Diminishing Prestige of Big Techs as Employers: Reflecting on Modern Corporate Challenges

I believe that a large portion of individuals born between the 1970s and 1990s, especially those involved in the technology sector, dreamed of working for a major technology company. It's not surprising, considering that those born during this time witnessed the exponential development of technologies, whether in software or hardware. So, at the beginning of their careers, aspiring to work for giants that were driving and changing the world was desirable. Who studying data processing, systems development, or computer science never dreamed of working at IBM, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, or SAP?

There was a time when indeed, working for these companies, besides being highly desired, also provided an environment where one could develop both professionally and personally. They were, so to speak, pleasant environments. In other words, the best of both worlds. I could develop, have good benefits, build a family, and have a controlled and balanced life. This is what we call today work-life balance.

However, time has passed, and companies have grown enormously, becoming true Kafkaesque behemoths. Large, slow, and bureaucratic. If in the past the focus of companies was innovation, today the focus is on maintaining the achieved status quo, market dominance. Innovation has become a secondary concern, and the company's core business is often put on the back burner in favor of policies such as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG). These two policies are pure evil and will also be addressed in another article.

There is another phenomenon that occurs with companies when they grow too much, similar to what happens in the state. In the state, when a new public department is created to solve a problem, after a short time and with many employees, the department stops fulfilling its function, and its objective becomes its own survival. The same happens with companies. Take, for example, Meta aka Facebook. It was created with the aim of connecting people and being a public square for discussions. What has it become? A company that manipulates, censors, lies, promotes bad ideas, and now struggles to remain relevant. How? By ceasing to innovate and colluding with the state to manipulate hearts and minds. But that's not what I want to talk about; this perversity of Big Techs is a subject for another article.

What I really want to talk about is how Big Techs lost the prestige of being desired companies for professionals. Let's start with some basic axioms to understand this a little better.

1. Companies exist to make a profit;

2. Publicly traded companies become hostages of shareholders;

3. Companies are loyal to results, not to employees;

4. Anyone is replaceable.

Starting from the first axiom, I think everyone understands that if a company is not profitable, it has no reason to exist. If it doesn't make enough to pay the bills and generate profit for reinvestment and growth, the company dies. So, employees, who are the most important asset of the company, need to generate results. These results are invested in R&D, Marketing, and HR.

There comes a moment when the company reaches a certain result and size that catches the market's attention. At this moment, a choice must be made. Continue small and grow slowly but with a startup DNA and innovation, or raise a considerable amount of money and enhance the company to grow fast with some side effects? Many companies choose the second option. This is not wrong; it is just an option. Once the company's capital is opened up for private investment, shareholders expect results, and this is where the second axiom begins. The company starts to lose focus on the product and only looks at the result. If the founders are ousted, then, my God. New managers oriented only to numbers forget why that company exists and start pushing teams to generate financial results and no longer innovation. I don't need to mention some examples here; those in the field know that this really starts to happen in numerous instances. It's not a rule, but it's quite common.

If the results don't come, the third axiom comes into action. I knew a company whose goal was to grow by at least two digits per quarter for 10 years. Audacious goal, isn't it? Would it be possible to grow by two digits per quarter? Of course, it is perfectly possible. The problem is for how long. There comes a time when there is a saturation phenomenon. You have grown so much and sold so much that there are no longer any big customers capable of buying your product. Almost everyone has already bought, and selling to small ones doesn't help you achieve the goal of growing by two digits over the previous quarter. So, either I create a new product (hello, managers who only looked at numbers and didn't invest in R&D) to start a new sales cycle in the market and continue to grow, or I cut costs. You see, I need to grow another 10% next quarter, but I no longer have anyone interested in my product. How do I deliver 10% more to investors on the balance sheet then? Well, I cut costs, and the highest costs of companies are employees. And next quarter? More employees? Yes. And what's left? Fewer employees, insane workload, processes not being followed, and thus, operational chaos. In the middle of this pandemonium, employees burn out, have heart attacks, and die in the meeting room, marriages end, families are destroyed, and when the last drop of water has been squeezed, the last axiom appears.

Nobody is irreplaceable, and if you have generated countless results in the last 8 years, now that you can no longer deliver what shareholders want, then you are discarded. But you are not failing because you are incompetent. It's because the results are often, if not very difficult to achieve, impossible. So, like a car tire that has driven 60,000 km, you are thrown away. A new tire is put on the corporate car and will run a few more km before bursting or being replaced by a cheaper brand. And notice that many times the terrain has changed, and they want to ride with the same type of tire. It doesn't work!

In a way, this is what big companies have become. There are many other details involved, and what I described here is just a snapshot, an overview of things I've seen and experienced. It is because of this type of toxic corporate behavior that companies have lost their charm, and many people prefer to prioritize working for small or medium-sized companies, where the focus is still on the product, innovation, the employee, and above all, the balance between work and personal life. A good salary is useless if you are sick. A good salary is useless if you don't see your children, if you don't spend time with your wife. You need to work to live and not live to work. This is only possible most of the time in medium to small companies because in big companies, something very serious happened. They lost sight of the fact that their most important asset is human capital, and human capital is human and has human needs and needs to be treated as human and not as an electronic component on a production line. The recent mass layoffs of big techs clearly demonstrate what I'm saying.

If my advice has any relevance, prioritize a balanced quality of life with work. Be good professionals, focused, efficient, organized, but above all, aware that the company is part of your life and not your life.

If you die, only those who will remember that you worked a lot of overtime, weren't at home, and didn't see your children grow up will be your wife, your children, and your friends. On Monday, a new "you" will be ready to work in your position.