My view of why it happened is a bit different than the author, but my conclusion is wildly different. I've been on tech for almost 20 years, 11 of them in the US.
On average, I do see people that work hard and on important things getting recognized and promoted. I don't have this bleak view that nobody should do anything, it's all random, nothing matters.
I do agree at the end of the day we're just numbers on a spreadsheet for large companies. Most of the time it's not personal, and Shopify probably decided having engineers in Germany wasn't worth, no matter how good they were (and I personally knew a handful that were really, really good, live there, and lost their job).
Those things aren't contradictory. You can work hard and be promoted and get more recognition, and you still can be cut due to decisions completely out of your control. The opposite is also true. Average people get lucky to be on the right project at the right time, sometimes multiple projects in a row. Peter principle and all.
But on average, companies to reward the people that bring value to the company (and its owners)