When Alexis Gay had to present second quarter results to her team on a Zoom video call, she sat down and wondered how she could do it. She wanted be transparent but she also wanted to be encouraging to her teammates who had worked so hard through unprecedented circumstances.
The second quarter of 2020 was one of the worst in years for many tech companies, as the Covid-19 pandemic sent the economy into a tailspin. As a senior manager at San Francisco-based digital company Patreon, Gay knew colleagues were still learning how to work remotely while the country was in crisis.
While rehearsing what she’d said, she couldn’t help but laugh.
Gay grew up wanting to be an actor, but found herself seven years into a tech job where she fully leaned into the industry’s hustle culture. And now, she found herself trying to do it with a straight face during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.
Before her meeting, she made a satirical video depicting how she’d approach a team.
“This is a learning quarter,” she said as she looked to the side of camera as if trying to convince herself of what she was saying. “These are unprecedented times,” she said in another cut. “But the team really dug deep!” she said in another cut, as if trying to encourage her team.
Her video immediately got tens of thousands of likes across various social media platforms. “I was tapping into that idea of like, ’what are we going to say about Q2?” She laughed.
Gay is one of several tech workers leaning on comedy to poke fun at their workplaces, where the quirks and qualms of employers grew more pronounced amid the pandemic. It’s the latest spin on a recent trend, where employees offer first-person accounts chronicling the dystopian nature of Silicon Valley work-life.
Often using quick-take comedic videos, workers are poking fun at recruiting strategies, diversity pledges and the industry’s homogenous makeup. Some have even begun making money from their followings, many of whom are millennials facing high rates of burnout, exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. For some, it’s become a form of therapy.
From tech to comedy
In January 2021, as the pandemic raged through a winter surge, Gay took a leap and decided to pursue comedy full-time.
“The awareness of how uncertain the future was was a point driven home every day,” she said. “It felt like, the time is now because we simply don’t know what’s coming next.”
Since graduating college, Gay had worked tirelessly in various roles in tech, from marketing to sales to partnerships. She’s liked her jobs for the most part, she says.
“There was an excitement to being young and fresh in the start-up world,” she said. “This was a world where all I had to do was raise my hand and work hard. I showed up early, stayed late and did that whole deal. I became addicted to this idea that you can build and create something. Like, I was having an impact.”
While working at San Francisco-based cloud company Twilio — although she liked the job — she realized she didn’t really care that much, she said.
“It was like, you work in tech, all your friends work in tech, you hang out on the weekends and talk about tech,” she said. “It felt like this homogenous routine.”
Gay then moved to another company that was closer to her heart: Creators making content. Her most recent role was at San Francisco-based Patreon, where she worked in creator partnerships. Around the same time, she joined a San Francisco improv group.
She launched another popular video in March 2021 called “every single park hang in San Francisco,” which drew industrywide attention. “Alexis continually captures the reality of our industry better than any @semil end of year post ever could,” tweeted Compound Ventures partner Michael Dempsey.
“She’s so spot on it’s terrifying,” another Twitter user stated. (Gay said Twitter works well for comedy — the short format writing makes prime real estate for zingers, and everybody in San Francisco tech is on the platform.)
Gay said her comedy isn’t meant to be anti-tech, though. “If anything this is self-deprecating humor,” she laughed. “For me, it’s poking fun at me and my friends and the fact that for seven years, this was the choice I made. ”
Now, Gay is using the skills she learned in her tech roles to earn money from her videos on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. She still does some consulting and panel moderating for conferences on the side, she said.
Gay is not the first to make the leap to a comedy career.
Sarah Cooper, a former Google user experience design lead, found huge success after she filmed a satirical commentary about what it’s like to work at Google and at a big tech company. She achieved global popularity in 2019 for her TikTok videos lip syncing to President Donald Trump. In 2020, she landed a Netflix deal for her own show, “Sarah Cooper: Everything’s Fine.” And, in March 2021, CBS ordered a pilot for a show based on her book “How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings.”
“What is so cool about seeing her mainstream success is that origin story of being a tech comedy person didn’t pigeonhole her later on so that’s been affirming,” Gay said.
Satire from a diverse perspective
Josh Ogundu, a product operations lead at TikTok and a startup advisor mentor at accelerator Techstars L.A Cohort, makes videos about the reality versus expectation of working in tech.
The 28-year old posts videos to his account NaijaNomad, and has reached tens of thousands of viewers since the beginning of the year. He even got a shout out from show runner and “Billions” co-creator Brian Koppelman on Twitter.
He often pokes fun companies’ multi-million-dollar diversity initiatives, recruiting practices and how when companies refer to “hiring” for certain roles, they often mean contractors, who usually don’t get the benefits and perks that regular employees enjoy.
TikTok product operations lead Josh Ogundu has grown in popularity as tech workers relate to his videos that take satire to the reality of working in tech.
