The final few weeks of any year – what to speak of a decade – tend to give us pause to reflect on, in the words of Alexander Graham Bell, “What hath God wrought?”

We realize that, in terms of historic industries and major industrial transitions, tech is relatively new to the planet. Every major industrial shift prior to tech has done precisely what tech has done: basically, created efficiencies. But given the breadth, scope and speed at which tech has engulfed the global landscape, forgiving founders for their youthful business missteps has tended to create those efficiencies at great expense to some, and in many cases, quite a few members of the planet’s population.

Uber entered the ride-hailing space without consideration to local regulations (Ask forgiveness, not permission) and scaled quickly, following yet another tenet of technology: move fast and break things. Uber did make ride-hailing more convenient and, surge pricing aside, less expensive. However, their drivers were not all properly vetted, which led to, in several cases, criminal allegations. But Uber skated a fine line, insisting that it is an ‘app,’ and that their drivers were not employees – the same argument they made in order to avoid paying drivers employee benefits. Job creation? Uber did contribute to the swelling underclass: the money mostly went in one direction. The Next Web summed it up pretty well back in 2017: Uber: The good, the bad, and the really, really ugly. Given Uber’s (current) legal challenges around the world, it seems to be going to the lawyers.

Ah, the gig economy. Take DoorDash’s ‘business model.’ How is skimming tips from one’s delivery people a business model?  You can’t make this up. It wasn’t until the company was called out by the press and “outrage and customer complaints about the policy,” according to the New York Times, As we reported back in November, DoorDash had to change its tipping model after it was discovered that tips that were meant to go to the workers were being kept by the company. Even after they promised to change that, Vox reported that DoorDash was still pocketing workers’ tips, almost a month after it promised to stop. DoorDash’s CEO actually stated on Twitter:
4/ Going forward, we’re changing our model – the new model will ensure that Dashers’ earnings will increase by the exact amount a customer tips on every order. We’ll have specific details in the coming days.
— Tony Xu (@t_xu) July 24, 2019
And where were this unicorn company’s investors during all of this? Note that DoorDash shares the same major investor as does both Uber and WeWork: Softbank’s Vision Fund.

Unicorn Instacart tweaked their algorithm twice: the first time to siphon tips from its delivery team (InstaCarters?); again in 2017 which led Some Instacart workers to strike over pay that can be as low as $1 per hour, as Ars Technica reported (Wikipedia reported eighty cents/hour). Then there was their most recent scathing open letter directed at founder and CEO, Apoorva Mehta, who continues to play it fast and loose with the InstaCarters’ pay. Seriously?  He tries to pull the same shenanigans again and again – to no avail. So much for  insta-recall.

WeWork When it was time to IPO, it came to light how founder Adam Neumann was playing fast and loose with the financials, and the Street made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that this is not how we work. Now WeWork parent company (is reportedly cutting) up to 25% of workers. Neumann is also out, but not on the street: he walked away with a $1.7B settlement. Again, nothing like a good legal team. Talk about imperfect models: it seems the Ponzi scheme is not dead, but it doesn’t necessarily always work out in the long run.

We can go on and on with examples, but the bottom line is that, in their claim to reinvent or disintermediate almost every vertical they enter, tech believes that it can change the laws of basic economics and business – or operate without regard to state laws and/or local regulations. And therein lies what may well be yet another tech mantra: if you start with a crime, you have to cover it up with an even bigger crime.

We also remind you that all of the above had no clear pathway to profitability at the onset – it was all about that seeming other Silicon Valley/tech mantra: hockey stick growth at all costs.. But this is not the web of the previous decade – the aught years, when we were coming out of the post-Web 1.0 meltdown.  WeWork was the latest – and hopefully the last – in the series: a runaway unicorn headed by the apotheosis of what tech and its investors have long valued most: the brash entrepreneur who pushes beyond the limits.

The teen years are over, and with dissatisfied employees becoming more and more vocal, heads up, tech: you may be in the hotseat in the coming decade. Time to brace for the Terrible Twos. Onward and forward.