It also makes it hurt more when you are laid off and the illusion is broken.
You only ever work for yourself. A single employer means you have a single client. It also means you only have one source of income. That is always risky, because work done for others is always temporary. Honestly full time employment is way way -more- risky than being an independent contractor with a few small predictable retainer contracts.
Also key to remember is that no matter how rewarding and interesting the work is you will eventually lose access to that too unless you fought hard enough for it to be open source.
If you want a job where losing that job is tantamount to company failure, start your own business. When it fails (and statistically it probably will), your failure will also lead to your job loss. Congratulations.
If you "have a job", you're accepting being a cog in a machine that's primarily not about you. I make that trade-off, as do most people, but don't mislead yourself about what's going on.
That said, the swings tech stock over the last couple years have very little to do with his leadership. Yuan is not responsible for the tech bubble and its deflation. No human on the planet could have made zoom hold its peak stock price.
It doesn't make sense to accuse someone of not feeling the economic impact of a downturn at all while downplaying the fact that they actually lost $5billion.
If you were serious or had devoted any thought into the issue you wouldn't even consider the silliness of framing a $5billion loss as a lifestyle issue.
But at the end of the day, he won't work for nothing if you took all of his comp, so fair accountability is not really possible in this light.
Did the workers build the company? Did the capital build the company by providing the pay to pay the workers?
Did the workers take any risks? Or did they sign an employment contract, and get paid the same every month regardless of performance? Their only risk, that the contract will end, perhaps unexpectedly [1]?
In the case of small private businesses (which of course the vast majority of businesses are) did the "Capitalist" worry about making payroll this month, get short paid when cash is short, try and predict the future, make tough decisions when things go wrong, and somehow be a human?
Of course the socialists believe the capitalists should keep those people hired forever (or better yet, not hire them to begin with?) - ironically that's what the capitalists want as well. But life happens and hard decisions have to be made.
[1] risk costs money. If you have one employer you are at risk. As much as you can, hedge this risk with liquid savings. This has been good advice for thousands of years. Most workers live so close to poverty that this is unattainable. However folks at (big tech whoever) have the means to do this AND get decent severance, so I'm not crying for them just yet.
So, for those keeping track, Mr. Yuan is giving up about $300k in cash, but still receiving about $13M in stock. That's a 2.3% level of "accountability".