> Employer-bound health insurance in the US
Benefits are part of an employees compensation package. A competing offer could have even better healthcare than Id.
> Industry blacklists to exclude uppity employees and union members.
This is illegal and the last time SV companies were found doing this the government punished them
Is there any evidence that this is happening to Id employees?
> Noncompetes
Illegal in CA where ID is based. NDAs don't prevent you from working at competitors, only from taking confidential info.
> Extremely localized jobs and an ever-shrinking number of larger and larger conglomerates as employers.
Id is located in the Bay Area, probably the place with the greatest concentration of software jobs in the country if not the world.
> Benefits are part of an employees compensation package. A competing offer could have even better healthcare than Id.
If a period of unemployment kicks you off an insurance program that's covering life-essential treatment for a loved one, there is no mechanism of "choosing freely" here; ex-employees don't have the option of covering health care themselves and there are no guarantees that the other employer's health care will cover existing treatments even if the coverage is better in theory.
> This is illegal and the last time SV companies were found doing this the government punished them
Every recruiter has spreadsheets of blacklisted employees, one of the reasons why companies frequently outsource staffing to outsides for plausible deniability.
> Illegal in CA where ID is based. NDAs don't prevent you from working at competitors, only from taking confidential info.
So illegal en CA but legal pretty much everywhere else, once again limiting you if you want to move because COL is too high in California and reducing the pool of real employment alternatives.
> Id is located in the Bay Area, probably the place with the greatest concentration of software jobs in the country if not the world.
Software jobs but not gaming jobs. California suffers from an artificial shortage of affordable housing due to insane tax laws and building restrictions. There's nothing free market about this.