You can't win a game without playing it, in other words.
Upper management, yeah, they might be able to effect change from within. But, even that is going to be severely limited in the face of a big-name founder like Zuckerberg.
Managers and high profile people at companies like Facebook have a lot of leverage and can organise relatively easily because there's relatively few of them. The senior tech people and management need to recognise that they hold a ton of power because they basically run the place, their influence would be much better served by pressuring Facebook. It's Facebook who can't afford to lose them.
There needs to be some sort of class consciousness for the 'top 10% but not 0.1%'. They've got all the leverage in the world, and increasingly share no common ground with the owners of the business.
> Two senior Facebook employees told The New York Times that they had informed their managers that they would resign if Mr. Zuckerberg did not reverse his decision. Another person, who was supposed to start work at the company next month, told Facebook they were no longer willing to accept a position at the company because of Mr. Zuckerberg’s decision.
Switch easily even right now? I imagine they'd lose something in the process...
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Facebook will not lose employees at their pay rate, they’ll just get different ones.
You are definitely correct in that soft revolting is a waste.
If people have the chance to openly disagree with leadership, they probably can try to effect change - quitting is just giving up and letting those in favor of the status quo to keep driving decisions as they already do?
Once Facebook realizes that they are losing good employees they are more likely to change those policies.
Unfortunately most Facebook employees want to continue getting outrageously paid at the 95 percentile of the market and soft "revolting" without risking their $$$. That tells a lot a bout their convictions.