My point isn't that this is likely to happen today with software engineers, but that companies will 100% make decisions to improve their bottom lines at the expense of the well-being of their employees in the absence of other factors preventing this. Wasting time of salaried employees on commutes is a fairly tame version of that compared to what's happened historically, and I used an extreme example because my argument is that the main difference between then and now isn't companies fundamentally caring more about their employees, but improved safeguards for workers. Outside of those safeguards, sadly I'd find it more surprising if companies _didn't_ push to the absolute limit of what they could get away with rather than actually considering whether what they were doing was reasonable.
An example I would suggest is the push for "always more" no matter how much has been given.
Employer: "Great job succeeding in delivering our release death march on time! You are all the best!"
Us: "Comp time to rest?"
Employer: .oO(awkward choice employee...) "You agreed to a full time position, it will be fine for you to work your normal 40 and do make work."
That I've experienced almost that directly. Not in every role but it did happen. That particular company lied to me about the role too so I ended up leaving.
The thing that concerns me is that we start with these overly strong statements. The next stage is some of us become convinced of them. After that some of those transition to believing companies are obliged to them and start behaving accordingly. But these beliefs are bad for business and everyone involved. They create iterative counter solving games that reduce satisfaction and productivity. While I've always done my best by my employers, the concrete delivery of that effort has varied based on external factors but mostly the health of the work environment. No one has gotten as much of of me as startups that set a clear goal and let me work.
