Unfortunately that assumes the employer will provide the phone rather than going "this guy can't do his job because his phone is rooted?" and hiring someone else. Or that the employer knows what rooting even is.

Most companies ask you to install work profiles and such only after your sign on. It would be exceedingly petty of them to fire you for something like that, especially at a tech company that will definitely have the money to provide ~$300 work phones

So the absolute worst case scenario then is you buy your own second phone for $50-150 and use that for work purposes only.

Still sucks of course, but a far cry from the false dichotomy of "submit to Apple/Google rule or lose your job."

That's one of those ideas that's great in theory and not in practice. Not everybody is as confident in their positions to demand that.

I mean I could do that. I could also just not associate my phone with a real Google account and then only use it for phone calls and signal messages.

The point is that you shouldn't need to jump through flaming hoops to avoid Google's spying

Many people have to supply their own equipment to work, it's not unusual.

You still give up a ton of privacy, even if you "leave it alone".