerberg and other top managers have again taken care of the control. They have increased performance expectations, clamped on employee discussions and some fired that they saw as activists. And with mass dismissal from technology companies in recent years under the leadership of Elon Musk by more than three-quarters of employees at X, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022-Kiezen employees now for muffled subversion instead of noisy protests.
“The general feeling has been more fear among technical employees about their rights,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a labor lawyer who has represented technical employees in court cases against Uber, IBM, X and other companies.
Meta and Amazon refused to comment, while Apple did not respond to requests for comment. José Castañeda, a Google spokesperson, said that the company's product team was behind his animation on the inauguration day and that Google marks other “highly wanted events” in the United States and elsewhere in a similar way.
The subtle resistance of Tech employees nowadays contrasts with their much more vocal behavior during the first administration of Mr Trump in 2017. When Mr. Trump ordered an immigration ban from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries that year, Silicon Valley -employees held protests, circulated petitions circulated And pushed managers to denounce the president.
In response, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai spent rejections on the movements of the administration. Mr. Brin appeared on San Francisco International Airport to protest against immigration policy, in addition to other technical colleagues.
In the following years, those power relations were shifted – especially because the struggle to recruit technical employees became less fierce. Since 2022, Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram, has almost a third of his workforce and continues to be fired. Amazon fired 27,000 business employees in 2022 and 2023 and has since had some smaller fires.
Meta and Google Gedempte Employees Also dissidence by deleting messages from internal messageboards that have to do with controversial political or social issues.
The recovery of power by top managers was particularly striking on Twitter, that Mr. Musk has reformed. After buying the social network in 2022, he said that employees should be “extremely hardcore” and work “long hours at high intensity”. All low performance would be pushed, he warned.
That made it difficult for employees to speak. “You can let a thousand people come together in the company and say they don't like it, and it won't change his mind if they make that turn really aggressive,” said Menotti Minutillo, a Twitter engineering manager who left in 2022.
Last year Tech Moguls started their support behind Mr. To throw Trump. Mr. Musk endorsed Mr Trump in July and donated more than $ 250 million to his campaign. Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Pichai and Mr. Bezos visited Mr Trump after the elections in Mar-A-Lago and donated their companies to his inauguration fund.
Employees have found modest ways to demonstrate their objections. In the case of the special fireworks animation that Google employees had to make to appear in addition to searches to 'Inauguration Day', it broke with the tradition of the company to try not to stay -party. The employee who was responsible for approving the change made it clear that it was the boss forced their hand, two people with knowledge of the incident said.
“With the concept that I was given from my leadership that Sundar Pichai has personally demanded that this team is currently launching this function, I am giving my approval,” wrote the Google Worker in the company's system for keeping updates to the code. The post was visible on a large scale within the company; A copy of the message was assessed by the Times.
Mr. Castañeda, Google's spokesperson, said the employee 'mistaken'.
Google employees also went to Memegen, an internal bulletin board where employees share images and memes, on the inauguration day to post messages such as “Sundar attended the inauguration”, two employees said. The messages were deleted by internal content moderators, they said.
“There is something very wrong when placing a clip or photo of an external event that attends our execs is contrary to the internal policy,” an employee wrote in response.
Mr. Castañeda said that the company has long not allowed a political debate about our internal platforms to help concentrate our global work for our work. “
De Swing to Mr. Trump was especially pronounced at Meta. This month, Mr. Zuckerberg promoted two top Republican managers to Leiden's policy division in Meta, and Dana White, the head of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and an ally of Mr Trump, appointed to the company's board of directors. Mr Zuckerberg then announced major changes to Meta's policy, including the release of rules for speech and the termination of diversity initiatives.
The shifts came in the midst of the performance assessment season of Meta, so employees feared that expressing opposition would endanger their job, said two employees.
In recent weeks, some employees who criticized the company or have questioned the changes of Mr. Zuckerberg in a way that broke the policy of the “community surveillance expectations” from Meta, their posts removed, two people said. The employees also received notes from the Human Resources department, which offered coaching about workplace issues and warned that further violations could lead to termination.
Meta also removed ways for employees to ask Mr. Zuckerberg about his actions. Prior to a Q&A session of the company that was planned on Thursday, the company said that it would “skip questions we expect might be unproductive if they leak,” said a message viewed by the Times.
A question that employees voted to ask Mr. Zuckerberg was how women could bring “male energy” to the workplace at Meta, according to a poll that was posted internally. The question was an excavation in the recent performance by Mr. Zuckerberg on the Podcast Joe Rogan, in which he said that companies need more 'male energy'.
Mr. Zuckerberg has previously announced that new redundancies would take place on 10 February. The employees of Meta have withdrawn into private groups on signal and other chat apps that are not controlled by the company to discuss ways to press back. They also brought the sanitary products back to the men's bathrooms.
But after employees recently spread the petition to return tampons, linings and pads to all toilets on the company's silicon valley campus, the signatories received an e -mail from the vice president of the workplace services.
Although it was “not the intention of meta-leading to make employees feel unwanted or excluded in our offices, we currently have no plans to visit our offer on site again,” said the e-mail. “But I will share your feedback with leadership.”
Nico Grant” Karen Weise And Tripp Mickle contributed reporting.
