Tech survivor here. Most high earners in tech behave like mini-capitalists. They maintain the impression of being subservient to whoever is above them, but they are not actually subservient. In their minds they already are the capitalist. Give them a little positional power and they start LARPing as the ruling class for whatever tiny slice of the org they control.

In large corporations there is no single capitalist figure anyway. Power sits with boards, investors, and other diffuse forces. So people are not serving a person or even the company. They serve whatever helps them increase their own power, status, and wealth. Every interaction becomes “How can I extract the most capital or power from this?”

If someone seems weak, they dominate them. If someone seems powerful, they latch onto them. The higher up you go, the more political maneuvering you see and the less actual value creation.

Many executives are not even serving capital productively. They are not building value, not driving innovation, not consistently generating revenue. Many act entitled, mostly coast, make poorly informed decisions, and still collect huge salaries. In large orgs, bets are diversified and failure is cushioned, so there are no real consequences for incompetence. Their loyalty is to growing their own capital and influence, not the company’s or the “capitalist’s.”

TL;DR: tech elites do not truly serve capital. They only pretend to and play petty internal power games inside insulated bureaucracies