A lot of people would genuinely prefer for companies to never make risky investments in growth, yes. If you’ve ever wondered how the Japanese norm of lifetime employment can be sustained, this is why; many employees prefer it to a system where they might discover one day that their job was dependent on a speculative investment that didn’t pan out.
In a lot of ways it is, and it's my understanding (although I can't claim any personal knowledge of this part) that in the past couple of years things have been changing. But I've had conversations with people who know their job is worse than it would be at the Stripes of the world - worse pay, worse office, worse benefits, worse hours - and yet they're still not interested in applying elsewhere because they're confident they can stay in their first job until retirement. Some people really do value stability and job security above anything else in their career.
