> lying to employees

Not necessarily to employees, but in general - could be customers or other businesses too.

> everything is viewed through the lens of business versus employees

Not business vs employee but business vs individual. There's a lot of shit in the business world that is considered good when done by a company, but bad when doing by an individual.

Corporation-on-consumer fraud has been normalized. Outlandish claims in advertising are even enshrined in law so that you can't even sue for that (not that it would go anywhere either way).

It sometimes correlates with class but has nothing to do with class per-se (in fact it's very cheap to set up an LLC and engage in a lot of dubious practices that would land someone in jail if practiced under their personal capacity).

> I was a coworker of someone trying to practice these techniques.

I've been a coworker of some incompetent employees too - in fact it's even sadder that they didn't practice those techniques because at least then someone would benefit - in their case nobody was benefiting, not even them.

I'm not blaming them though; they match what is expected of a "senior" developer nowadays and passed all the interviews. It's the same reason my coffee is now both smaller and more expensive, but applied to employment. Companies are welcome pay more to get better talent.

The other employees who take on the slack without extra pay are engaging in philanthropy so the company has no reason to fire the slackers and hire more expensive talent if ultimately everything works out anyway.

The company could of course preemptively compensate them for the extra workload, but if you believe this actually happens I have a very nice bridge to sell you.

> At some companies it takes 6-12 months to build a case to fire someone

That sounds like a hiring or performance management problem. In the meantime, if someone can pocket 12 months of salary as a result of such incompetence, more power to them - it ain't my problem to solve unless I get a cut of the savings!

> being on the receiving end of this behavior as a coworker sucks

It gives the few that actually do work more leverage to negotiate higher salaries/fees/benefits. But of course you have to capitalize on it instead of engaging in charity/volunteering.

Edit: funny thing about ChatGPT and LLMs, companies are intentionally encouraging and tracking their usage, thinking more slop is somehow going to get them out of the hole they dug themselves in.