While I think you are right along I'd like to offer a different perspective of what's happening. A lot of what you've said is true-- candidates have changed over time, people are caring less about the company, and the general conscience has definitely shifted towards lesser company loyalty.
We, especially Hacker News's readers, workers in tech and tech-adjacent roles are very much a small percentage. If you've read older books, especially autobiographies, biographies, and journal-like books you'll likely see that the following:
> This whole trend of optimising everything to the max without caring for people is going to create an employee base that is completely disillusioned about their role or prospects or what's their best strategy for life.
already existed even before during the great industrial revolution. It's very much related to human nature I think. On another point:
> Any company needs some people who care about what they do. But these are in shorter and shorter supply every year, it seems.
Surprisingly, there ARE a lot of people like this, the biggest problem I've found (having been in the hiring seat) is their competence and skills do not match what the companies need and are looking for. This is also correlated to why outsourcing has become such a big part of large companies today. Not just the cost benefits. Unfortunately, a lot of companies don't invest into training and investment and likely if they already are, they cannot get employees to commit because of wages (financials for both the company and employee).
> It is no way to have a productive employee base.
We are still largely far away from this and likely why cities will still be playing a big part of greater economic change even amidst remote work. I even might venture to write that we have yet to truly see one besides what currently exists akin to Silicon Valley, MIC, and adjacent employee bases.
Anyway, I lost my train of thought now. Feel free to discuss