Stop Distinguishing Between Motives of Individuals and Corporations

Lessons from Recent Microsoft Layoffs

Scrolling through X posts about Microsoft’s recent layoffs, I noticed a recurring theme: a call to abandon loyalty to companies and prioritize individual relationships.

Commenters lamented corporate greed, urged workers to “look out for number one,” and shared stories of betrayal by faceless organizations.

This sparked a better question: why do we assume corporations and individuals operate from different motives?

It feels intuitive—companies chase profits, people chase values—but that’s not quite right.

Both are shaped by incentives. Both respond to pressures in their environments. The difference isn’t moral. It’s structural.

Microsoft’s layoffs are a case study in what happens when we draw a hard line between “corporate” and “human” decisions. This post breaks down why that split fails—and how closing the gap could lead to smarter policies, clearer accountability, and better teamwork.

In early 2025, Microsoft cut thousands of jobs across teams like Azure and Surface.

Social media reacted as expected. Rage at the company. Sympathy for the managers. It looked like a values mismatch, but really, it was the same incentive structure at every level—just playing out differently.

Let’s look at why we separate these motives in the first place, what it costs us, and what happens when we stop.

Why We Think Individuals and Corporations Act Differently

It’s easy to paint companies as greedy machines and humans as emotional beings. That contrast shows up again and again in online reactions. People call Microsoft “heartless,” but give individual managers a pass for “doing what they had to.”

The story we tell ourselves is simple: companies are villains, people are heroes. But in reality, both are shaped by the same core drivers—risk, reward, survival.

Legal frameworks don’t help. Corporate personhood makes it feel like companies have a life of their own. That helps with lawsuits. But it also blurs who’s really making decisions.

So instead of talking about the actual people behind a layoff—executives, board members, investors—we act like it’s some corporate spirit pulling strings.

Psychologically, we struggle to attach emotions to systems. We can imagine a laid-off worker’s fear or a manager’s guilt. But “Microsoft” feels like a machine, not a character. That makes it easier to direct blame at the brand and ignore the humans inside it.

And let’s be honest—sometimes we just want to believe in heroes. We like the idea that some good boss tried to protect their team. It feels better than facing a system that rarely rewards that kind of move.

But that’s the problem. Wishful thinking keeps us from decoding what’s actually going on. Executives are protecting their reputations and careers. Employees are doing the same. The incentives are parallel. Our refusal to see that doesn’t make us more empathetic. It makes us naïve.

What Is the Implication of This Distinction

When we divide motives into “corporate” and “individual,” we end up with a messy, unpredictable story about how the world works.

That uncertainty fuels distrust. People on X flip between calling Microsoft evil and defending its leaders. But they’re responding to the same pressures. The layoffs weren’t random—they were a strategy to stay ahead in a cutthroat market.

It also messes with our ability to think clearly. We love to say “human behavior is complex,” but algorithms are out here predicting it better than most analysts.

That’s because they don’t get distracted by narratives. They follow incentives. Clicks, likes, shares.

Meanwhile, analysts debate whether the layoffs were “strategic” while viral posts capture what people actually feel: abandoned, expendable, frustrated.

We also end up blaming the wrong things. It’s easy to say “Microsoft failed us” and ignore who approved the budget cuts. Or to excuse a manager’s decisions because we think they “fought for us.”

But that just muddies accountability. The individuals making these decisions aren’t powerless. They’re responding to pressure, yes—but they still have agency. If we don’t name names, we can’t ask for better behavior.

And we lose out on opportunities to work together.

Employees might’ve negotiated better outcomes if they understood the company’s incentives—not as “greed” but as logical moves in a system. Leaders could’ve done better by being upfront instead of letting shockwaves hit unprepared teams.

On a bigger scale, policy suffers too.

We regulate companies without addressing the people and pressures inside them. Microsoft’s layoffs sparked calls for new protections. But barely anyone looked at how executive comp or investor expectations played into the cuts.

If you don’t map the actual incentives, your policy fixes won’t work. They’ll treat symptoms, not causes.

Conclusion

The Microsoft layoffs revealed something we don’t want to admit.

We act like corporations and individuals are playing different games.

They’re not.

The same motives—survival, security, status—drive both. Just in different shapes and at different scales.

We blame corporations as villains, praise managers as victims or heroes. But that split keeps us from seeing the real dynamics. And it makes it harder to fix anything.

Want better outcomes?

Ditch the fantasy. Focus on incentives.

Workers can negotiate better when they understand how decisions are made. Leaders can explain themselves more clearly. Lawmakers can build smarter regulations by targeting actual causes, not cartoon villains.

None of this is about becoming cynical.

It’s about being precise.

Algorithms don’t confuse “Microsoft” with a moral actor. They just track what people want and what systems reward. If we did the same, we’d be better off.

The outrage is valid. But the framing is off.

The real problem isn’t that companies act inhuman. It’s that we pretend they’re something other than human systems in motion.

That’s fixable. If we stop moralizing and start mapping incentives, we might actually get somewhere.