No company of any size is going to care about its people. Individual managers might, and leadership may talk about it when times are good, but all of that will go in the bin if it means less profit for the company.

I think the same is true of smaller companies as well; there it is just maybe a little harder for management to be assholes because they are so much closer to the actual people they are treating like shit. Employees are always only a means to an end.

The bigger the company is, the more employees it has; that means it has to treat the employees even more like interchangeable parts in a machine because treating them like humans requires too much time and money.

I think the only way to avoid this dynamic is for the workers to be owners and for the company to be small enough that any individual worker can have a meaningful say in how the place is run. Employees owning shares—while maybe better than nothing—is still basically meaningless other than as a means of additional compensation.