The tech industry, with an eye towards improving its reputation, is quickly pivoting to offer remedies to the pandemic crisis
Before the pandemic, Yiying Lu was known for her work designing the Twitter Fail Whale and the dumpling and boba tea emojis. In the past few weeks, Lu said she was called to a higher purpose. Tweets: @neweconforum , @sbanjo , @jessefelder , and @sbanjo Tweets: Bloomberg New / @neweconforum : The coronavirus is forcing Silicon Valley to reset its moral compass https://www.bloomberg.com/... Shelly Banjo / @sbanjo : “We've tapped into this feeling of 'there's nothing I can do to be productive and useful,'” says @frankba “Well, here's something you can do.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... Jesse Felder / @jessefelder : “Facebook, Snapchat and the last decade of tech has brought us together in some ways but has also pushed us further away from real life. The virus is a warning for people in the Bay Area that we can't just come here and take. We have to give, too.” https://www.bloomberg.com/... Shelly Banjo / @sbanjo : “This is a wake-up call, especially in Silicon Valley, where life is pretty good and everyone gets paid a lot, that we've lost focus on what matters, says @sethbannon https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The pivot arrives weeks after the pandemic's first wave of online community building showed digital tools absorbing some in-person losses — and after years of criticism over tech's societal impact that Bloomberg frames as Silicon Valley being forced to 'reset its moral compass.' Designer Yiying Lu, known for the Twitter Fail Whale and emoji work, embodies the individual-level version of the shift, describing her move into pandemic-response work as a call to a higher purpose.
The story matters because it tests whether the industry's usefulness turn is reputational theater or a durable reordering — a question the related coverage keeps alive through the downturn, when companies were still weighing a retreat from 'gee-whiz' projects like self-driving cars and metaverses toward products that make money.
First-order effects
- Yiying Lu and other tech workers redirect their skills toward pandemic-response work, with Lu framing the move as answering the feeling that 'there's nothing I can do to be productive and useful.'
- Silicon Valley companies face immediate pressure to convert goodwill gestures into visible remedies, with Bloomberg's Shelly Banjo and Jesse Felder documenting the reputational reset as it happens.
Second-order effects
- The remedies push moves inside company walls too: by September, tech firms had shifted workplace incentives out of the office toward parental time-off allowances and mental health support, extending the crisis response from products to employee policy.
- Rival firms are pushed to match each other's crisis initiatives, since standing apart from the remedy effort now carries a reputational cost in a market where trust is the contested asset.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, 'useful' becomes the industry's organizing test rather than novelty — a trajectory the later downturn coverage makes explicit as companies weigh dropping self-driving and metaverse bets for revenue-bearing products.
- Reputation shifts from marketing output to operating input: platforms compete on demonstrated social utility, making trust something built into products and workplaces rather than communicated around them.
The trend: Crisis-era usefulness is hardening into the tech industry's core reputational and product criterion, outlasting the pandemic itself into the downturn's discipline.