As one of the below comments says, you just don't know what level of snooping is going on. If you're reading this $CEO, hi!
Once again at the end of the day the problem is more likely the profit motive above all else
If we leave things up to humans they might be generous instead of ruthless, and generosity doesn't make money
“These dynamics exist specifically to wring the humanity out of any and all processes”
Who designed the processes? Reptilians?
Whatever the flaws of the dynamic, I would guess there is something innately human and organic about it, not designed. Just another weird outcome of the efficiency machine of social evolution.
Wrt. the original article - any META employee should be capable of running some xClaw to imitate reasonable activity satisfying whatever KPIs are established for them including submitting of the off-tracking requests following a reasonable pattern.
I remember how almost 30 years ago at one moment the only guy in our team who filed the status report was the one on vacation - he had a cron-script which didn't take vacation into account.
Possibly The Baroque Cycle though it's been a while since I'd re-read it.
His political fiction (Interface and The Cobweb) were also fairly traditional, though he had a co-author on those.
Anathem had perhaps the biggest deux ex machina in literary history, and seveneves had an entirely separate novella for an ending.
Seveneves had a conclusion, and then an extra book...