Yup it’s all the fault of Jack Welch. He worked at GE and company culture at the time was to be proud of the number of employees they had. Some companies were proud that they never laid anyone off even during the great depression. They proudly took a loss rather than lay off anyone.
So Jack works his way up the ranks of GE which is how things worked back then. He got all the way to the top of this great company that was proud of his employees. And as soon as he was CEO he started laying everyone off. And the stock price of GE soared.
Ever since then that’s what every CEO tries to emulated. The stock market sees the CEO emulating Jack Welch and buy buy buy.
But it’s all short term thinking. Products get worse and worse, nobody give a shit about their job, work doesn’t get done. But just blame the employees and do another layoff.
Jack Welch fucked us all, but very few people even know his name.