in 2023, Google laid off some twelve thousand people, representing around six per cent of its workforce, and, in the years that followed, an estimated four hundred thousand jobs were eliminated across tech
This right here, ooh you're so close! Those 400k people were fired because white collar workers, as a bloc, became powerful, and started making demands of management, demands like "you should do something about social inequality." During the height of the pandemic, most of that energy was focused on race. And those demands were met! C-suite executives and board members were forced by their white collar employees to implement DEI initiatives at work, put pronouns in their email signatures, have complex conversations about social power and race and gender at company all-hands. These same people are now sitting behind Donald Trump at his inauguration.
Did they do those DEI things in 2021 because they wanted to, or because they had to? And if they had to, what power compelled them? Remember: these people gave 90 million dollars to someone who coerced one of his own employees to do oral sex on him in a hotel room!
The way I read this is that a company will sacrifice everything (in this case, incredible corporate culture) to maintain the balance of power between management and employee. As soon as I started reading about internal organizing, I knew exactly where this story was going to end.
Your job description re-written at the drop of a hat, sudden re-org and alienation from coworkers, feeling like an interloper at your own job, sudden gaslighting - that is what real power looks like. The only reason she was not immediately fired is because of actual labor laws, which H.R. knows inside and out. Were those laws not on the books every single one of those googler moms in that group chat would be fired within 24 hours. They probably were all pushed out in a manner exactly like Claire within the span of a few months. With a paper trail to CYA in case of a suit.