Microsoft net income 2022: ~$70B. Why force pay cuts or fire workers when you have roughly $300k of net income per employee to work with?
It's not how business works.
You hire people if you need people, and you pay them the least you can get away with, so you maximize profits - because long ago, you raised money with the promise to the people you raised the money from that you would do this, and you have a Fiduciary obligation to do so...
We agree then that employees should put in the least amount of work that they can get away with, right? Fair's fair.
They're particular individuals who will take a stance like what you're outlining and sit in a limbo state outside of performance firing them. They bring down team moral, high performing employees feel cheated, etc.
Please show me one public company that has said - sorry shareholders - we're returning 100%+ of profits to our employees forever.
You can't raise money from Shareholder A with the promise to never return the money.
That's a donation. Not gonna be able to raise money like you can from VCs and IPOs.
Being nice to workers, and never returning money to shareholders because you're overpaying your workers are two entirely different things.
FAANG has treated their workers quite well for a 10+ years, and shareholders have not cared, because profits and growth have been enormous.
They could've treated their workers much better and paid them 2-3x as much money, though. But they didn't. Because they would've gotten sued by shareholders.
Probably not. Google makes $1.6 million in revenue per employee, and $400k in profit per employee. Wages in tech for these money printing companies are more set by arbitrary norms than any real financial basis.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/217489/revenue-per-emplo...
Compared to unions and socialist ideals, FAANG has treated workers okay because of the arbitrarily high income compared to when the working class gets even more exploited in other industries. Being better than bad situations doesn’t mean a good situation.
Some big tech companies were colluding to keep wages stagnant by not hiring workers at other companies. Wages were lower until the collision was uncovered and companies like Facebook came around and started paying more. Colluding against workers is not treating them well.
Pay and some stock options aren’t the only ways to treat workers better. Capitalism doesn’t have to control every part of why we are nice to other people.