The last paragraph of the linked article:
QUOTE
Between the construction at Ames and hagfish-like assimilation of Mountain View, Google is steadily assembling its own little city, And why not? When free gourmet food and massages failed to keep employees from defecting to hotter startups like Twitter and, especially, Facebook, the company tried offering workers free servants and multi-million dollar retention bonuses. Those are nice cushions against the travails of the real world — the bother of bank balances and annoyance of mingling with mouth-breathing non Googlers — but there's nothing like blocking out reality and living out one's days completely encapsulated inside the bubble, assuming it will never end.
Quick "gedankenversuch." How do we square this paragraph with the long-running corporate dystopia theme in Shadowrun. It's a staple of Shadowrun that corporations are trying hard to woo valuable employees away from their rivals. The response to this situation in the real world is that one of the most powerful corporations on Earth is pampering their employees to a ludicrous degree. Not exactly the gray-washed world of dystopic wage-slavery we see in Shadowrun.
To answer my own question:
In SR labor unions seem to have been defeated completely. Also, extraterritoriality means that employees of AA's and AAA's are actual citizens of a sovereign corporate state. Add in restrictive employment contracts (no longer moderated by national governments or labor unions) and it is
a lot harder for an employee to actually jump ship to another corporation. If employees can't change employers, what incentive does the corporation have to pamper the employees like Google is?