Introduction
Tech workers play a fundamental role in discussions of digital work and technological development because of their growing influence in the digital economy and the unique perspectives they offer on how technology can meet society’s needs and solve social problems (Dorschel, 2022). Despite this, there is still a lack of literature that specifically addresses contemporary tech workers in the digital economy (Dorschel, 2022; Selling & Strimling, 2023). In this context, this study uses data from 26 interviews to explore the perspectives of Brazilian tech workers on the emerging collective mobilisations in their community.
This work aims to make two main contributions: to contribute to the debate about collective mobilisation in the tech industry from the tech workers’ perspective, and to shed initial light on the Brazilian tech community in an effort to contribute to necessary further studies on the topic beyond the Global North (Dorschel, 2022). In this regard, the research on which it is based aimed to identify the main collective mobilisations and their characteristics in the Brazilian technology community from the perspective of its workers.
The research also sought to contribute to the literature on diversity and inclusion in the tech industry by exploring the intersectionality of gender, race, and sexuality within the tech industry in Brazil, and how these intersecting identities shape the types of collective action that Brazilian tech workers pursue.
The next section provides an overview of the existing literature, shedding light on the concept of tech workers, their collective mobilisations, and their specific context in Brazil. The third section describes research methods, focusing on the qualitative techniques used and the characteristics of the participants involved. The following section examines the challenges of collective action and the role of unions in the Brazilian tech sector, highlighting the differences among unionisation movements and workers’ perspectives. In addition, a further section describes how the primary collective action within the Brazilian tech community focuses on training and inclusion initiatives for underrepresented groups, particularly women, with a growing emphasis on addressing racial and LGBTQIAP+ diversity. The final section presents the conclusions and discusses the emergence of collective struggles among Brazilian tech workers over ethical concerns in technology development, particularly regarding algorithmic bias.
Bringing tech workers’ mobilisations into the debate
While authors such as Fuchs (2016) have broadened the category of tech workers to include all workers in the production chains of the digital economy, including those involved in hardware production, this article defines tech workers in accordance with most of the literature (Miller & Coldicutt, 2019; Roy, 2021; Dorschel, 2022; Selling & Strimling, 2023) as workers with the necessary expertise dedicated to the design and development of algorithmic systems and digital databases using programming languages.
Moreover, while self-identification as a ‘tech worker’ is complex and evolving, it forms a basis for the development of a transnational community rooted in a collective sense of belonging, knowledge exchange, and shared institutions that are strongly linked to the act of coding. (Beltrán, 2023)
To analyse the collective mobilisations of tech workers in Brazil, this study draws inspiration from Atzeni and Cini’s (2023) understanding of working-class collective action as a dynamic and evolving process that extends beyond traditional union-centred frameworks, while still acknowledging their significance. Atzeni and Cini (2023) emphasise the importance of analysing the role of unions, but also of informal networks, self-organisation, and grassroots initiatives in mobilising workers, especially in contexts characterised by precarious conditions. Collective action, they argue, is often initiated and sustained by decentralised and bottom-up solidarity efforts that do not necessarily have a clear and defined antagonistic programme toward their companies or capital from the outset. Their work thus provides a comprehensive lens that facilitates the study of the decentralised and dynamic forms of collective action emerging among Brazilian tech workers.
To date, research on the collective mobilisation of tech workers has largely focused on regions in the Global North and Asia (Dorschel, 2022; Beltrán, 2023). In a pioneering way, Barbrook and Cameron (1995) contextualised such studies in the dominant political values and practices of the Silicon Valley tech community, which have been propagated globally, as a ‘Californian ideology’. According to them, the agenda of this community could be summarised as the replacement of all political processes with free market models and technological innovation to optimise the solution of social problems. This perspective led to the replacement of the collective organising culture inherited from the counterculture with values and mechanisms of entrepreneurship and meritocratic competition in Silicon Valley in the 1980s and 1990s (Turner, 2006). This, along with the relative income and employability privileges of tech workers compared to others, made it difficult for them to organise in collective mobilisations (Fuchs, 2013).
Since the late 2011s, however, there has been a resurgence of tech worker politics within and against Big Tech, beginning with the collective organising of tech workers in Silicon Valley and spreading across the United States and beyond (Rothstein, 2022; Selling & Strimling, 2023; Logan, 2023). Examples include the 2018 Google strike, in which more than 20,000 employees in 50 cities protested a toxic work culture characterised by harassment and racism, and the formation of new unions such as the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) and Game Workers Unite (GWU) in response to labour and ethical issues such as the use of tech workers’ work products in the military (Selling & Strimling, 2023). Selling and Strimling (2023) point out that these unionised movements express a growing turn by tech workers in the Global North toward positions more left wing than those of their employers, challenging the hegemony of Californian ideology.
Beyond the Global North, Li (2019) has studied how in China, due to state control of unions and legal restrictions on strikes and physical protests, online platforms have become crucial for organising and mobilising, with tech workers mobilising through online petitions, open letters, and social media campaigns (Li, 2019; Liu, 2023). In this context, Liu (2023) highlights the fight for women’s rights as a driving force in Chinese tech worker activism, as in the ‘807’ digital mobilisation against structural sexism in tech companies that began within Alibaba. Li (2019) also points to the growing pressure for labour rights, such as the ‘996’ online movement against the 9 am to 9 pm, six-days-a-week work schedule (Li, 2019). In addition, Lindtner (2014) highlights the emerging Chinese ‘maker’ culture, where tech workers are confronting intellectual property, hacking technologies for use in local tech solutions, and sharing knowledge in online forums without a licence.
In India, Irani (2019) highlights how tech workers face a combination of precarity and privilege. Despite relatively high salaries and perceived white-collar status, they face challenges such as job insecurity and long working hours. For Roy (2021), this ambiguous status between precarity and privilege prevents tech workers from defending their labour rights and makes them reluctant to organise into unions. The Indian tech worker community is also characterised by a diasporic dimension, with constant transit of tech workers between India and the United States, where many must navigate the precariousness of temporary work visas, mobilise around solidarity networks, and learn how to confront US migration policies (Chaudhuri, 2020).
In Latin America, Beltrán (2023) highlights how immigration to the United States is also a central axis of the culture of Mexican tech workers and their mobilisations. These workers face the restrictions of migration policies and the negotiation of their Latin American identity in a North-American technology market that does not always welcome cultural differences. In this context, this author analyses how Mexican tech workers mobilise through hackathons and migrahacks, combining their Latin American identity, hacker culture and neoliberal entrepreneurship. Hackathons are events where hackers come together to create technological solutions in a short period of time, often addressing challenges related to issues such as health, transportation and, in the case of migrahacks, immigration. Feminist hackathons are also important spaces for Mexican tech workers who seek to promote the inclusion and education of women in traditionally male-dominated environments (Beltrán, 2023).
In Brazil, women’s communities in technology have also emerged, formed on digital platforms, addressing issues such as networking opportunities and raising awareness about gender inequality in technology (Paz, 2015; Gonçalves et al, 2023). Although these characteristics are common to all the initiatives studied, Frade (2021) looks at groups and forums on social platforms, Gonçalves et al (2023) focus on profiles of feminist influencers in the area of technology on Instagram, and Paz (2015) examines the emergence of feminist collectives specifically in the free software community.
Researchers have also analysed the challenges faced by other oppressed sectors in the tech market. Myles, Chartrand and Duguay (2023) focus on how LGBTQIAP+ tech workers perceive the cisheteronormative bias of algorithmic systems in various ways, such as search results, and the algorithmic resistance to challenging this bias. Alfrey and Twine (2016 ) discuss how some LGBTQIAP+ workers have developed strategies to gain recognition in the industry that, while successful in certain contexts, nevertheless reinforce structural inequalities, particularly the maintenance of white dominance. In Brazil, Santos, Magalhães, and Ralph (2023) document from interviews with LGBTQIA+ tech workers how requesting remote work becomes a strategy to increase security for community members, especially for non-binary people, but note the need for more studies on LGBTQIA+ mobilisation in the Brazilian tech sector.
Furthermore, some studies have addressed the issue of race in the tech market. Chow (2023) explores how racialised North-American tech workers develop strategies to deflect or confront racism in the workplace, Franklin (2021) analyses how Black tech workers in Silicon Valley engage in group networks and manage inter-racial relationships to advance in the tech market, and Alfrey and Twine (2016) addresses the movement in the United States pressuring tech companies to set specific, quantifiable diversity and racial inclusion goals. In Brazil, Afroya (2024) maps initiatives for the inclusion and development of black professionals in the tech market.
Despite this, while there are studies that focus specifically on race and gender in Brazil, many studies focus primarily on working conditions that affect the entire community (Castro, 2013). The Brazilian community of tech workers, composed of approximately 2 million professionals, is the largest in Latin America (Maggetti, 2022), with its importance linked to Brazil’s specific role in the digital economy as a regional technological leader (Seto, 2024).
Despite its importance, similar to the Indian reality (Irani, 2019), the Brazilian tech workforce combines relative privilege with precarious working conditions (Castro, 2013; Oliveira, 2017). The sector is highly educated, with most professionals having higher education and relatively higher salaries than most Brazilian workers (Bridi & Motim, 2014). However, Brazilian workers in the technology sector often face flexible and insecure employment conditions, with temporary contracts and extended working hours being common, according to Castro (2013) and Oliveira (2017). Although there are no official statistics, Castro (2013) estimates that around 60% of Brazilian tech workers are in non-permanent employment arrangements, while Oliveira (2017) defines this proportion as up to 65% of the community in freelance or subcontracted work relationships. In addition, the rise of remote work has further blurred the boundaries between personal and professional life, leading to intensified workloads (Oliveira, 2017; Bridi & Motim, 2014). It is in this context that the emerging forms of collective mobilisation among these workers are analysed.
Research design
Between July and November 2023, a qualitative, exploratory survey was conducted as part of a broader research project focused on the socio-technical imaginaries of Brazilian tech workers. Using the snowball sampling method described by Vinuto (2014), interviewees recommended other participants for anonymous interviews. This method was crucial for building trust, which is especially important in this field because of the risks associated with workers expressing criticism of their industry. The initial contacts were graduates of computer science programmes at two federal universities in Rio de Janeiro.
The study aimed to include a diverse range of socio-demographic profiles (Table 1) among the 26 selected Brazilian tech workers, recognising the gender and racial disparities in the field. Specifically, efforts were made to include black and female professionals, with the hypothesis that their perspectives would offer unique insights into societal perceptions and epistemological approaches within the tech community. The participant group consisted of 16 men and 10 women, including 17 who self-identified as white, five as Afro-Brazilians, and a further four who did not identify their race. The group also included five individuals who identified as LGBTQIAP+ and one person who identified as neurodivergent within the autism spectrum. Their ages ranged from 26 to 36, their work experience ranged from one to 15 years, and most identified themselves as full or senior developers or data scientists. All participants were college graduates, with a quarter having studied computer science, while others had backgrounds in business, urban planning, psychology, engineering, human resources, biology, and medicine. In these cases, their technical expertise was primarily self-taught or acquired through boot camps, with many women following this path.
Participants’ socio-demographic and professional characteristics
| Gender and sexuality | Men | Women | LGBTQIAP+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | 10 | 5 | |
| Race | White | Afro-Brazilians | Not identified |
| 17 | 5 | 4 | |
| Age | 26–30 | 30–36 | |
| 19 | 7 | ||
| Work experience | 2 to 5 years | 5 to 10 years | >10 years |
| 7 | 17 | 2 | |
| Employment | Private foreign company | Private national company | State-owned company |
| 5 | 20 | 1 |
In line with Vinuto’s (2014) approach to qualitative research, the sample size was determined based on the saturation point, where additional interviews no longer yielded new information, ensuring that the research objectives were comprehensively addressed. The study also tracked diversity across economic sectors: interviews were conducted with tech workers involved in developing AI models for industries such as oil and gas, data analysis for social platforms, video game development, digital security, delivery apps, banking, and financial analysis. Most were employed in the private sector, split evenly between national and multinational companies, including one from a Brazilian state-owned company.
This approach marks a conceptual difference from Global North researchers such as Selling and Strimling (2023), who tend to focus on workers employed primarily in Internet-related companies, especially Big Tech companies or what they call ‘tech firms’ (Dorschel, 2022). In contrast to Silicon Valley, investment in digital technologies in Brazil is not only focused on platforms but is also strongly linked to the country’s most competitive economic sectors: oil and gas, agribusiness, and mining. For example, Petrobrás, the national oil company, operates the largest supercomputers in Brazil dedicated to AI development (Seto, 2023).
The interviews were transcribed verbatim and then the affinity diagram method was applied, following Charmaz (2014). This method consists of segmenting the interviews into excerpts that reflect single ideas, coded and grouped by similarity, forming conceptual categories that reveal emerging patterns and relationships, in order to identify recurring and divergent themes in the interviewees’ responses, providing an in-depth analysis of the workers’ perceptions of collective mobilisations in their community.
The challenge of collective action in the Brazilian tech worker community
In recent years, an interesting aspect of the mobilisation of the tech worker community in the Global North (Rothstein, 2022; Selling & Sterling, 2023; Logan, 2023) has been the emergence of new unionisation movements, ranging from company-specific unions, such as the Alphabet Workers Union, to initiatives aimed at bridging gaps between different types of tech worker, such as the Tech Workers Coalition (TWC). In Brazil, however, one element that workers consistently emphasised in interviews was their distance from unions, ranging from ignorance to outright hostility, in a reality similar to that described in some other countries, such as India (Roy, 2021) and Mexico (Beltrán, 2023).
Of all the participants, only two knew which union represented their category, and only one was aware of the activities of the union leadership in relation to their working environment. Similar to some extent to the situation in China (Li, 2019), the union movement in the Brazilian technology sector is highly institutionalised and shaped by state regulation, with little direct confrontation with companies and in many cases limited to being a bureaucratic apparatus (Bridi & Motim, 2014), as exemplified by this participant in the study:
The union never contacted us, the company did. What happened: there was an increase in the amount deducted from our salaries that automatically goes to the union. The company told us that if you don’t want to pay, you have to sign a document saying so. The company is based in Uberlândia (a Brazilian city), where the union is located, but 40% of their programmers work remotely in other states, and that’s my case. So I have to travel 12 hours to go and 12 hours back, losing a working day, to deliver a document, because the union only accepts it in person during working days. If you really want to upset someone, tell a remote programmer that he has to physically deliver a signed piece of paper to an office so as not to lose pay to a union that never said anything, never asked how I was doing, is totally useless.
This statement expresses the majority perception of the workers interviewed that the existing unions are bureaucratic organisations far removed from their reality, and highlights the challenge to the traditional logic of union territoriality for remote workers dispersed throughout the country. In Brazil, unions are organised by law in the municipalities or states where the companies are located, following what Atzeni and Cini (2023) call an industry-centric organisational model that struggles against the reality of remote work and workers’ sociability centred on digital platforms. The platformisation of workers’ interactions poses another significant challenge, as described by this other interviewee:
The law guarantees the union access to company spaces: offices, factories, this kind of stuff. But what about remote work? Will the union representative have access to [Microsoft] Teams? What about the union’s relationship with a worker who can be anywhere? I have never seen a discussion about unions on our Teams [internal work communication platform] and couldn’t imagine how union leaders could access it.
Another fundamental challenge in Brazil is that unions only represent formally employed workers who are contracted under a wage system with social rights, a minority of the Brazilian tech workforce (Castro, 2013; Oliveira, 2017). 1 In this context, and in contrast to the radicalism of the majority of tech workers in North America (Selling & Strimling, 2023), the general opinion among research participants is that most of their community embraces the values of the Californian ideology (Barbrook & Cameron, 1995), as exemplified by one worker:
There is a liberal logic that distrusts the state and the unions, and the majority is against them. Having a formal job means that the state and the unions keep part of our salary; we prefer to earn much more with fewer guarantees than less with more security. We study and work alone, in isolation, which favours a meritocratic ideology.
However, the type of company they work for and workers’ backgrounds may influence their position on unionisation as a collective mobilisation. For example, one data scientist who worked for a state-owned company was aware of union activities and benefits. Another data scientist, formerly an engineer, acknowledged the benefits of union involvement in his previous career and lamented the lack of militant unions in his new field. An additional element to this lack of active unionisation is the different reality in Brazil compared to the recent mass layoffs in the United States and Europe (Rothstein, 2022). Although layoffs had recently increased in Brazil, most workers perceived the local market as still buoyant, especially for experienced workers with higher skills.
The layoffs in Brazil also show that hostility to existing unions does not mean an absence of solidarity initiatives among workers around labour issues. Many interviewees reported that when companies carry out mass layoffs, it is common practice to circulate lists of the names and resumes of those laid off to encourage their quick hiring by other companies. In addition to creating networks of job placement, many workers offer training and mentoring to those who are laid off, as this interviewee describes:
When there are layoffs, there is solidarity. Influencers spread the word about those who have been laid off, pointing them to new job openings. Because everyone knows that they weren’t fired for productivity, because the professionals weren’t good. When I was laid off, that happened and I got some contacts. Besides job offers, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of training and study initiatives, free mentoring, including for Black and LGBT people, etc.
We consider this example of mutual aid to be characteristic of an emergent supportive and self-mobilised community, which Atzeni and Cini (2023) argue are the central elements of contemporary grassroots collective worker action. These actions are usually a response to the inadequacies of traditional union structures, ‘showing a return to mutualistic, associational, pre-union forms of organisation well beyond specific workplaces’ (Atzeni & Cini, 2023:6). By creating informal networks and providing direct support to their peers, these workers are building a sense of solidarity and collective identity outside the constraints of formal organisations that no longer provide these elements. Moreover, this phenomenon could perhaps foster long-term resilience and new types of labour organisations and actions, including strikes, within their community in the coming years, the subject of future studies.
Diversity and inclusion as collective action
An interesting form of collective action within the Brazilian tech community involves training and inclusion initiatives for people from oppressed communities in the tech market. These diversity initiatives were considered by all interviewees to be a very relevant form of collective organising, despite controversies about their autonomy in relation to tech companies, discussed later in this section. All the racialised and LGBTQIAP+ workers interviewed mentioned their participation in these collective initiatives, claiming that they felt a strong responsibility to make a more diverse Brazilian tech industry as a means of social advancement for marginalised populations and to influence the technologies that this industry produces. As one worker explained: ‘When Microsoft launched the Kinect 2 , it didn’t work well with black people. Not necessarily because the programmers were racist, but because they didn’t have black programmers to test it and realise that there was a problem’.
In particular, these initiatives focus on the inclusion of women, which, according to the majority of interviewees, surpasses initiatives with a racial, territorial, and LGBTQIAP+ focus. The prominence of women in addressing structural oppression in the Brazilian tech market (Paz, 2015) mirrors their importance in tech worker movements in other countries, such as China (Liu, 2023) and Mexico (Beltrán, 2023). This study reinforces the impact of these initiatives, given that half of the women interviewed entered technology careers through training and boot camps provided by initiatives focused on bringing more women into the technology market.
The main initiatives mentioned were Women in Tech (WT) and Women in Data Science (WiDS), international initiatives with local chapters in Brazil that promote gender equality in the technology market through courses, mentoring and study groups. In addition to these initiatives, there are also several smaller groups that have been formed informally by more experienced women programmers or with a specific focus, such as Black women. For example, another initiative mentioned by participants, PretaLab (2023), defines itself as a platform that connects Black Brazilian women working or aspiring to work in technology through training cycles, professional networks and study groups. This intersection between gender and race is an especially important topic, considering that the literature highlights the absence of more racialised professionals in the tech industry as a key factor in the reproduction of racist biases in algorithmic systems (Noble, 2018) and even in LGBTQIAP+ inclusion strategies (Alfrey & Twine, 2016). Beyond initiatives exclusively for Black women, interviewees mentioned the Afroya Tech Hub as a Brazilian collective focused on the inclusion and mobilisation of Black people in general in the tech market.
In the LGBTQIAP+ field, ‘Todas as Letras’ 3 was an important example mentioned by one interviewee as a collective that focuses on empowering members of this community through courses and labour market integration. However, it is important to note that there are fewer initiatives relating to this area than to women in Brazil, and the lack of research on the Brazilian LGBTQIA+ community in the tech market, according to Souza Santos et al (2023), requires further study.
Another important element among collectives focused on including oppressed populations in Brazil’s tech market is reclaiming identity from peripheral and marginalised territories. Many of the interviewed workers pointed out that being born in favelas or poor neighbourhoods was a major career access challenge, highlighting the importance of initiatives like QuebradaDev and PerifaCode. QuebradaDev (2023) defines itself as a podcast aiming to represent tech workers from urban peripheries, discussing technical topics and social and political issues related to technology that affect society, while PerifaCode focuses on inserting people from peripheral origins into the tech field through its Discord 4 forum and tutorials by more experienced members.
All of the interviewees who participated in race, gender, LGBTQIAP+ and peripheral inclusion initiatives did so voluntarily in their free time and highlighted these spaces as rich experiences of self-organisation. They operate through digital platforms, particularly Discord, without a rigid hierarchical structure and without requiring constant and expensive militant participation. According to the participants, these online networks connect small groups focused on specific goals, such as mentoring, and specific programming language courses, creating supportive digital communities as described by Atzeni and Cini (2023).
However, there are controversies between locally founded bottom-up initiatives, such as territorial ones, and those that represent local branches of international institutional initiatives, as well as between groups that remain informal and those that are institutionalised as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), some of which are funded by Big Tech companies. Two different approaches, somewhat in tension with each other, can be identified here.
On the one hand, the self-organisation of oppressed sectors is generally seen as a fundamental element for concrete transformations to take place, without which the diversity policies of tech companies will be just speeches without effect, as this programmer describes:
We will only have more diversity by force. Either we push to create positions for women, or the positions will be filled by men. There’s a gender gap in tech education, so the person with the most experience is usually going to be a man, unless there’s a specific position for women, or there’s training and policies for women by women … Companies make nice speeches, but at the end of the day they want a senior person, they’re not going to spend months looking for a woman or spending time training that person unless they’re forced to.
The perspective of this senior participant in a self-organised tech women’s course at a public university echoes the centrality that a participant in a training initiative for peripheral tech workers gives to the autonomy of the movement:
I would never partner with Meta or Google, we don’t get involved in closed technology. Teaching data analysis with a technology that we don’t even know how it works because it’s proprietary, we’re not going to do that. It’s one thing to work for them professionally, it’s another to let them buy us.
This speech exemplifies the importance of what Atzeni and Cini (2023) call ‘activist traditions’ in the constitution of collective mobilisations, such as the free software tradition in the case of tech workers, which influences the defence of the autonomy of initiatives in the face of large corporations.
On the other hand, some other initiatives, such as Women in Data Science, are funded by large Big Tech companies from the Global North, and Afroya Hub, a large Black tech workers collective, is funded by Brazilian precarious work platforms such as Zé Delivery. This raises questions about the connection between liberatory promises of inclusion and the continued neoliberal nature of the tech industry, as Morozov (2018) points out. While this private funding may call into question whether these specific initiatives can still be considered collective workers’ movements, Atzeni and Cini (2023) caution against trying to reduce the contradictory new workers’ movements to ideal types, as if all collective workers’ mobilisations are necessarily anti-capitalist, and not to ignore that other actors, such as corporations and the state, are constantly trying to co-opt workers’ movements, especially organic ones.
From the struggle within Big Tech to the algorithms of the oppressed
While issues of diversity and inclusion in the workplace have been prominent, Brazilian tech workers have also highlighted the recent emergence of collective struggles and initiatives around disputes over how and for what purposes the technologies they develop should be used. These mobilisations around algorithmic bias, for example, often occur spontaneously, without prior collective organisation, when they encounter discriminatory or harmful policies in companies’ internal development processes. One notable account came from a developer hired to adapt algorithmic filters for Portuguese content moderation on a large Chinese social platform:
We were working on improving automatic filters that identify content for human curation … But the biggest surprise was when we realised there was a policy in the models to censor videos of affectionate LGBTQIA+ interactions, like hugs and kisses!
Since the Brazilian team in charge included LGBTQIA+ people, the professionals collectively decided to resist the directives from the Chinese headquarters, arguing that it was in contradiction with local laws and threatening to leak documents and evidence to the press. Although they were successful in preventing censorship of Portuguese content, they remained unaware of policies for other communities and feared exposure due to confidentiality agreements they had signed, as they did not want to be fired or ostracised in the industry.
Given the asymmetry of power between platforms and precarious content moderation workers, where these workers struggle with the opacity of the systems and unclear or conflicting policies (Ahmad & Krzywdzinski, 2022), this example of Brazilian tech workers directly pressuring moderation policies through their privileged position as designers of the moderation systems points to possible alliances between moderation workers and tech workers. This case also reinforces how the presence of LGBTQIAP+ people inside the tech industry can influence the perception of cisheteronormative bias on algorithmic systems (Myles, Chartrand & Duguay, 2023), and engage the community in strategies of algorithmic resistance against these biases.
Another social challenge identified by a developer working on a Brazilian delivery platform was how to set the parameters of the algorithm that optimises delivery routes and worker selection. The model focused on achieving deliveries at the lowest cost and in the shortest time for the company, with the goal of extending users’ working hours through gamification strategies. However, when this tech worker suggested to the company that the algorithm should also consider the physical fatigue and capacity of platform workers, taking into account their mode of transportation, gender and working hours, among other factors, this was ignored, despite support from colleagues.
Faced with the impossibility of building technologies according to their ethical standards, since the pandemic, an increasing number of Brazilian tech workers have mobilised themselves into new collectives to develop data and algorithmic solutions for public interest, in a similar way to some of the activists involved in Chinese ‘maker’ culture (Lindtner, 2014). A primary reference among the interviewees in Brazil is Cooperadev.br, founded in 2023. A founding member described it as:
A community of over 250 workers who voluntarily seek to self-organise to create open systems and services for the community and other movements … We want to be a reference for workers across Brazil, with groups in every state for every need: technical training, political, legal, psychological advice.
The collective, which grew to encompass hundreds of members in its first few weeks, combines discussions about working conditions and technology in general with a focus on developing technological solutions for social movement partners, including as a form of self-financing. Cooperadev.br is an example of an initiative born entirely through a Discord forum, without extensive planning by its founders, as one of them described:
The cooperative grew out of a day of directed anger at corporations, where I posted an outraged call about our working conditions: join us if you’re a tired developer, if your family will be without income if you get sick, if your back hurts, if you can’t remember when you last took a vacation, if you know you’re not going to become a billionaire.
Ideologically, the community defines itself as leftist, although the interviewee emphasised that it does not discriminate against or prevent the participation of workers from a variety of ideological positions, as long as they accept the community rules. There are clear commitments to non-capitalist goals, as another activist put it:
We discuss a lot about the algorithms of oppression, how they reproduce racism, sexism, etc. But now is the time to debate the algorithms of the oppressed, how we build technologies that address the problems of women, workers, the periphery, Brazil.
In this spirit, the collective was focusing on developing its first project: a work platform for delivery workers organised in an anti-fascist collective, which should prioritise workers’ well-being and fair working conditions in its design and be easily replicable by other activist groups of platform workers. This example illustrates the potential for tech workers and precarious platforms workers to engage with one another at a technological and organisational level (Irani & Silberman, 2016; Dorschel, 2022), building broad alliances among workers who develop and use digital platforms. It also highlights the importance of integrating workers’ perspectives into platform design processes. However, Irani and Silberman (2016) emphasise that these alliances between asymmetrical sectors of the working class risk glorifying developer designers as technological saviours and minimising the agency of platform workers, which can lead to solutions that do not meet the needs of platform workers and perpetuate existing inequalities.
Another risk that collectives like Cooperadev.br face is that, by rejecting typical corporate organisational and management relationships, which they consider authoritarian, they struggle to establish coordination processes that organise and separate moments of political discussion from the practical development of projects, with defined authorities and deliberation processes. Despite gradually defining its own rules and using a general assembly as its main body, the community’s rapid growth, lack of previous organisational experience, and asynchronous discussion pose enormous challenges, reflecting the difficulties described by Freeman (2013) as ‘the tyranny of structurelessness’ in organisations. However, the founders remain optimistic, approaching the challenge of political and collective mobilisation with the philosophical attitude of a software developer: ‘Our development process is iterative. Test, fail fast, adapt. I know what I did wrong, the next one will be stronger’.
While Cooperadev.br provides an interesting example of an emergent collective mobilisation with a clear working-class commitment to technological development, it is worth questioning to what extent Brazilian tech workers, in their emerging mobilisation models and their own perceptions of their role in social transformation, still reproduce the ‘ technological solutionism’ described by Morozov (2018) and Milan (2020). For instance, as previously discussed, they conceptualise their political organisation in a manner analogous to a software development process, prioritising technical solutions over social issues.
Conclusion
The study’s initial finding is that, rather than organising predominantly through unions, Brazilian tech workers tend to form activist organisations consisting of support communities (Atzeni & Cini, 2023). This is due to the high level of union institutionalisation and the unions’ difficulties in organising the new labour models prevalent in the technology community, such as remote and flexible occupations. These activist support communities are primarily focused on knowledge sharing, with a strong emphasis on promoting diversity and inclusion within the Brazilian tech industry. Their main area of activity is the implementation of solidarity initiatives based on education, training, and mentoring of junior workers by seniors, with a particular focus on women, but also on racial, sexual, and gender diversity.
An important element that emerges in the Brazilian tech worker community is the dimension of claiming a collective identity from the territory: the concept of common interests among tech workers from the periphery and for the peripheral population was very important for many interviewees, especially those from the favelas. Although immigration has not been such an important issue as in other regions of the Global South, such as India (Chaudhuri, 2020) and Mexico (Beltrán, 2023), many Brazilian tech workers share with Indians and Mexicans an awareness of their precariousness compared to citizens of the Global North, but also a pride in their local cultural identity and a sense of responsibility towards their territories.
These findings can contribute to the literature by highlighting the relevance of specific national contexts to tech worker mobilisation, providing an initial understanding of why traditional unionisation is less prevalent in the Brazilian community and how, in this context, Brazilian tech workers are navigating the challenges of traditional labour mobilisation through grassroots initiatives and informal networks. Moreover, alliances between traditional unions and peripheral tech collectives, such as the recent alliance between QuebradaDev and the São Paulo Technology Workers Union, could be an important way for Brazilian tech workers to overcome both the current limitations of union-centric organising frameworks (Atzeni & Cini, 2023) and the risks of structureless movements and co-optation by Big Tech companies.
And, while the discourse of inclusion can be co-opted by neoliberal logic (Alfrey, 2016), there is some evidence in this research that more diversity in the tech industry can directly impact the development of technology and its social uses. In addition to initiatives of education and inclusion in response to oppression, workers are also trying to act within companies to ensure that technologies do not reproduce discriminatory biases and reflect the interests of the workers who use them. Often, however, these workers are not able to globally change the technologies developed within companies, leading some to seek other forms of association around the development of technologies that conform more closely to their own ethical and political standards.
It is for this reason that the article introduces new Brazilian grassroots movements and collectives that aim to develop technologies in line with social justice principles. This reflects an emerging trend in the Brazilian tech sector, where workers are striving to create ethical and socially responsible technologies outside of traditional corporate frameworks. The creation of cooperadev.br is an example of this recent political phenomenon that has yet to be more widely studied. Future research will be necessary to follow its evolution in depth, in order to understand whether it is an ephemeral phenomenon or one with the potential to consolidate, and to determine which elements will be decisive in its development or collapse. It is important to emphasise that this is exploratory work and that the qualitative approach, while revealing, may not capture the full spectrum of perspectives within the Brazilian tech worker community. Possible future work could conduct surveys for a quantitative analysis that makes it possible to study how Brazilian workers’ visions compare with those of other countries, as exemplified by the mapping done in the United Kingdom by Miller and Coldicutt (2019).
Finally, this research has demonstrated that, despite the Californian ideology not impeding political mobilisations concerning internal inequalities among tech workers or the debate over the social impact of the technologies they produce, this ideology remains influential within the community. Some forms of collective mobilisation illustrate the impact of Californian ideology and values, including opposition to unionisation and techno-solutionist perspectives. The cooperative.dev model of organisation, which emulates software development theories, and the development of algorithms for the oppressed as a primary means of combating various forms of oppression are two illustrative examples of this influence.
In conclusion, this study reveals that Brazilian tech workers are actively reshaping the forms of collective action within their industry by building inclusive, grassroots networks that challenge both traditional union structures and corporate dominance. Their mobilisations, rooted in issues of diversity, inclusion, and social justice, highlight the importance of solidarity and mutual support, particularly for marginalised groups. While there are risks of co-optation and structural challenges, the emergence of new collectives shows that tech workers are developing innovative approaches to combine ethical technological development with collective empowerment. Future research will be essential to track the evolution of these movements, which may offer transformative insights into the role of tech workers in advancing socially responsible technologies in Brazil and beyond.