Anxious Chicago tech workers seek solace in pinball

Beep clack. Boeing

Distractions are the natural enemies of the flow state—that happy, locked-in mode revered by tech people as where the best work gets done.

Yet technology people Love Pinball. The cacophony is part of the charm, because the challenge is to overcome. Local pinball leagues are full of tech workers on teams with names like “Tilty as Charged.”

“It’s a game of control,” says Jane Verwis, a user experience designer in Chicago and the world’s highest-ranked female pinball player according to one rating system. “The better you are, the more control you have over the situation.”

There’s a lack of sense of control among tech workers right now, as a wave of layoffs is brewing in the sector. Already by 2023, 102,000 tech workers will be out of a job at US tech companies like Microsoft and Alphabet (Google), according to Crunchbase. Last year the total was over 140,000.

Chicago’s tech scene has largely survived. But in an industry that has known only rapid growth and big money for most of this decade, the cuts represent a predictable trend that will draw your attention — and perhaps encourage a retreat to comfortable spaces like the playground.

Between league arenas like Logan Arcade and Emporium Wicker Park, the conversations sometimes get serious.

“It’s a scary time to be working in tech or trying to work in tech,” said Mike Pantoliano, vice president of Verwis Group, a Seattle, Okla., software company. Pantoliano, a former top-200 player nationally, transferred to Chicago in the fall.

Pantoliano is a flowing-realm Jedi, one who prides himself on his ability to concentrate. On league night, playing Johnny Mnemonic and trying to unlock the “spinner millions” bonus of serious players, those who get into their heads and stay there are a little uneasy about the threat of being fired. Knowing is the key to victory.

The goal remains the state of flow, but getting there and staying there becomes more difficult, tenuous, and fleeting.

“There’s a switch that you flip when it’s your turn, and a lot of the time my routine depends a lot on how well I can identify and focus on what’s at hand,” he explains of his approach. Pinball.

Tech companies face similar dynamics during recessions and downsizing, says Gayle Wilkinson, founder and managing partner of Chicago-based venture capital firm Vitalize.

She expects to see a big shift in the tech workforce, both in Chicago and across the country, not just because of layoffs and layoffs, but because the rest of the workforce “needs to keep up with what’s happening across the board.”

“What happens after that depends on the personality of the employee. Some people say, ‘I have to go somewhere safe,’ says Wilkinson. In other cases, Big Tech employees judge that “the stability that those firms historically provided is no longer available,” prompting them to take a high-stakes gamble, such as creating their own startups.

That’s a particularly daunting calculation for young tech workers. Many coders and UX designers turned to tech in the first place because of the financial security it promised.

Take Taylor Bancroft for example. At the beginning of the epidemic, she lost her job at a brewery in Portland, Maine. She got into software development and moved to Austin, Texas, where she quickly landed a job at a startup, taking on a part-time role as a technology instructor at the University of Texas at Austin.

It was a meteoric rise to being able to call your own shots, so Bancroft set her sights on a good career and got it right: She now works on the team that oversees Internet-related features at Elk Grove Village-based pinball manufacturer Stern. The company’s new machines.

For two years, it was full speed ahead. But now Bancroft and her friends are speculating about who will lose their jobs first: higher-paid workers or newcomers like Bancroft.

“It’s not like there are a lot of people around me in Chicago who are getting fired,” Bancroft said. “It’s just such an air of uncertainty. And I felt like there was this intense, upward movement that was happening so quickly in my career – but now it’s just like a person, there’s nothing stable.

Vervis knows this firsthand. She has spent most of the past year out of work, but recently started a new job as a digital product designer for Chicago-based bicycle parts manufacturer SRAM. The manufacturer, she hopes, is protected from layoffs from Big Tech.

Steve Hendershott is a freelance writer based in Chicago.