"Flexibility" in the way the term is usually used in CEO-speak doesn't mean having employees that you can trust. It means not having to have to trust your employees because their work has been broken down into such generic chunks that it requires no independent thought or initiative.

You're looking at this from the perspective of a skilled professional, which is fine -- most of the HN audience probably does as well. But it's not the perspective I'm talking about. I'm talking about the perspective of the people who see skilled professionals as a problem, because their skills mean they can demand things like money and respect as a condition of employment. That reduces the CEO's flexibility to do things like take that money and put it instead into his own golden parachute.