Why I Still Work in Tech
My industry is getting some hard knocks — but I still believe in a better future.
Last December, I got the worst call of my life — my father had gone missing.
He was traveling with my aunt when he became upset with her at a stoplight, abruptly leaving her car on foot and disappearing. When you’re diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, your license is revoked, and my dad was irritated because he couldn’t rent his own car. My mother called me, frantic. In response, I turned to my new hack: grabbing my phone and checking his location from thousands of miles away with the Find My Friends app. The tiny dot on my screen told me he was in a park several miles from his hotel. After calling him and hearing he was alone and lost, I sent a Lyft to bring him back to my aunt.
While knowing where my father is around the clock might sound Black Mirror creepy, the phone he carries — which I ask him to keep on him at all times after he started wandering a year ago — allows me to still help him from thousands of miles away. It’s a powerful reminder of how technology has profoundly changed our world in real time. The reality is, the only way I can keep my demanding job and live across the country from my father is by using tech to take care of him.
At the Big Tech company where I work, I have something of a dream job. There’s the enviable work-life balance, free therapy, and I often find myself in Menlo Park which allows me to check in on my West Coast friends and family. It’s the type of gig I have literally dreamed about since I was 23 — and fought like hell to get in 2016, back when the world saw technology in a much more benevolent light, as a means for curing some of society’s ills. Everyone in tech, including me, was an optimist and a capitalist, and we approached the world like a Rubik’s cube, a puzzle we might finally solve with our fresh perspective. I was fairly confident that I would be part of history, a member of the generation with all the answers. Looking back, it was naïve to think we were building the panacea humanity has been seeking for thousands of years without complications or setbacks, but at the time it made sense.
Today, when I say, “I work in tech,” I brace myself for the inevitable questions regarding my moral compass and ability to sleep at night. Elected officials are suggesting that tech companies are nothing more than abusers of privacy, spreading disinformation to make a buck. I’ve read op-ed writers compare social media giants like my company to monopolies of the robber baron era, or to big tobacco, claiming we’re simply peddling addictive platforms to the masses while pilfering data.
Tech is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for good and bad. But when it’s used for good, it can revolutionize how people make an impact. According to a 2018 study by Pew Research, nearly half of Americans have been civically active on social media this year. Consider almost 70% of people who attended the 2017 Women’s March in D.C heard about it on Facebook — including me. Not long ago, I took 20 minutes on the train to write a post on Facebook to raise money for Alzheimer’s research, and raised $3,500 in 24 hours. Several of my family members followed suit and raised thousands more dollars. It was a potent reminder for me of the incredible power of the platform I work for to amplify good intentions.
But forget the stats. For me, tech’s greatest impact is one I live every day — caring for my parents. There are the mundane but vital tasks I handle long distance for my father, especially since he can’t drive. Every week, I buy his groceries online and help him arrange Lyfts to visit friends. I post to his beloved running club on Facebook (Dad was an active ultramarathoner), always finding someone who is available to take him out on his favorite route. Selecting the right caregiver for him has been challenging (Dad is not thrilled about having a stranger in his house), especially living across the country. But by using Care.com I’ve been able to personally interview several applicants, check their references, and find someone I feel I can actually trust — and he may actually grow to like. Sometimes, Dad will Facetime me at work and I’ll sneak into a conference room and we’ll take a walk “together,” me in my office and him doing laps around the neighborhood like we used to when I was a kid.
These might seem like small gestures, but they make a big difference in his daily life and mine — technology allowing me to fill in the gaps because I’m not physically there. Is it a silver bullet when it comes to taking care of all his medical and emotional needs? No. He still gets incredibly lonely and complains about not feeling seen or being socially connected. He often finds me to be a huge pain in the ass when he feels like I overreach with my tech-forward caretaking. I set up text fraud alerts on my phone for his credit cards and call him out when he makes a big credit card purchase on something ridiculous he’s seen on TV, like monogrammed night-vision goggles.
Since he was diagnosed in March, I’ve seen my father alternate between various states of lucidity, wrestle with bouts of forgetfulness and even lose self-control when it comes to his emotions. Recently, he didn’t like that a friend of mine had parked his car at his house, though we gave him permission to do so, and promptly spray painted orange paint on his hood. He immediately felt terrible and spent all day scrubbing the car with soap and water. I’ve realized that as my father’s Alzheimer’s advances, his social norms are beginning to disappear — and the fallout can sometimes be embarrassing when I’m trying to pick up the pieces from another coast. But I often think about how more difficult his life would be — for both me and for him — without technology.
When people bemoan our hyperconnected ways, or FOMO, or trolling, or all the other fallout from a connected world, I like to point to a 2015 paper I came across called Life Satisfaction in the Internet Age. Two researchers from Israeli universities pored over a decade of data involving 70,000 people and found that Internet adoption over the past 10 years has positively impacted life satisfaction, especially for the elderly and mentally ill. It allows them to buy whatever they need online, email family and friends with ease, and order cars when they cannot drive. Tech doesn’t solve old age, frailty, or dementia. But it does make life more doable for those suffering from health problems.
Ultimately, my dad is getting sicker from a disease with no foreseeable cure. A 30gb iPhone isn’t going to stop the progression of his disease. But I work in tech because I personally know how it can still make a positive impact on a life and a family.
Yes, technology — and my company — are not perfect. The last few years have showed us that in painful detail. For those like me who work in my industry, it’s been a hard road filled with self-reflection. We were wrong. Tech alone will never win the battle against death, war, or inequality— all the things that make life most painful. But we were also right. Technology can make life better.
