The best workplace culture in America is being built by companies you’ve never heard of

Microsoft’s announcement that they would be cutting 4,800 jobs was met with confusion by many, who contrasted the layoffs with the company’s recent market success (Microsoft’s net income was $31.8 billion last quarter, up 23% year-over-year). But it’s the reality of business in 2026 – profitable public companies cut thousands of jobs, impacting the lives of thousands of real people to justify huge AI investments to Wall Street.

These layoffs by Microsoft and other corporate giants represent a turning point in business history in America: large corporations can no longer serve as the cultural leaders for American businesses; they’re structurally incapable. It’s time for small and medium businesses to take up the mantle.  

The doctrine that ate the workplace

Fifty years ago, Milton Friedman published his famous doctrine that the sole social responsibility of business is to maximize profits for shareholders. It became gospel — reshaping business schools, boardrooms, and eventually the personality of corporate America itself.

Over the last year, we’ve seen this idea taken to the extreme, as company after company has cut thousands of workers to justify AI spending and boost market performance. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs in January (in addition to the 14,000 jobs cut in 2025). Block cut nearly half its workforce in February. And since then, several other American giants like Salesforce, Intuit, Oracle, GitLab, Meta, and Cisco have laid off several thousand employees as well. 

Big Tech has bent over backwards to live up to Friedman’s doctrine, continually justifying their reduction under the push for AI modernization and efficiency. They’ve ushered in a new and brutal era of corporate culture that looks unlike anything seen in generations past. 

The Detroit auto companies that mirrored their employees’ lifelong loyalty? Gone. IBM’s paternalistic career culture? Gone. Even Google’s once fabled cafeterias and “20% time” rules? Steadily eroding. 

Like offshoring, digital transformation, and SaaSification before it, AI is the latest excuse for business leaders to cast aside human talent for quick market wins. Executives point to these external forces as the reason layoffs are inevitable, and claim to be helpless in the wake of global and technological trends.

But the truth isn’t as cut and dry. According to  SHRM, only 6% of jobs are both highly automatable and free from the practical barriers that would actually let AI displace them. In other words, AI is transforming jobs, not eliminating them. Which means external conditions aren’t forcing these cuts: company leadership is choosing them. 

Small businesses are running a different playbook

With the resources and the talent to be experimental and push the envelope, large businesses — especially in the tech age — became the cultural leaders for America’s business environment. Small and mid-sized business leaders idolized public companies, as if they were the varsity team. Get there, and you’ve “made it.” Org charts were copied; perk playbooks were cribbed. Their roadmaps for innovation gave confidence to smaller companies that they had it all figured out.

But the brutalism of today’s corporate culture is shifting the dynamics and pushing small and medium-sized businesses into the driver’s seat. While the big guys were facing “unavoidable” layoffs, small and mid-sized businesses have largely been able to avoid mass layoffs. Instead, they used AI to change what their teams could do, invested in flexible talent, and emerged more resilient. Nearly half of SMB leaders reported maintaining high confidence throughout 2025’s economic shocks.

Employees have noticed, too. Employee happiness data shows companies with fewer than 25 employees scoring an average net promoter score of 51, while companies with more than 500 score 34. That gap has been widening since 2021.

This isn’t happening because private business owners are morally superior people who have transformation all figured out: it’s because they’re structurally free. 

There is no one-size-fits-all playbook that private companies have to follow — not with regard to profits, or managing downturns, or their business playbook. A multinational apparel company like Patagonia can dedicate 100% of its profits to fighting climate change, while a manufacturing technology company like Barry-Wehmiller can refuse layoffs, even with their backs against the wall. Without the obligation to translate every decision into a story that will move stock, these private business owners can afford to think in years, not quarters. They can decide that a person is worth more than a nominal point of margin, and decide for themselves what corporate culture should look like.

The success of public companies no longer grants them freedom or trust; the speed and values of the market have penned leaders in like a hog in a chute. Driven in a single direction, fattened up until they can no longer support their own weight, and then butchered.

While public companies may continue to lead and drive things like infrastructure, capital markets, and scale, it’s time for businesses (and business schools) to look towards a different set of leaders to set the tone of American business culture. Small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as private companies, can build a culture that continues to value human output and innovation in an era where it’s being minimized. 

Public companies have no choice. We do. We can choose to optimize for more than a monetary high score. We can structure our organizations to embody those intangible qualities we value most, and want to see grow throughout society. You don’t have to be a nonprofit to care about more than money. We don’t have to play the public companies’ game. We can play our own.

And we get to make the rules.