In tech, when things get tight, culture dies first

As burnout increases for tech sector workers it's becoming clear that employee-centricity was always more marketing than mission

Employee-centricity is not ping pong tables and kombucha taps, it's trust, transparency, fair pay, and psychological safety.

There was a time when the employee perks in tech looked like a Wes Anderson fever dream: kombucha on tap, nap pods, yoga Wednesdays, and ping-pong tables. 

Companies threw buzzwords like “employee experience” and “wellbeing culture” around like venture capital confetti.

But peel back the branding, and something darker emerges: the steady, deliberate murder of employee-centricity. 

In today’s tech sector, burnout isn’t a bug — it’s a feature. And beneath the glossy facade of “workplace innovation”, the only metric that truly matters is the stock price.

But let’s get one thing clear: employee-centricity was always more marketing than mission. 

Sure, the concept — putting people before profits — sounds noble. But corporate responsibility in the US has always been subordinate to shareholder primacy. 

When things get tight, culture dies first. We saw this during the pandemic. 

Companies that once waxed poetic about “employee empowerment” suddenly demanded unpaid overtime and weekend hustle under the guise of remote productivity. 

When the Zoom windows closed, so did the empathy.

And then came the layoffs. From Amazon to Meta, the last two years have been a bloodbath. More than 104,000 tech employees were laid off between 2022 and 2023. 

No company was immune, no role sacred. One-click terminations became the norm, with engineers discovering they’d been axed only when their logins failed at 8.59am.

Why the sudden purge? Because it turns out that “employee experience” is incompatible with quarterly earnings. 

Amazon’s layoff announcement was paired with a 12% rise in stock price. Translation: Wall Street clapped while workers cried. These weren’t failing companies. They were thriving ones.

It means generational expectations are shifting fast. Millennials and gen Z workers have internalised that career security is an illusion. 

They’ve watched their mentors get laid off despite stellar reviews and decades of service. 

The lesson? Don’t believe the hype. In a 2023 study, only 28% of tech workers believed their employer had their best interests at heart. 

The rest? Quiet quitting, resume-padding, and prepping their exit.

If you needed more proof that employee-centricity is dead, just look at the return to the office movement. 

Despite all the productivity gains reported during remote work, executives are dragging workers back into the office, not for collaboration, but for control.

Leaders miss seeing people in seats. That’s it. It’s ego wrapped in rhetoric.

If employee-centricity is dying, then diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has already been buried with no headstone. 

As soon as market pressure hit, diversity officers were the first out the door. DEI budgets were “reassessed”.

Remember when “culture fit” was supposed to mean shared values? Now it means “shut up and ship”. Dissent has been reframed as toxicity. 

Asking about mental health support is seen as weakness. Ethical concerns about AI development? “Not a team player.” 

Cultural Darwinism

As Carlton Bonner notes, younger professionals entering the workforce are more socially conscious, and they’re clashing with Boomer-era values hardwired into culture. The result? Cultural Darwinism.

Only the quietly compliant survive.But here’s the kicker: killing employee-centricity is bad business.

Companies with high engagement see 21% greater profitability and 59% lower turnover. But by commodifying workers, tech has made itself untrustworthy to the very talent it depends on.

What happens when your best minds stop believing in your mission? They start their own. Or worse, they leave the industry entirely.

Employee-centricity isn’t a perk — it’s infrastructure. It’s not kombucha taps. It’s trust, transparency, fair pay, and psychological safety.

If tech wants to rebuild that trust, it needs to start by dismantling the systems that made betrayal standard practice. 

That means: transparent hiring and firing policies, actual DEI accountability, remote flexibility, mental health support beyond webinars and real career paths, not bait-and-switch promotions.

It’s not complicated. It’s just expensive. But as the talent war intensifies, companies will learn the hard way: if you don’t build for people, people will build without you.