Corporations like this don't deserve any loyalty. If I worked there and anybody offered to pay me even a few percent more, I'd leave in a heartbeat. I probably wouldn't even work hard, only the bare minimum to not get fired, because why should I? In conservative media this this is being spun as "nobody wants to work anymore because millennials and gen Z are lazy" but the real reason is very obvious for anybody under 30: as a corporate employee hard work doesn't pay off most of the time, instead you will be fired when shareholders are in danger of losing a few dollars.
Companies that work on loyalty do not have anything of the above, as their loyal employees won't be persuaded by a bigger TC number. Their TC is not high and they are not public too. It would be bizarre for somebody who went to Google or other such company because of the TC (likely applying to multiple jobs out of school or resigning from the previous job) to expect loyalty from the employer.
The backlash comes from highest educated, best skilled people who received high salaries and who have great prospects of being hired again quickly. Why they suffer?
Should these companies not hire those employees in the first place? The employees would be jobless then, our would be hired by companies witch they previously rejected in favor of FAANG.
To me it all seems like reality check for people who for years were bit out of touch with, well, reality. This is what regular people deal with all the time.
Regarding your argument about falling birth rates - education, career, job stability etc. are all negatively correlated with birth rates. I'm pretty sure that FAANG employees have one of the lowest birth rates in society - I admit, I have no data to back this up.
For an employee, it is an arms race to dystopia slowed down by mountains of government regulation. For your business, it will never benefit from any employee’s full potential.
Free market only works if people value good will, good faith, reputation. Embracing a lack of these values puts you on a road that one way or another leads to authoritarianism or oppression.
Layoffs are bad because they are deceptive and cruel to those laid off and further erode trust from those not yet laid off. They are deceptive because being hired as an employee traditionally carries with it implied permanence that being hired as a temp or contractor (like your plumber) does not. You have a job unless and until your performance provides cause to fire you. They are cruel because they take advantage of the inherent power imbalance between employer and employee. The employee may be here on a visa, or just moved their family across the country, or has debts and obligations where he requires employment. He is harmed if the company suddenly and unilaterally ends the relationship. The company on the other hand is not materially harmed if the employee unilaterally decides to leave.
You can argue that a company is legally allowed to act in bad faith, but “barely within the law” is not a high ethical bar.
I see nothing deceptive nor cruel in it, unless Google promised not to fired these people
Now, Visa workers and people who moved should be taken care of separately, I agree. Firing them is not ok, at least not without extra compensation. However, are they a big percentage of those laid-off? Centering discussion about minority like if they are majority isn't helpful.
As for power imbalance.. Those hired at FAANG are one of the smartest people in the population. They should have known all of this and factor in all of this. It's hard to treat seriously people who make $300k/year and say they were cruely harmed because they were fired and now they may need to apply to another job.
I wrote this elsewhere, but I do not support Google. I view them as amoral, they make whatever is necessary to maximize profit.
If there is no obligation for the employee to work forever, then there should not be an obligation for the employer to provide work forever too.
And key here IMO is she is laid off without cause.
And here the person in the middle of childcare leave additionally has no time to research job alternatives in job market where thousands are being laid off, so in addition to stress during already stressful time (how much sleep did you get for months after you had a baby?) there is now a hole in the resume that is always a red flag for HR. They are left out in the cold like your nan in AU.
The analogy is flawed.
You pay him until he completes his job. Or he will be pissed.
Google is telling the plumber to leave before the agreed upon work is done.
What an utterly stupid analogy. You never hired the Plumber as an Employee in the first place.
They layed off female employees on maternity leave just as they gave birth to children. No payout for the remainder of their maternity leave. That also contradicts your assertion of whether FAANG employees were making children btw. Google was horrendously cruel here.
