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This was discussed downthread somewhat but "maximizing shareholder value" is a lie. Very few companies do it, even though they are supposed to.
Most businesses favor employees over shareholders. The obvious case is the investment banks where the employees are millionaires while shareholders fight over scraps.
But bloated big tech is another example. Google, for example, has massively overhired, creating hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs that don't need to exist.
Businesses that treat employees poorly are generally structurally unprofitable – forced to compete on cost. They don't want to, but they have to in order to survive.
Businesses with a moat such as Google or Twitter (pre-Elon) rarely fire bad employees. The biggest example, of course, is the government, which faces zero competition and offers essentially lifetime employment regardless of job performance.
Just because you find companies where it doesn't seem to hold up in one aspect it doesn't mean the whole statement falls. Large companies like Google do other stuff that is against the interest of their customers and especially against their users. For example "ad topics" is to use their browser monopoly to be the only game in town for targeted ads on the "open web", after disabling third party cookies they jack up the prices. Also they are trying their best in tricking chrome users on enabling it.
But keep in mind For every "bloated big tech" company that pamper their employees, you find big tech companies who doesn't do that. Oracle, Cisco, IBM, AWS ...
As for investment banks paying their employees much, who do you think has the most ownership of those companies? Is the compensation given to employees as equity(i.e. shares) in the company?
Talked as someone who hasn't been in contact with private equity firms I see.
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