Dog In A Fireman Costume

I had lunch with my best friend yesterday, at his new job.  He's been working there for about two months, give or take, and he absolutely loves it.  The last place he worked was terrible, he was abused and underpaid and unappreciated, at least until they learned he was going to leave and they would be screwed.  This new job pays him what he's worth, they encourage him to take time off, and they seem to genuinely appreciate him and his contributions.  And, at first glance, the place is kind of cool.
   This new place is in a re-purposed shopping mall, which the company has completely taken over and made into their own.  Even the CEO and the other top guys sit in cubes like everybody else.  There are perks to working there, to wit: they have free soda in various kitchenettes scattered throughout the sprawling former-mall.  Every Tuesday and Friday they invite food trucks into the parking lot and let the employees and relatives loose to enjoy a grilled cheese sandwich or noodle bowl or chicken parts.  Their health insurance is so cheap it's almost free.  They have sections named after breakfast cereals or superheroes or some of the stores that used to be in the mall itself, back when it was a mall.  They have a slide from the second to the first floor.  They re-purposed gondolas from Brackenridge Park as small conference rooms.  They have a ping-pong table and encourage people to take a break and play.  It seems like a pretty cool place.  Which I suppose it is, especially coming from a world of abject corporate douchebaggery as my friend did.
    But it's really no different.  This company is traded on the NYSE just like Ford and Mattel and a few thousand other companies are.  As much as all the nifty signs and wacky names would like you to believe that this company is not like any other, it really is just like every other public company out there.  Sure they have a 'Snap-Crackle-and-Pop' conference room, but that's exactly the same as the 'Fiesta' conference room at another place, just with a picture of breakfast cereal pasted onto the window.
    It's like a dog dressed in a fireman costume.  It's cute, but there is no way anyone is going to mistake the dog for an actual fireman, especially when there's a building on fire.  This company used to be a start-up, they used to have only three employees, they used to be one bad month away from bankruptcy and living on the street.  Now they're a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, about as far from their scrappy, against-all-odds origins as they can get.
    Honestly, I don't know whether to be cynical and awful about this, or to give them points for at least trying.  It bothers me greatly when people try to pretend they're not who they really are, and when companies try that trick it makes me want to fly into a murderous rage.  They're a publicly-traded company, their employees are 'resources' the company officers have a fiduciary responsibility to exploit just like any other commodity.  This is the lurking, creeping evil of a corporation, the loyalty of the company is to making more money, nothing else, and no amount of free soda is going to change that.
    I think the window-dressing of it all is a desperate front, a way for the company to insist - despite all evidence to the contrary - that it's still cool, that it's still the same three guys who ordered in a pizza after work, and who are determined to do things 'their way.'  Except that way involved doing the same thing every other tech company did, going public the first chance they got, a money-grab by the principals.
   I don't begrudge my friend the improvement in his situation, but he didn't really trade up.  He's still working for a someone else, and that company will become more and more like his old company the bigger and bigger it grows.  But they'll still have that slide in the building, that's something.  Right?