100%, what I have seen is alot of companies are trying to emulate Google's laid back culture in shipping products. The problem with this is Google is one of the most successful monopolies ever created. Alot of these tech companies are not, but they emulate the perks and wlb that google has which leads to situations like what we are seeing now.
This comment reminded me of a time long ago when I worked at a middle of the road startup with ~100MM in revenue, ~300 employees, and a margin of ~30-40%. On net the company lost money, and probably had a gross profit of ~200k per employee.
A particular principal engineer was prone to arguing that Engineers should be getting paid between half a million and a million per year. On the basis that our contributions were much greater than what we were paid. That Engineer is a CTO now.
