An engineer laid off after over 16 years at Google said 'faceless' tech giants see staff as '100% disposable'
This is basically called the “Six Levels Down” problem.
Whenever there is a crisis or a problem, typically the person who can actually fix it sits six levels down from senior managers. What happens though, in reality, is that senior managers run around like a headless chicken trying to solve the problem, until they realize the person who actually can fix it was laid off a year ago in the latest round of budget cuts. So they go out and hire a bunch of consultants and contractors at twice the price who take five times as long to fix it. All because, as you said…management views employees as a number on a spreadsheet in a cost center, and not an invaluable host of institutional knowledge on how the company actually runs.
90% of senior management is useless. They’re only there because of ambition, the lack of empathy that allows them to make “tough” decisions like making blanket layoffs, and because they know which corporate bingo bullshit buzzwords to say during a speech to their bosses. The ones that are actually decent get burned out from all the nonsense they have to deal with.