It seems like both you and the people you're arguing with are generalizing wildly and lack curiosity. The situation in the article sounds more like a bureaucra

It seems like both you and the people you're arguing with are generalizing wildly and lack curiosity. The situation in the article sounds more like a bureaucratic snafu, where the company is hiring but the teams either aren't given open headcount to use, or they don't want to use it on the new hires for some reason. Isn't that weird? Wouldn't you like to know how that happened? I doubt it generalizes, but it's interesting.