Actually they don't. Well run companies have cash reserves and expect to have periods of ups and downs. They don't pray to the alter of the next quarterly report.
They do it to suppress wages, not only because of economic instability. It’s worked - wages are down across industry. Wage suppression is one of the responsibilities of a well run business (the CEO together with HR hires consultant help for this or they hire a benefits and wages role, and it’s referred to as market positioning)
It's pretty cynical to say that wage suppression is one of the responsibilities of a CEO. But perhaps not off the mark.
If only we had the equivalent on the other side to balance the equation. Some kind of a group of individual employees, who work together to counter wage suppression efforts.
historically in tech, that group is some new competitor that "disrupts the industry" and either becomes a new power respecting talent for a while, or gets bought out by a megacorp and given that huge salary once again.
That's really the main saving grace for this industry; the scalability that a few employees can still provide a solution that makes corporations with hundreds of thousands of workers sweat. That's why they surged salaries so aggressively in the 00's and half the '10's
That's also the reason why unionization will be a hard argument among tech workers. Slowly starting to happen in the games industry, so that at least confirms there IS a breaking point somewhere for that to happen.
not saying I should go work for McKinsey, just noticing that unnecessary payments are likely happening. companies don't exist to employ people. employees exist to help companies. just make everyone a decent shareholder with decent liquidity and move on when the employee isn't necessary.
>companies don't exist to employ people. employees exist to help companies.
Companies in society exist to serve the customer, provide labor opportunities, and overall stimulate the economy (all of which is needed to make money).
This mentality above is exactly why the latter half of Millensials and Gen Z were demystified by the labor market and simply don't take the kind of "loyalty" narrative of the older generations. You can't talk family, layoff "family" every 2 years regardless of talent and pretend that "hard workers get rewarded". So you'll get the bare minimum, you will get no overtime when you request it (especially if you aren't paying 1.5x), and you probably won't even get the long dead 2 weeks notice when I move on.
You can't expect much more "help" when you can't give the basic modicrum of respect to your help.
> just make everyone a decent shareholder with decent liquidity and move on when the employee isn't necessary.
