Yes, but it's mostly cuts in actual wages/base pay that are sticky. People obviously aren't happy if fairly predictable bonuses and RSUs get cut but most understand at some level those are variable and tied to company performance. And if the same thing is happening at most places they have little choice but to just deal with it.
Sure but OP claimed there are no cuts thus the only option is to stop hiring and do layoffs. In fact there are automatic cuts (via RSUs) and the follow-up approaches are hiring freezes and layoffs. I'm merely arguing that OP's point isn't valid.
"Pay cuts" via stock going down for the base company are pay cuts that do nothing to improve the company's financial position. Google-the-employer, even looking at them only as an employer, is no better off if employees have less total comp through stock losses than it is if they had stock gains. It does nothing to improve their bottom line -- and in fact, with the way that tech companies grant equity comp (by targeting a dollar amount at the time of the grant and then granting enough shares to hit that dollar amount), it actually worsens their position every time they give a grant (they have to give more shares to hit the same dollar amount).
In contrast, inflation or explicit wage cuts are things that, ceteris paribus, every employer would like to do, and does improve their bottom line. (But explicit wage cuts are such a morale killer that they're de facto impossible right now.)
I think OP was referring to salary cuts. Stock is known to carry risk so it being "cut" isn't taboo, but salary, which is supposed to be guaranteed, is.
Sure but in the context of saving the company money to prevent layoffs they're identical. Companies don't cut salary because they have a found a better way to cut comp costs without upsetting workers as much.
They absolutely aren't identical. If you have a grant for, whatever, 1,000 shares a year, and the shares used to be worth $100, but now they're worth $50, the company is still giving you the same things it gave before (X% of the total value of the company). It will still have to go to the board and ask for more dilution to create new share pools at the same time as it did before. Its cash-on-hand situation is no better than before.