Today I want to ask something of the technologists who have been affected by the most recent waves of layoffs at tech companies. Were those companies struggling? Were they losing money?

Do you still think you got a fair deal for your labor?

What happened to the code you wrote after you were let go? Did your code still work? Were people still using it? Were they still selling it? Did they keep their revenue while you’re desperately looking for another job to feed your family?

How many of you worked crunch time hours to ship things? Did you get woken up in the middle of the night by a pager bot so the company could keep selling your software 24/7? Did the CEO ever get a call from a robot at 2am?

Do you think that the royalties the author of a book gets are unfair to the publisher? What about the writers and actors of a television show or movie?

Those people recognized their value, why don’t we?