> The problem is, once you adopt this mentality, there's often pushback that you should also consider labor just like a business acting in self interest. Labor should focus on their profits (comp vs time vs benefits of concern) and optimize on those, just as businesses do in terms of employment.

As someone who has managed a lot of tech teams over the years across multiple companies and including remote teams in different countries, I can confidently say that people already act exactly like this.

> Labor should aim to do the least work possible for the most compensation and only do what gets by. Labor too is not a benevelot source of resources for a business to leverage, it's a two way street.

This is how most people operate, especially in the tech world in recent years. Usually when people go above and beyond, it’s for promotion and advancement opportunities or to build their resume to move to another job.

The thing is, if either side takes these positions too far then the other side is going to want to cut ties. A company doing a 6% layoff into an obvious global downturn isn’t exactly unreasonable. An employee who actively tries to do as little as possible and requires more management oversight than their peers is being unreasonable, though, and will find themselves at the top of the list for layoffs (with good reason).

Neither companies nor employees should be adopting extreme positions. I don’t see Spotify doing anything unreasonable here.

I would say that both sides have social obligations to fulfill their part of a contract according to their best effort while the contract is active, but also both sides are free to change / terminate contract (with respect to contract terms and laws) - both employer doing layoffs, or employee asking for raise or leaving the job.

The equation isn't equal, though. A company losing an employee has a very different impact on that company than an employee losing their employment has on that employee.