Does big tech need to be regulated?

David Heinemeier Hansson Chief Technology Officer BaseCamp

David Heinemeier Hansson has made a name for himself as one of the tech industry’s more prominent iconoclasts and industry critics. The Danish programmer is a successful entrepreneur who has testified before Congress to argue that Big Tech firms should be more regulated and started an anti-Facebook campaign. He is chief technology officer of BaseCamp, which makes workplace collaboration software. Hansson spoke with The Associated Press to discuss remote work in the age of the pandemic and why Big Tech’s power should be limited.

Basecamp is mostly remote. Has the pandemic affected how you work?

BaseCamp has been remote for about 20 years and we have all the systems and processes in place to be able to make that a pleasant experience. But with the pandemic is it’s not just remote work, it’s remote work during a pandemic. About half the people at BaseCamp have families who all of a sudden have to deal with childcare at home or a spouse who has to share the perhaps one home office there was. So the pandemic part of it has definitely been difficult.

Since the pandemic started, have you seen other companies making mistakes switching to remote work?

I’d say the number one mistake I’ve seen from other companies suddenly being forced to go remote without having any preparation for it has been that they tried to recreate the office remotely. And this whole idea that you can recreate the office remotely is a nonstarter.

It’s particularly not a great way to work during a pandemic when people suddenly have a lot of things they have to juggle. Switching to an asynchronous work style where people don’t have to be at a certain place at a certain time for the vast majority of the collaboration that happens is the key to unlocking both the productivity and the sanity of anyone working remotely during a pandemic.

You have been critical about companies like Apple and Google being monopolies. Why do you think they’re dangerous?

The power that Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and others have right now to dictate the terms of the digital economy, to capture the lion’s share of all economic activity is unprecedented, astounding and incredibly dangerous. From 2000 to 2010, I think most people uncritically looked at these companies with just applause. That’s not the case anymore.

I don’t think there’s a lot of people who are just cheering on: Oh, isn’t Facebook just universally amazing? Isn’t it wonderful that Apple has an iron grip on all distribution of software to the iPhones in such a way that they can shake down individual software makers for 30 percent of the revenue? I think some of these storylines now have taken over from the uncritical applause that these companies used to have. And that’s a huge, powerful and important change that’s paving the way for these regulatory actions. I mean, virtually all energy that goes in to legislation or regulation comes from public perception changing.