1. Those "employee-appreciations" were a cost-saving measure to retain talent. 20% time towards projects that benefit the employer vs getting paid 20% more, or free food at an incremental cost of $100/mo/employee instead of paying $2000/mo/employee for equivalent comp-based retention.
2. We are no longer in a severe labor demand deficit. Quality of life will converge on the American norm - treating employees like disposable cogs, under layers of brutal middle-management politics.
3. "Believe that people can change the world", or caring for and investing in employees... Can you point to any industry that was sustainably disrupted by a company following such a mindset? The only examples that come to my mind are niche companies that market based on such an ethos, like Patagonia. Of course there are stable European companies, and US union shops, but those aren't disruptive. WeWork had that ethos for a little while I guess.
"Don't do evil" comes to mind, though the company ethos changed a lot since then.
The company with the largest market cap in the world, Apple. Steve Jobs believed in recruiting great people, and he entrusted in them and expected of them to create sustainably disruptive products. From Steve Wozniak all the way to Jony Ive. I don't know if I'd say Jobs was caring for all people working at Apple in my conception of things, but he did not look at the people working on an important Apple project as disposable cogs, and he didn't look at the products they were making as junk commodities to raise next quarter's revenue.
Whatever it boils down to, and whether it can continue creating things like the M2, there is a reason the company with the largest market cap in the world is Apple.
You can make a killing in a quarter by firing all your workers. You won't be around for the next quarter.
A day of reckoning will come triggered by spectacular failures of big corporations that pawned their future + infusion of cash as the economy "recovers". At that point in time the pendulum will swing and hopefully people will not forget the absurd way they were treated.
I'm already seeing a significant uptick in demand for senior+ engineers. This is me talking to multiple companies and recruiters, headcounts are going up again and thankfully their for products that actually provide real value to customers. I haven't heard from a crypto/nft company (see: scam) in a looooong time.
> Working together; believing in, having compassion for, and doing good for others are all outré, often depicted as humanly impossible and ridiculed.
We all have better angels and worse; there's nothing special about the our worse ones that means they are somehow more fundamental or necessary.
We actually can do much better - not perfectly, of course, that is a strawperson; but we can do much better.
You sound really confident so I'm assuming there is some substance here.
Based on our reality: We were born into a world built by it, free and prosperous and safe far beyond any of our ancestors. Generations before us actually built that (and what are we building for the next?). Look what King and Einstein and Keynes (and Friedman) and Steinum and all those people built - none profiting much from it.
Do you really doubt that humans have better angels and worse - inside every one of us, and that we have a choice? It's hardly a novel idea, though I can see that it's outre, it's disruptive and outside the pale, in this (uber-reactionary?) moment. Otherwise, who would want to deny that reality?
From what I understand of modern biology even newborn babies are not entirely blank slates, there's some amount of genetic and epigenetic influence so that many 'choices' are not really up to the individual to decide.
And certainly by adulthood, which is the vast majority of passing HN readers, many many permanent life altering choices have occurred.
For a real world example, the children and grandchildren of those who suffered severe starvation in the Netherlands during WW2 have noticeably worse characteristics on average, in terms of a shorter lifespan, less healthy, etc.., compared to families that didn't undergo that. Even their personalities and behaviours, on average, were affected.
I think you are taking the influences we all have - emotional, physical, environmental, etc. - to an extreme. It's not blank slate or automaton. People still make lots of choices, even if there are drives and other influences one way or the other. You don't have to do bad things, and you can choose to deal with your natural drives, emotions, etc. in many ways.
The Dutch example suggests the opposite, that to noticeably move the needle for large groups of people like that, in a positive direction, would take many lifetimes to occur.
Even to get them back to the population average would likely take at least a half dozen generations.
Life is too short for such diversions, and those things have cause far, far to much harm to too many people, in ways we know very well. In fact, I might assert that nothing has caused more harm to humanity: stop acting on racial/ethnic/nationalistic biases, and we'd have a far more peaceful, free, prosperous world.
Lots of people have that bias, everyone to some degree. Everyone has anger too, but we don't all punch or neighbors or believe we are self-righteous. You could change how you deal with your biases right now - you don't need generations, and don't accept that excuse for yourself. We have a choice; we can do so much more - right now.
Or is there confusion about the term 'Dutch'?
This is another term to refer to the Netherlands.
Considering this is the third deflection in a row, I'm going to have to insist on solid proof of this 'overwhelming evidence' going forwards, instead of hand-waving and easily seen through innuendos.
Those men knew exactly what they wanted and spent every waking moment working towards it. Money.
SV earnestness has always been a con.
Again, people love to say it, like it sounds smart. Humans are earnest and deceitful, to varying degrees at varying times. We do acheive earnest goods; we have human rights, for example, democracy, and lots of peace (but not enough). We have a choice, free will, the moral choice of thousands of years of (much) religion and philosophy.
How about starting with Larry Ellison?
I don't recall "believing" in an employer since maybe my early 30's.
Plug in your own appropriate interpretation of the Liberal/Conservative labels.
> I don't recall "believing" in an employer since maybe my early 30's.
Not even a small one? Where everyone knows everyone?
There have been teams, especially small ones, where I trusted everyone on the team to act like a true friend, and to strive to do good things for the company.
I don't recall ever working for an organization where I 100% cared about their goals, or believed 100% in the righteousness of their goals, or where I was 100% sure they'd succeed.
I may have some level of loyalty to those around me but even that comes with a healthy bit of cynicism.
If those people care about those things (and aren't in a system that pressurises them not to or selects for people who do) then the "company" will also care about those things.
The solution to avoid this Kafkaesque trap multitudes are willing to saddle around their necks is worker-owned co-ops.
I remember back in 2002 (?) when the 2-pizza team idea was introduced. My manager said he would find out how we could expense the pizza. It turns out that the pizza was merely theoretical: the team should be sized so that, if there were pizza, then 2 pizzas would be enough for the team. But that doesn't mean that pizza would ever be ordered or expensed.
Every day around lunchtime, hungry Amazon workers from adjacent floors would quietly try to slip in to get a sandwich or a kebab or whatever, or would surreptitiously attempt to get a bag of chips.
Eventually the Twitch side started to complain: there was never enough food to go around at lunch time. If you were more than ten minutes late, all the food would be gone.
The Amazon management’s response? Lock off the Twitch floor so it required special badges for access. Let the Amazonians starve!
It’s not subtle. It’s overt & being externally communicated.
Wall Street this past year began crushing non-profitable companies.
The pendulum has swung back from the years where growth was all that mattered.
It’s now back to focus on profitability.
The pendulum will swing back again at some point as well.
It’s cyclical.
i.e. people stopped buying shares in non-profitable companies.. would you want stock in non-profitable companies in your retirement account? I wouldn't
Remember game rooms, 20% personal projects, sushi, etc.? Maybe some of that is still there, but it is a product of an attitude of a former time.
Now in business and elsewhere there is the tidal wave of a new zeitgeist. Working together; believing in, having compassion for, and doing good for others are all outré, often depicted as humanly impossible and ridiculed. Corporate leaders are humans and are swept along too, perhaps more easily because it flatters and enhances their power (also, SV corporate leaders are perhaps more versed in the power of CPUs than the power of zeitgeist, which requires understanding Shakespeare (et al) not LLMs).
The good news in this story is that the corrupt and misguided are easy to compete with, just like then-newer SV companies ran circles around corrupt, miguided incumbants that didn't invest in the future. You just need the courage of your convictions. Believe that people can change the world, and (with lots and lots of work and risk) they will.