In this post I felt that you held back what you are really trying to say to the extent that it rendered the piece meaningless. You just spilled 800 words worth of ink on the same vacuous platitudes you seem to accuse companies of.
So I am curious what the real message here is. What change do you want?
Companies didn’t arrive at the culture of giving workers more perks, independence, respect, etc. for no reason. CEOs don’t wake up and think “You know we should be nicer”. No it was through competition. Companies spent recent years fighting for talent and talent could make choices so they chose companies that best fit their lifestyle, represented them, actualized them, and so on. We get paid very well so salary is not the chief concern, other things are.
Maybe as we enter more austere times we’ll see a shift. Certainly Elon’s behavior hasn’t gone unnoticed. But I think your advocacy for _whatever_ should be clarified so it can be properly critiqued.
That would lead to a more interesting article.