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Google’s walkout last week, which included 20,000 workers globally that organized within less than a week, was more significant for taking place in a work culture known for individualism, and for reaching out to acknowledge worker struggles in other industries, such as the Marriott hotel workers that were striking in the same city. Individualism has been the Silicon Valley ethos for decades, where a single engineer could change the world, class struggles were a thing of the past, and unions were anti-innovation. The walkout symbolized a feeling that individual workers, no matter how well-paid, could not address Google’s recent issues alone. While rare that well-paid workers will protest working conditions, it is not without precedent. Two historical cases include the 2014 strike at Market Basket which included managers and executives, and when Major League baseball players hired Marvin Miller, a steelworkers union official, to represent them in what would become one of the strongest unions in the country.