People seem to fundamentally misunderstand what a company is. It exists for the benefit of its shareholders, and secondarily, customers. It will take whatever actions necessary towards achieving this. It'll accrue benefits to the employee to the extent it helps towards these goals.

Now what happens in a lot of publicly-traded large companies is, the inmates start running the asylum. The workplace primarily starts to exist for the benefit of the employee. Since internally most companies are structured as an oligarchy or dictatorship, most of these benefits accrue to "management" - another type of employee. Harmonious behavior and not creating too much trouble become the premium value. Everything seems to be going great, until you implode and fire thousands of people, or get acquired and the same things happen. The lucky ones retire before that. All of this, of course, happens to the detriment of shareholders.

Look at Microsoft. Great employee satisfaction. They missed out on the internet, on search, on social, on mobile, all the while bringing in HUNDREDS of BILLIONS in revenue over the last 20 years. Ballmer gets a lot of the blame, but everybody else also kind of just went with it. Asleep at the switch.

A company doesn't exist for the employee to have good work-balance, to get self-worth, nurture your creativity or whatever. It exploits your very human needs and desires to create wealth for its shareholders. Google would like you to think it's just like college, and to give you great social opportunities and make as many friends as possible, so it replaces your original parent-in-standing, The College Campus. The more of your psyche and social world is tied to the corporation, the more meaning you'll ascribe to your work, the more likely you'll stay.