> Why shouldn't employees want to extract the most value they can for their labor, and push back when the terms of that agreement change? If cost cutting or taking a loss necessitated a firing, would that "tacit relationship" prevent someone from being fired? My guess is no. Business is business, not personal.
One conception of employment involves voluntarily adopted shared goals. Another conception is that employees rent themselves in exchange for money.
I suppose I think we need to find the happy medium between those conceptions. Too much of the latter perspective leads to alienation (because you conceive of yourself as a wage slave) whereas the former can lead to exploitation.
The article is arguing that Google is too far into the latter conception. It should towards the former, not all the way, but at least a little.
OP did not say, and I wouldn't either, that every aspect of a employer-employee relationship should be documented and tracked like a PnL. But no one should pretend that it's not a debate over "unwritten compensation", and the value the employer gets from the employee. If employers didn't want to quantify that, there wouldn't be demand for corporate spyware and monitoring of employees. Yes, the Microsoft 365 option was shut down, but it's an arms race, and that's one battle in a war.
Why shouldn't employees want to extract the most value they can for their labor, and push back when the terms of that agreement change? If cost cutting or taking a loss necessitated a firing, would that "tacit relationship" prevent someone from being fired? My guess is no. Business is business, not personal.