But yeah, it's basic professionalism -- don't joke about firing people, quitting, pay cuts/raises, etc.
As a counter to this, I have seen multiple managers make jokes like this and they all came from nontechnical backgrounds and had 20+ years of experience. I literally had a (nontechnical) manager say in a supposedly joking manner once about going to some meeting “Well you want to put food on the table for your family don't you? So remember that you have to be there for <some not-that-important meeting> Ha ha ha”.
So the whole “it's just coders learning basic professionalism” narrative might not be as cut-and-dried as you think it is. One (unproven) hypothesis I have is that it's possible that people who went to college and had their first decade's worth of jobs in a comfortable economic climate are more comfortable making these kind of jokes than others who were not so fortunate.
It's probably both that and how financially secure they are in general, whether that be via grunt work, inheritance, safety net, whatever.
I spent the first 5 years of my career spending the equivalent of minimum wage or less. Now I don't need to give a fuck. Realistically, on a starter dev salary, you can save >50% if that's your target.
As a result, it's a manual process for me to empathise with people who actually _need_ their job.
Don't get me wrong - I understand their predicament - it's just not an automatic impulse, because for me, work is like a side quest I do to keep myself ticking over in the long term, a bit like regular exercise or a good diet, it's never present constantly in my mind like I imagine it must be for a wage slave.
True. Privilege, and assumptions of “But of course you can find another job” probably play a huge part too. I've never had a manager belonging to an underrepresented community in tech, but I imagine they would be far less likely to say something like that.