When Rachel Grey started working at Google as a software engineer in 2007, it was a good time to be a Noogler, or what the search giant called new employees.

2007年蕾切尔·格雷入职谷歌软件工程师时，对于一名Noogler（谷歌对新员工的称呼）来说，那是一个美好的时代。

At a two-week orientation at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Ms. Grey discovered a utopia of perks. The company’s cafeterias served steak and shrimp, kitchens were stocked with fresh juices and gyms offered free workout classes. Workers received stock grants on top of their salaries, a 50 percent match on their retirement contributions and a Christmas bonus that came in the form of $1,000 tucked in an envelope.

在加州山景城谷歌总部为期两周的入职培训期间，各种福利令格雷眼花缭乱。公司的自助餐厅有牛排有大虾，厨房里备有新鲜果汁，健身房提供各种免费课程。员工除了工资外，还有股票期权可以拿；你往退休账户里存多少钱，公司就再贴给你一半；还有装在信封里的1000美元圣诞奖金。

What also made an impression on Ms. Grey during orientation was that Google revealed how many machines were in its data centers. “I saw how transparent things were in the company,” she said about the normally hush-hush information.

在入职培训期间给格雷留下深刻印象的，还有谷歌披露了数据中心服务器数量。“我见识了公司的透明度，”她谈到这些通常秘而不宣的信息时说。

Over the years, though, her experience changed as she became a software engineering manager. The Christmas bonus shrank. Employees were no longer provided a fire hose of corporate information. The company abandoned a pledge that its artificial intelligence would not be used for weapons. The budget for promotions dried up, pressuring Ms. Grey to lower performance ratings, which she said was “stunningly painful.” In April, just shy of 18 years, the 48-year-old quit what was once her dream job.

这些年来，随着格雷晋升为软件工程经理，她的感受也发生了变化。圣诞奖金缩水了；公司不再像过去那样向员工大量公开内部信息；公司放弃了不将其人工智能用于武器的承诺；晋升预算枯竭，迫使她不得不压低手下员工的绩效评分，她形容这一过程“痛苦不堪”。今年4月，48岁的格雷在入职将满18年之际，辞去了她曾经的梦想工作。

Life for workers at Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies is different. Very different.

硅谷巨头员工的生活已经不同以往了。而且是大不一样。

Gone are the days when Google, Apple, Meta and Netflix were the dream destinations for tech workers, offering fat salaries, lush corporate campuses and say-anything, do-anything cultures. Now the behemoth firms have aged into large bureaucracies. While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate.

谷歌、苹果、Meta和网飞曾以高薪、豪华园区和自由的企业文化成为科技人才梦寐以求的归宿。如今，这些巨头已蜕变为臃肿的官僚机构。尽管其中许多企业仍提供免费餐饮和高薪，却在裁员时毫不手软，强制坐班并压制员工争议。

It’s the shut up and grind era, workers said.

员工们感叹，现在是埋头苦干不要说话的时代。

“Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”

“科技公司在免费午餐和高薪方面可能仍然是最好的，”格雷说，但是“恐惧指数已直线飙升”。

“I suppose it’s better to have lunch and be scared to death than to not have lunch and be scared to death, but I don’t know if it’s good for you to be there,” she added.

她补充道：“我想，有午餐吃但吓得要死，总比没午餐吃也吓得要死要好，但我不确定留在那里是否明智。”

A Google spokeswoman said that many employees had been promoted and that the company had changed its performance management system to better reward high performers. The company has introduced policies meant to encourage employees to focus on their work while also staying true to Google’s goals and culture, she added.

谷歌发言人表示，许多员工获得了晋升，并且绩效管理体系已优化以奖励优秀员工。公司政策旨在激励员工专注工作，同时坚守谷歌的目标与文化。

As the tech companies became hulking entities with work forces larger than many towns — and costs to match — scrutiny increased, too. Meta, Google, Apple and others were driven to make changes as workers and the public questioned their power.

随着科技企业膨胀，员工规模超越许多城镇，成本相应激增，审查也就随之增加。Meta、谷歌、苹果等企业在员工和公众质疑它们的权力过大时，被迫做出了改变。

The turning point came in 2022 and 2023, when Elon Musk bought Twitter (renamed X) and shed three-quarters of its employees, while Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, cut thousands of jobs during what he called “a year of efficiency.” Google and Amazon also conducted mass layoffs. Many of the companies blamed the pandemic for their overhiring during lockdowns as more people turned to digital services.

转折点发生在2022年和2023年，埃隆·马斯克收购了Twitter（随后将其更名为X），并解雇了四分之三的员工；而Meta的首席执行官马克·扎克伯格在他所谓的“效率年”裁减了数千个工作岗位。谷歌和亚马逊也进行了大规模裁员。许多企业将责任归咎于疫情期间数字服务需求激增导致的过度招聘。

Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized.

在此过程中，公司对员工的直言不讳变得不是那么宽容了。在员工抗议包括职场性骚扰在内的问题后，管理层重新强化了掌控。随着就业市场工程师的过剩，批评者很容易被取代。

“This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.

谷歌首席执行官桑达尔·皮查伊去年在一篇博客文章中说：“这是一家企业，而非扰乱同事、制造不安的场所，亦非个人宣传平台或政治争论的战场。”

Some would say the changes have simply aligned tech workers with the rest of corporate America, where employees are accustomed to fulfilling corporate priorities.

有人会说，这些变化只是让科技行业员工与美国其他企业员工趋同而已，在那些企业，员工习惯于完成公司的优先事项。

But the shift in tech was compounded by the rise of generative artificial intelligence, which executives say has already made some jobs redundant. In January, Mr. Zuckerberg said he believed A.I. would replace some midlevel engineers this year. Mr. Musk went further, predicting last year that A.I. would eventually eliminate all jobs.

但生成式人工智能的兴起加剧了科技行业的这种转变，高管们表示，人工智能已经让一些工作变得多余。今年 1 月，扎克伯格称，他认为人工智能今年将取代一些中层工程师。马斯克则更进一步，他去年预测人工智能最终将取代所有工作。

“The tide has definitely turned against tech workers,” said Catherine Bracy, the founder and chief executive of TechEquity, a nonprofit that pushes for economic inclusion in the industry. “Companies have even more leverage to use against workers, and A.I. is supercharging that.”

“现在正在向着不利于科技工作者的方向发展，”推动行业经济包容性的非营利组织TechEquity的创始人兼首席执行官凯瑟琳·布雷西说。“公司有更多手段可以用来对付员工，而人工智能正在加剧这一点。”

曾为谷歌员工、现供职于Honeycomb的丽兹·方-琼斯表示，目前人工智能对科技行业就业的影响仍不确定。

Liz Fong-Jones, the field chief technology officer at Honeycomb, a San Francisco company that helps engineers find and debug problems in their code, said A.I.’s effect on jobs was overblown. But that could change five years from now, she cautioned.

帮助工程师发现并调试代码问题的旧金山公司Honeycomb的首席技术官利兹·方-琼斯表示，人工智能对就业的影响被夸大了。但她警告说，五年后情况可能会改变。

Tech workers could stop A.I. from taking hold, said Ms. Fong-Jones, a former Googler, adding, “but we’re all afraid enough to go along with training our own replacements.”

曾在谷歌工作过的方-琼斯说，科技工作者可以阻止人工智能占据主导地位，“但我们都太害怕了，以至于只能顺从，训练自己的替代者。”

For some tech workers, the change in the workplace was abrupt. Adam Treitler, 32, a human resources strategist who worked at Twitter’s New York office before and after Mr. Musk’s acquisition, said the company’s moves under its new owner were startling.

对一些科技工作者来说，职场的变化很突然。32岁的亚当·特雷特勒是一名人力资源策略师，在马斯克收购前后都在Twitter的纽约办公室工作，他说，新老板接手后，公司的举措令人震惊。

“From the day before Elon to the day after Elon, it pivoted overnight from ‘how do we improve H.R. management’ to ‘what are the fewest number of steps involved and the fewest number of people needed to pay our employees,’” said Mr. Treitler, who joined Twitter in 2021 and left in January 2023. He now works for the jewelry company Pandora.

“从埃隆接手的那一刻，公司一夜之间就从‘我们如何改进人力资源管理’转变为‘如何以最少的步骤和最少的人员来支付员工工资’，”特雷特勒说，他在2021年加入Twitter，2023年1月离职，如今在珠宝公司潘多拉工作。

X did not respond to a request for comment.

X没有回应置评请求。

Others said the shift had played out more slowly. Ava Sazanami, a designer in her 40s in Seattle, joined Meta in 2022 to make tools to help users with their privacy settings. The mother of two said she had felt empowered to help solve some of the tech concerns that worried her as a parent.

也有人表示，这种转变是渐进的。40多岁的艾娃·佐佐波（音）是西雅图的一名设计师，2022年加入Meta，负责开发帮助用户设置隐私的工具。这位两个孩子的母亲说，她觉得自己有能力帮助解决一些作为家长让她担心的科技问题。

Meta also allowed a flexible schedule so she could accompany her children to appointments, and L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly policies made her feel welcome because she had gay family members, she said.

她说，Meta还允许灵活的工作安排，这样她就可以陪孩子去完成预约事项，而且该公司的LGBTQ友好政策让她感觉受到接纳，因为她有同性恋家人。

But over time, Meta curtailed its family benefits, Ms. Sazanami said. In January, the company killed its diversity programs and social media policies against hate speech targeting L.G.B.T.Q. people. A month later, she was laid off when Meta cut 5 percent of its work force.

但佐佐波说，随着时间的推移，Meta削减了家庭福利。今年1月，公司取消了多元化项目以及针对LGBTQ群体的反仇恨言论社交媒体政策。一个月后，Meta裁员5%，她也被解雇了。

“We’re seeing right now why tech needs unions,” said Ms. Sazanami, who is looking for a new job. “The current culture has disempowered workers.”

“我们现在明白了为什么科技行业需要工会，”正在找新工作的佐佐波说。“当前的文化削弱了员工的权力。”

A Meta spokeswoman declined to comment. In an earnings call in January, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “We operate better as a leaner company.”

Meta发言人拒绝置评。在1月的财报电话会议上，扎克伯格说：“作为一家更精简的公司，我们运营得更好。”

身在旧金山的前苹果公司设计师杰森·袁。他于2023年离开苹果，因感到人工智能领域的竞争正在将他甩在身后而焦虑。

Some workers are leaving big tech companies to join the A.I. fray. Jason Yuan, 28, started as a designer at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., in 2021. It felt like a lucky break to work for a company that he revered for its design, he said.

一些员工正离开大型科技公司，投身人工智能领域。杰森·袁（音）今年28岁，2021年开始在苹果位于加州库比蒂诺的总部担任设计师。他说他推崇苹果的设计，能在这家公司工作让他感到荣幸。

Yet after the A.I. boom arrived with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, Mr. Yuan said, he yearned to get involved. In 2023, he left Apple to start New Computer, a company that makes a personal companion chatbot. He hopes to work more speedily and make more money, as A.I. is likely to replace him in his lifetime, he said.

然而，2022年OpenAI推出ChatGPT聊天机器人，人工智能热潮到来后，杰森·袁说，他渴望参与其中。2023年，他离开苹果，创办New Computer公司，致力于打造个人伴侣聊天机器人。他希望工作节奏更快、赚更多钱，因为他说人工智能可能在他有生之年取代他的工作。

“We’re reaching the end of our economic life span,” he said, adding, “There’s a feeling of, I have to make whatever I do now count.”

“我们正接近经济生命周期的终点，”他说，而且“有一种感觉是，我必须让现在做的任何事情都有意义”。

Apple declined to comment.

苹果公司拒绝置评。

For Ms. Grey, Google’s exhilarating early days seem like another lifetime. The work was not always easy, she said, but the company’s culture made it easier to power through. One day, she recalled, she and her co-workers arrived to find Nerf guns on their desks. When a power outage hit, shutting down computers, they grabbed their Nerf guns and broke into a friendly fight.

对格雷来说，谷歌令人振奋的早期岁月仿佛是另一段人生。她说，工作并不总是轻松的，但公司的文化让人们更容易坚持下去。她回忆说，有一天，她和同事们到岗后，发现办公桌上放着Nerf玩具枪。停电导致电脑关机时，他们拿起Nerf枪，展开了一场友好的“战斗”。

“Google had such a glow about it then,” she said. “There was an institutionally approved playfulness to it all. I loved that.”

“那时的谷歌散发着一种光芒，”她说。“有一种受到公司认可的活泼气氛。我很喜欢这一点。”

Now “the future of the whole industry seems very shaky,” said Ms. Grey, who is taking time off from tech.

现在，“整个行业的未来似乎非常不稳定，”暂时离开科技行业的格雷说。