Blurbs.

Blurbs are starting to come in this week for You Deserve a Tech Union, and let me tell you: that’s been kinda overwhelming.

I mean, look, I’ll just say it: it’s a pretty vulnerable thing to ask people — people you respect and admire, no less — to read something you’ve been working on for a couple years. I’ve written to people who’ve been working and writing in labor circles for years; you can imagine what it did to my sleep when I sent them a draft of the manuscript.

What’s more, there’s no small amount of professional risk involved in talking positively about unions in the United States. That’s doubly true if you work in the tech sector. So to see colleagues excitedly sign their names to something that endorses this little book? It’s hard not to feel several emotions at once. (I’m tearing up again just thinking about it.)

But more broadly, it feels, well, odd as hell that the book’s at a place where it can be shared. For the last year and a half, the book’s mostly existed as a pile of text files and audio recordings on my laptop; now, it’s at a point where people who aren’t me (or the fine folks at A Book Apart) can read it. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a little scary.

But hey, I’m excited, too: I’m real, real proud of this book, and that’s not something I say too often. If you happen read it, I hope it’s useful to you.

---

Further reading

• You deserve a new book design.

  25 Mar 2025

  A peek into You Deserve a Tech Union’s new design, and the typefaces — and process — that made it happen.

• A new op-ed: on OpenAI and worker power.

  11 Dec 2023

  What happens when workers take collective action, and in an anti-worker industry?

• Mail, run.

  16 Aug 2023

  What else happened this week? Well, I wrote my first op-ed; also, I got some mail.

• Street team.

  7 Aug 2023