Perhaps its a false dichotomy, but I'll take a pay freeze/cut over a layoff any day.
Part of what's enticing about these "blue-chip" megatech corporations like Microsoft or Apple is that they pay good salaries. Most work at these companies is not interesting (at least it wasn't at Apple), but you stay because the pay is good.
If the pay is shit, I'll take interesting work at a startup, or I'll find a place that does pay well (like Wall Street).
Probably companies are banking on that.
I don't know about Microsoft but certainly at Apple there were plenty of people who were pretty mediocre engineers...I certainly was the last 6-8 months I was there because I hated it so much and realized they probably wouldn't fire me.
I'm being facetious but I honestly don't know. I've become a softy in my old age. I can imagine how deeply awful it would be for a breadwinner with a home and kids. Even for people I work with that I don't particularly like, I wouldn't want to put them in that situation.
Like a lot of Americans I've been experiencing a lot of envy for the more socialist European companies where maybe people have less to gain, but they also have less to lose. All I really want is a comfortable life for me and my family. I'd like the same for everyone else.
I remember working in Europe, and going to the park during a week day and seeing all these parents, both Mum and Dad playing with their children in the sun with this kind of carelessness about them. I vividly remember being shocked at that scene. I’d never seen it before.
People would just go home from work and not “grind” away at their jobs.
I think given a few more years of “automation” and most Americans might think differently about free market capitalism. Maybe at that stage it’ll be too late to change to something better?
Europe is a kind or project too, it’s a work in progress. I think their systems will just improve over time.
However, would I give someone a $1? sure and probably a lot more - but that is different than accepting a pay-cut for any reason from my employer who is booking billions of dollars a year in profits while letting people go.