Note the subtle shift - in much of SV and the corporate world - from employees as high-return investments that we want to maximize, as human beings we believe in, as agents that would change the world and be the source of our future growth and success; to employees as costs we want to minimize, as a drag on this quarter's profits, as adversaries in a low-margin power struggle fought without any higher purpose or moral. Where will the world-changing, paradigm-disrupting ideas come from? Have we given up on that?

Remember game rooms, 20% personal projects, sushi, etc.? Maybe some of that is still there, but it is a product of an attitude of a former time.

Now in business and elsewhere there is the tidal wave of a new zeitgeist. Working together; believing in, having compassion for, and doing good for others are all outré, often depicted as humanly impossible and ridiculed. Corporate leaders are humans and are swept along too, perhaps more easily because it flatters and enhances their power (also, SV corporate leaders are perhaps more versed in the power of CPUs than the power of zeitgeist, which requires understanding Shakespeare (et al) not LLMs).

The good news in this story is that the corrupt and misguided are easy to compete with, just like then-newer SV companies ran circles around corrupt, miguided incumbants that didn't invest in the future. You just need the courage of your convictions. Believe that people can change the world, and (with lots and lots of work and risk) they will.