It’s no secret that the tech industry prides itself on its altruism. You’ve probably heard Google’s former informal motto, “Don’t be evil,” but it is far from unique: most tech companies have lofty ideals baked into their mission statements, their marketing campaigns, and even their very brands.

When I started working in the tech industry over a decade ago, I was as susceptible to this messaging as the next person. The never-ending communications about how my company was transforming the world for the better were appealing. It didn’t occur to me then that the constant drip of these messages was a highly effective way to get me to drink the Kool-Aid so that I would become a loyal, diligent employee.

It wasn’t just the unceasing communications that had this impact, either. The high salary and novel benefits all played a part. I quickly and naively bought into the idea that my employers were more ethical than employers in other industries.

Despite their seemingly noble intentions, it turns out that some tech companies are not the altruistic panacea they so proudly claim to be.

Sometimes quite the opposite. As more and more tech workers have spoken out against misconduct, a truth has emerged: tech companies, while certainly capable of transformative innovation, are often more incentivized by money. And without checks and balances to hold them accountable, some companies are more likely to do harm for profit than the transformative good they so often (and so misleadingly) promise.

There are many examples to support this. This year, for example, we have seen tech companies engage in copycat layoffs: SAP recently laid off 3,000 workers, IBM laid off 3,900, Microsoft 10,000, Meta is about to cut another 10,000 jobs, and the list goes on. Over 58,000 people were laid off from American-based tech companies in the first month of 2023, and 140,000 workers were cut in 2022.

These layoffs weigh especially heavily on my heart. In 2020, I sued my former employer, Google, for pregnancy discrimination. After settling my lawsuit, I took a year off of work to focus on healing myself and my family. Recently, though, I started using LinkedIn again to explore job opportunities. Instead of job openings, I found a sea of former colleagues announcing they had been laid off.

In some instances, people I know, like, and respect talked about showing up to work one day and discovering their badges no longer let them into their office building. These people had been let go, and disabling their badges was how the company chose to inform them. Heartbreakingly, and in a situation that felt all too familiar given how I was forced to depart from Google, they were denied the opportunity to make a proper goodbye to coworkers and receive deserved recognition for their contributions.

As part of these mass layoffs, it’s incredibly unsettling to see more women than men getting let go and how many expecting and new mothers are being targeted, some left without their maternity and other benefits being honored during a time that should be stress-free for the health of both moms and babies. Another population gravely impacted by the layoffs are tech workers on visas, many with children, who now have to quickly find alternative employment or move their families out of the country.

What makes these layoffs even more infuriating is that they appear to be unnecessary. Unlike the unapologetic PR messages these companies are putting out about the need for reductions, Stanford Business Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says the cuts are an example of “social contagion.” In other words, tech companies are laying off workers because other companies are doing it, notbecause they have to. As reporter James Suroweicki points out, this is corroborated by the fact that many of these companies are laying off roughly the same percentage of employees, despite crucial differences in their business models and balance sheets.

And, as design executive Peter Merholz shared on LinkedIn, “It’s worth recognizing that many of the companies that are laying people off (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Capital One, Goldman Sachs) are profitable. Profitable with the employees they have right now. None of these companies are laying people off because they need to.”

He’s absolutely right.

It’s also important to note that research shows that mass layoffs hurt companies financially more than they help companies. To make matters worse, studies have found that layoffs have a massive negative impact on workers, including increasing addiction, mortality, and suicide rates.

But none of this seems to matter to the companies implementing layoffs.

This ruthless slashing of jobs appears to be spurred in part by the hope that it will make investors happy in reducing operational costs amid economic downturn fears. Needlessly hurting their employees (expecting and new parents included) and compromising long-term profit and innovation is an afterthought. This is irresponsibility on a massive scale.

Think about it. During the pandemic, the tech industry was hot and competitive, and companies were hiring rapidly, despite rumblings about an upcoming recession and future economic uncertainty.

Fast forward to today, and things look very different. My most recent former employer, for example, laid off almost its entire user experience team — a team it spent the last half of 2021 and much of 2022 aggressively growing. Faced with facts like that, one question keeps coming up: How do you ethically push an overhiring frenzy and then, not long afterward, lay off a sizeable percentage of your staff while taking zero responsibility for overhiring and the adverse impacts of mass layoffs? Adding salt to the wound, some companies are now filling the roles they eliminated through contract openings, which come with limited benefits and reduced pay.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of the tech industry’s inhumanity, I can’t help but also ask another question: Is part of the strategy behind these mass layoffs to distract from and silence the growing movement of tech workers speaking out against tech industry misconduct?

What if, instead of layoffs, tech companies lowered executive salaries, bonuses, and lavish perks? What if they offered voluntary separation of leave, implemented aggressive hiring freezes, or helped employees acquire new skills and transfer to jobs within growth areas for the business? As an industry that often boasts about its innovation abilities, tech companies could have devised far better ways to reduce expenditures than laying off so many people.

The airline industry did just that when the pandemic crippled air travel. Delta Airlines, for example, asked employees to take voluntary unpaid leaves of absence to save money. JetBlue Airways paused employee raises and extended executive pay cuts to help cope with pandemic-related losses. The airline industry knew there were better options available than slashing jobs. Tech companies could have followed suit if they were genuinely committed to being a force for good.

“This is all terrible,” you might think, “but what does it have to do with me?” The truth is, it has more to do with you than you might think. After all, if tech companies are willing to abuse their employees for short-term profit, think about what they’re ready to compromise at your expense. While they might have the resources to change the world for the better, they can just as easily change it for the worse, especially with emerging technology such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Like other transgressions I’ve witnessed and experienced over my years as a tech worker, the current mass layoffs demonstrate why unionization and broader government oversight of the tech industry are so important. Because ultimately, what is happening now shows how frail and self-serving many of these tech companies can be. It’s time for them to put their money where their mouths are and focus on changing the world for the better by first taking responsibility for treating their employees well beyond the facade of free food, massages, and dry cleaning.

Chelsey Glasson is the author of the upcoming book Black Box: A Pregnancy Discrimination Memoir. You can learn more about her book at www.blackboxthebook.com.