>I get the fear, but look at it from the investor's perspective. The US market is tapped out, Amazon is already everywhere it can be.

Heaven forbid we forget about the investors, and don't forget about the executive compensation!

I mean, seriously, is there no such thing as balance? I'm not saying investors should be arbitrarily shorted, but on the same token it doesn't mean workers need to always take the brunt of the change, which is how it goes down 90% of the time.

If layoffs were seen as executive leadership failures first and foremost it would be a small step toward the right direction of accountability.

>To keep the valuation climbing (which sustains everyone's RSUs), they have to capture these emerging markets.

Fallacy that the stock must continue to rise to the detriment of the workforce that supposedly would benefit. Never minding that RSUs shouldn't be seen as a primary form of compensation to begin with, there is a myriad of things companies can do to maintain the valuation of employee RSUs, like bigger grants.

Secondly, you're assuming to capture these emerging markets, a layoff is a must. In reality, it likely is not. If you have a surplus of resources, deploying them effectively would be a net win, as you re-allocate these folks to higher priority projects and workstreams. The incentive structure that C-Suites have built up since the 1980s however don't align with that, because executive compensation is entirely based around juicing the numbers on a spreadsheet, as opposed to being rewarded for building sustainable businesses.

>If they don't, the stock stagnates, and the compensation model for US tech workers falls apart.

It doesn't, compensation is more broad than RSUs, and could be adjusted in kind. This is a solved problem.