This is one of the more excellent comments I’ve ever seen here. Thank you.

What could have possibly changed in the last several decades that might have affected someone's willingness to give their job there all?

https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Sorry for the sarcasm, but it is very frustrating to see people standing around wondering at this change as if it's a moral failing when people have been pointing out for decades that those at the top broke the social contract and that there would eventually be consequences.

Companies no longer reward loyalty or working hard on the whole, so I'm surprised that you are surprised. Those at the top reap entirely outsized rewards, the company does stock buy-backs, and the workers get table scraps.

We're insulated somewhat from that in our industry, we're well compensated, but I don't blame others in other industries for responding to how companies focus their resources today.

I think majority of jobs are low wage with no future prospects, and quite a lot of jobs have bosses or—worse—shareholders taking away the profits for their own private climate devastating opulence. Why would you work hard for these people? Why would you do anything more than the absolute minimum?

I think this supposed American dream was only ever a ruse, a Hollywood propaganda. If it ever existed it only applied to a certain demographic and was never actually a possibility for majority of Americans.

In the past decades (since the late 70s at least) Hollywood has slowed down it’s propaganda machine in favor of more independent film making (or the propaganda has shifted elsewhere; mainly the military during this century), so the illusion of the American dream is slowly but surely wearing off. In the meantime our jobs suck just as much as before, possibly even more, and are paying even less.

Sorry but this sort of drive is a two way street. If the company's not going to promote me and will drop me as soon as they've burned me out, I'm most definitely not going to "give my all" to the company.

The company needs me, I don't need them for my self gratification. I just need a paycheck.

MBAs instead of promote-from-within. Bringing along egotistical bean-counter superiority with typically vastly inferior performance. Seeing this trend in big tech has me very bearish - the non-tech MBAs just can't execute on long-term big bets that require the deep understanding/cross-cutting coordination that comes with career insiders.

Executives from corporate America led by people like Welch treated workers like cogs, which eventually taught employees to treat employers transactionally.

I know a Japanese expat who moved from America to Europe because he didn't want to work himself to death. There is more to life than career and money. Sure he earns less now but he actually has the opportunity to spend it!

> i highly doubt an IC could make something like this happen without approval from somebody. It would be a huge risk.

I'd bet at least beer money that this was some "IC" career 747 guy (or bunch of guys) who organised, planned, and authorised this without actual authority, because he was "a 747 guy" and he tendered his retirement 3 months ago and today was his last day. And a delivery pilot who was either in on it or was prepared to claim plausible deniability and that he was just following the autopilots pre-planned route, which he assumed was fully authorised.

What's the huge risk? They're gonna fire him???

My manager sends me videos of particularly challenging video game things he's accomplished. And links to fun games. Managers are people, too; there's plenty of good ones.

Not that you're bad ... you just love Jira tickets and spreadsheets and don't want to be accountable to anything that could come back and bight you.

The pilot just took off in Seattle, engaged autopilot, and sat back watching for warning lights until it was time to land.

I'll bet he knew exactly what was going on, because the perpetrator clued them in, and made sure they had suitable ass covering paperwork to show they were just flying the flight as per the delivered flight plan.

There may have been, maybe even probably was, a middling-senior manager involved here, but he was a "747 guy" as well, and today was his last day before retirement as well. And I'd guess all the "747 guys" have been there long enough to know exactly how to bury this paper trail, and possibly one guy who's prepared to "take the fall" if a board member or the customer bursts a coronary artery and demands a full forensic blame storm investigation - "Oh yeah, Bob signed off on that. He's got cancer, probably only a few weeks left, he was so happy to see the last one ever built fly, he started on the tools building them in the 80s. Last I heard he'd just sold up everything and spent his entire life savings paying off all his kids and grandkids houses and college loans. What a guy, huh?"

(I aspire to be Bob.)