I feel like people on HN who have comfortable passive incomes from stocks or other sources forget that people need a paycheck to sustain their lifestyles.
I very much depend on my pay check to sustain my life in the long run, although worker protections and a small (!) nest egg make it so I wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of abuse. I see employment as an agreement for a set number of hours of my expertise in exchange for a fee. End of transaction.
The real world is slightly less black and white of course, but that’s the gist of it.
You can always find another job, even if it's worse than your current one. A prick who thinks my family is less important than a transportation project, and has the audacity to assert that to me, can do the project himself or in the company of spineless worms.
I guarantee I am closer to the situation than you are. I have many heard similar, and worse statements, from executives of The Boeing Company many times in my career. Every single Boeing CEO that has left the company in the past 30 years has either been fired, or resigned in disgrace, for their various ethical, moral, and business management failures.
That’s 5 flamed out CEOs since 1996.
Does it shock you that a CEO who is on the record for preferring that his employees “Cower under their desks” in fear of him would also require that their employees prioritize the schedule of a flying barge over their child’s personal life?
Or how about "When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it is run like a business rather than a great engineering firm" - can this statement by former CEO Harry Stonecipher be justified as anything other than evil, in the context of the damage and injury that has been caused by intentionally reducing Boeing’s engineering capability?