If a software engineer starts working at Applebees, GDP will decrease. If lots of software engineers do it, GDP decreases more.
If corporate revenue increases and is spent (as most revenue is), then the workers will be better off in the most bland "raising all boats" sense of the word - there will be more competition for their labor and more opportunities for them to jump ship.
GDP gets a bad rap but if I had to pick a single metric, that's the one I'd choose.
I attended a talk by Alberto Alesina (RIP) a few years back and he made the point that, yeah, GDP isn't perfect, but by and large, people in countries with a high GDP are healthier and happier. It might not measure the difference between the US and France as well, but it's pretty good at pointing out that Sweden is doing better than Somalia.
One thing I remember from the first Dot-com crash circa 2002 is that the service quality in Silicon Valley area restaurants suddenly got a lot better. There were a lot of former "HTML programmers" forced to find other jobs.
Right - if you ask a heart surgeon to wait tables they'll probably do a great job!
But it's still a waste of their talents and society as a whole will be worse off than if they did heart surgery. You can measure that because a waiter makes minimum wage and a heart surgeon does not - the heart surgeon contributes more to the GDP than a food service worker.
That's the meaning of that metric and that's why it's useful.
If corporate revenue increases and is spent (as most revenue is), then the workers will be better off in the most bland "raising all boats" sense of the word - there will be more competition for their labor and more opportunities for them to jump ship.
GDP gets a bad rap but if I had to pick a single metric, that's the one I'd choose.