In the years since George Floyd’s killing, the contours of workplace activism have shifted. Discussions that once unfolded in staff Slack channels and private equity memos increasingly spill into public view. The locus of pressure around immigration enforcement — long an arena of public policy, law enforcement, and advocacy groups — now often begins inside product teams, legal departments and data centers. It flows outward from employees who see ties between the technologies they build and the lives those technologies affect.

This is not simply virtue signaling. It is a new form of workplace democracy: a decentralized insistence that companies reckon with the moral consequences of their contracts, tools and partnerships. The dynamic is striking because it flips the script on how policy influence is traditionally exerted. Instead of boardroom lobbying or executive endorsements, the impetus for scrutiny and change frequently originates with rank-and-file technologists demanding transparency and accountability from their employers.

From Cubicles to Campaigns

Technology companies have long occupied a peculiar place in civic life. Their products and infrastructure — cloud services, data analytics, identity systems — are used by governments and institutions of all kinds. Over the past decade, employees who build those tools have become more public and organized about the consequences.

What started as internal conversations about individual projects has matured into collective action. Workers circulate open letters, stage walkouts, and publish detailed reports explaining how particular services may be used by immigration authorities. They petition their companies to decline certain contracts, to adopt clearer ethical review processes, and to disclose vendor relationships that could affect vulnerable communities.

Because these concerns connect to core business decisions, they are also hard for leadership to ignore. Yet leadership responses have been uneven. Some executives meet resistance with commitments, policy changes and new oversight; others respond with piecemeal updates or silence. That silence matters: it signals a gap between public values proclaimed in mission statements and the real-world consequences of product deployment.

Why Employees Are Leading

The shift toward employee-driven pressure stems from several overlapping realities:

• Familiarity with technology’s reach: Engineers and product managers understand, often in granular detail, how a system built for benign purposes can be repurposed. That technical literacy breeds both concern and the capacity to explain risk in operational terms.
• Visibility of supply chains: Modern software is rarely monolithic. It depends on third-party APIs, cloud providers and data brokers. Employees who map these dependencies can show how their work sits within broader enforcement ecosystems.
• Workplace organizing tools: Collaboration platforms and internal networks reduce the friction of collective action. Past successes — on topics ranging from diversity to contract refusals — have created templates employees now reuse.
• Generational expectations: Younger professionals increasingly expect employers to align with ethical standards as part of organizational identity. For many, silence on consequential policy issues is itself a political choice worthy of critique.

The Cost of Silence

When executives remain publicly quiet, several dynamics unfold. Trust erodes between staff and leadership, external critics fill the narrative vacuum, and the company’s reputation becomes more difficult to manage. A lack of clarity on whether a firm will engage with certain agencies or accept certain contracts leaves internal stakeholders guessing — and often mobilizing in ways that are disruptive and public.

For companies, silence can be a strategic gamble: by not taking a stand, they hope to preserve optionality with customers and regulators. But that same silence can be interpreted as indifference or tacit approval, prompting employees to act as moral translators, explaining to the public and the press how a product or contract affects vulnerable people.

There is also a practical risk. Employees who feel unheard may leave, creating talent churn. They may leak documents, testify to oversight hearings, or amplify concerns through social media. The escalation from internal memos to public controversies often stems less from malice than from a breakdown in channels for responsible deliberation.

What Workers Are Asking For

The demands coming from employees are focused and often procedural rather than purely rhetorical. Common requests include:

• Clear policies on what kinds of government contracts the company will accept.
• Transparent disclosures about partnerships and data-sharing arrangements.
• Ethical review processes that include employee representation and independent oversight.
• Protections for whistleblowers and systems to escalate concerns without fear of retaliation.

These demands are not anti-business per se; they are attempts to align long-term enterprise sustainability with the values of people who build products and operate systems. When workers frame their concerns in operational language — citing edge cases, failure modes, and dependency graphs — they create a vocabulary that leadership can use to make decisions that are both ethical and pragmatic.

The Executive Dilemma

Executives face a difficult calculus. Publicly rejecting a government contract can invite regulatory scrutiny or the loss of lucrative business. Endorsing contracts without a clear framework invites reputational harm and internal dissent. The path between these poles is narrow and fraught.

For many senior leaders, the temptation is to delegate: create a review board, ask legal to handle compliance, or quietly limit exposure. But delegation without transparency fails to address the underlying moral questions and leaves employees and the public skeptical. When leadership chooses opacity, employees often feel they have no choice but to push publicly.

A New Balance of Power

The consequence of these dynamics is a recalibration of power within organizations. Employees are no longer just executors of strategy; they are active stakeholders shaping how strategy is defined. That shift changes what it means for a company to be accountable. Decision-making that once occurred behind closed doors now demands, at minimum, a credible narrative: a clear set of values, a documented process for decisions, and mechanisms for remediation when projects go wrong.

Companies that embrace this reality tend to fare better. Those that invest in robust, transparent governance can retain autonomy while making principled choices. Those that ignore employee concerns risk public flare-ups and the slow attrition of internal trust.

Beyond the Headlines

The public debates around immigration enforcement will continue to be fought in legislatures and courts. But the technical scaffolding that underpins enforcement will increasingly be shaped by workplace decisions. That is the quiet revolution: the people who build the systems are inserting themselves into the conversation about how those systems are used.

If leadership aims to weather this change, it will need to treat employee concerns as design constraints rather than noise. That means integrating those concerns early, documenting decisions transparently, and creating avenues for meaningful staff participation in governance. It also means acknowledging that silence is a choice with consequences — sometimes more costly than a carefully explained position.

Conclusion

The years since George Floyd’s killing did more than spark protests on the streets; they reframed questions of corporate responsibility. For many workers in technology, the work is inseparable from the world it shapes. Their insistence that companies account for the human outcomes of infrastructure, algorithms and contracts is not merely moralizing — it is a form of civic engagement born from proximity to power.

Executives who continue to shy away from transparent engagement risk not only reputational fallout but a widening rift with the people who deliver their products. The healthiest organizations will be those that convert moral unease into governance: clear principles, open processes, and a willingness to explain decisions publicly. In the end, accountability will look less like a press release and more like the hard, sustained work of designing companies that can stand up to scrutiny from both inside and outside.