Tech Employee Survey

About the survey

Protocol's inaugural survey of tech workers dives deep into how employees across tech feel about the existential regulatory issues facing their industry.

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Image: Greg Ory / Ataur Rahman / Protocol

Big Tech executives do a lot of talking. On their platforms, in interviews and on Capitol Hill. But Silicon Valley's uber-rich and powerful CEOs don't always speak for the whole tech industry or even their own employees, who are increasingly finding themselves at odds with their companies' most senior leadership.

To take a pulse of where tech employees across the country stand on key regulatory and policy issues facing the industry, Protocol is introducing its first Tech Employee Survey. Our goal is to regularly track the attitudes and behaviors of not just tech leaders, but also the people they lead.

For the inaugural survey Protocol, in partnership with Lucid, polled 1,578 employees across the country, from C-suite level executives to associates. All work in tech-related fields, and they hail mostly from large tech companies: Almost 40% of respondents work at companies with an annual revenue over $500 million and 57% of the companies have more than 1,000 employees.

Over 20% of our respondents are C-suite executives or similar. A further 3% are VPs, while 12% are directors. Managers made up the bulk of respondents: 50%. Much like the industry as a whole, our respondents skew male: Just 16% of respondents identified as female. Sixty percent are aged 35 to 44, with the next largest group 25- to 34-year-olds, who accounted for 18% of respondents. California was unsurprisingly the most common location, with almost 20% of respondents from the state, followed by New York (19%). The survey was conducted from Feb. 12 to March 10.

Interested in learning more about our tech employee surveys? Email us.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of survey respondents. This story was updated March 16, 2021.
 Shakeel Hashim

Shakeel Hashim ( @shakeelhashim) is a former growth manager at Protocol, based in London. He was previously an analyst at Finimize covering business and economics, and a digital journalist at News UK. His writing has appeared in The Economist and its book, Uncommon Knowledge.

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