Itamar Turner-Trauring latest Software Clown newsletter¹ (#105) was about this. The author wrote about a similar story where a company he worked at changed as it grew and layoffs were made.

He concluded with some really good points:

| I came away from the experience unable to commit myself to a company. In part this was an ethical stance: who controls the company can change, and change quickly. So loyalty to a company meant committing to follow people who shouldn't be followed, not because authority is inherently bad, but because in most companies authority cannot be rescinded by the workers in its power.

| But it was also an emotional reaction: I'd put a lot of myself into my job, only to see my work—and my friends' work—destroyed in an incompetent power grab. I didn't want to go through that again.

| The thing about loyalty, though, is that it's motivating: you give your loyalty because you want something or someone to succeed. So if you're past the point of pure survival, where do you find motivation if not in loyalty?

| Eventually I came round to solidarity, a thornier path than loyalty. Loyalty is simple, because it starts with an answer: your country, your cause, your company, your friends—above all. Solidarity is complex, because it starts with a question: beyond yourself, beyond your friends, beyond your cause, beyond your country, what ought you do to help everyone?

¹ https://codewithoutrules.com/softwareclown/