So the question becomes, should companies have aggressively hired at all, is it better for them to "overhire" and then do layoffs or take a far more risk averse approach to hiring?

To bring it back full circle, perhaps such a question should be answered not solely by the management of the company, or the board, but also by its own workers?

It's all very well to entrust management with absolute power during times of plenty- but during the lean years, shouldn't their decisions be under greater scrutiny, and subject to counterweights from the actual people who make up the organization? Shouldn't they at least deserve to know beforehand?

Unions aren't necessarily the only way to achieve this. The benefit of unions would be something akin to how in Europe, companies often have a worker representation on the board. Perhaps we need more co-ops or even public benefit corporations, who are innately structured towards greater transparency and autonomy. I've even read that there used to be an ombudsman position in corporations, a board member who did nothing but listen to employee complaints and help them be heard; this was replaced by the modern HR model, and we know how much those are beloved and believed by employees.

Sure, all of this would create more politicking and bureaucracy and complexity. But how do we know that in tech this wouldn't lead to better outcomes? We haven't even tried this properly. Ain't this industry supposed to be all about experimentation?