[HN Gopher] On loyalty to your employer (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
On loyalty to your employer (2018)
Author : Peroni
Score : 374 points
Date : 2025-04-24 09:43 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| turtleyacht wrote:
| You can be as quickly dismissed as the guy reads off a piece of
| paper (for liability purposes), swivels the camera round to HR
| rep, and your access is cut off right after the call.
|
| You have pretty much a minute or two (if that) to bye a sentence
| to a couple chats, and it's over. Done.
|
| Oh, and swing by to return equipment. Thanks.
|
| Not that it's worse by any previous measure. Just the process
| folks will go through: bloodless, swift, smooth. (They have a
| list to get through.)
|
| You can always wish it never happens, convince yourself every
| dawn or dusk commit proves something, but only the present
| reality ever mattered.
|
| Every student of computer science should experience a simulated
| firing. At least to consider beyond the "system under test" and
| reflect on business and capital, to think on the end of things
| along with its beginning.
| closewith wrote:
| For context, the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the
| above is true.
|
| That said, he's a recruiter and there's nothing of value to be
| found in the blog post.
| objclxt wrote:
| > the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the above is
| true.
|
| You can absolutely be dismissed without cause in the UK,
| protections against this only kick in after two years of
| employment.
| dcminter wrote:
| Statutory notice period would still apply in the UK. You'll
| get at least a week's notice unless you've been there less
| than a month.
| jessekv wrote:
| True, but to be fair the statutory notice period is for
| the pay, not access to the internal messaging systems.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| idk, while trite, the bulleted list is full of common sense
| that's all too easily forgotten:
|
| > * Do not sacrifice your relationship with family and
| friends to appease your employer.
|
| * Do not sacrifice your mental wellbeing to appease your
| employer.
|
| * Do not sacrifice your dignity, values, and ethics to
| appease your employer.
|
| * Do not buy into the bullshit hype of "hustle" to appease
| your employer.
| Propelloni wrote:
| > For context, the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the
| above is true.
|
| In the EU many protections -- depending on the member state
| -- only apply under certain conditions. For example,
| employees in companies with less than 10.25 FTE do not enjoy
| any termination protection beyond very short notice periods
| (between 1 and 7 month) in Germany.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _do not enjoy any termination protection beyond very
| short notice periods (between 1 and 7 month) in Germany._
|
| Not sure if that's a typo because several months of notice
| sounds long to me!
| Propelloni wrote:
| You get 7 months notice after 20 years of employment. I
| think that puts it into perspective ;)
| mattlondon wrote:
| Well they can't fire you totally on the spot in the UK, but I
| believe they can put you on immediate "gardening leave" where
| you lose all access to systems and buildings etc. You'll
| still get paid and are still technically employed, but you'll
| not be working on anything and can't go to the office.
|
| I think there is some expectation for gardening leave to be
| available for the odd call or meeting for doing handovers
| etc, but realistically I don't think anyone would expect a
| disgruntled suddenly-made-redundant employee to really do
| that with any gusto or enthusiasm.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| You can actually be fired on the spot, this is called
| "summary dismissal", but only applies in case of gross
| misconduct, so the cases that become "office lore" ;)
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| "you'll still get paid and are still technically employed,
| but you'll not be working on anything and can't go to the
| office."
|
| Oh noooooooooo, anything but that!
|
| Joking aside, seriously, part of why this is all so
| traumatizing in the US is because the second you know
| you're getting laid off, you're not even thinking about the
| job or anything anymore. You're trying to guess how much
| COBRA is going to be and hoping you don't get seriously ill
| in the next N months.
|
| Seriously, COBRA is often so fucking expensive that being
| laid off doesn't just mean loss of income, it means
| literally suddenly getting a NEGATIVE paycheck each month,
| as you now have to cover the % of the healthcare plan your
| employer was paying for. If I got laid off right now, i'd
| immediately start paying about $6000/mo for my current
| policy under COBRA. Then, if you do need to use it, it's
| still got a deducible and coinsurance!
|
| So yeah, that's why summary dismissal is so painful in the
| US.
| Tokumei-no-hito wrote:
| that has to be a typo. 6 thousand a month (72k/year) on
| insurance??
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I think i multiplied a bit too aggressively in my head. I
| think it'd be more like 2.5k/mo. I'm out of pocket
| $900/mo right now, and I think that's less than half,
| because my employer covers 100% of my premiums and 50% of
| the family premiums. So double that 900, and then add me
| in.
| gedy wrote:
| > You have pretty much a minute or two (if that) to bye a
| sentence to a couple chats, and it's over. Done.
|
| When remote in this situation, I've shut off wifi and hard
| powered down right after meeting before they try and remote
| wipe.
|
| I enjoyed making them squirm while I take a few weeks to mail
| back equipment, while receiving increasingly urgent emails.
|
| Pointless I know, but was fun.
| mattlondon wrote:
| The pros remote wipe overnight while you are sleeping, or at
| the very least _during_ the meeting with HR and your VP.
| Waiting to terminate access until after the bad news is
| delivered is just asking for trouble!
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > "When I'm on my deathbed, I won't look back at my life and wish
| I had worked harder. I'll look back and wish I spent more time
| with the people I loved."
|
| I saw a Reddit thread the other day on r/startups or
| r/entrepreneur where the OP was talking about how they'll be
| working until the day he or she dies.
|
| I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends.
| Had this person already seen the world and its many sights and
| wonders? Had they already experienced everything good there is to
| experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it
| that they would prefer to work instead? Had they already swam
| with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy
| mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of
| Tokyo, etc.
|
| I completely get the drive to _create_ ; I have various side
| projects I make for fun and to learn. But I would never want to
| _work_ for the rest of my life. Life is too short and the world
| is too big.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Not everyone has the money to swim with whales or explore
| jungles. And even among the few that do, many would rather
| spend thier money on uplifting other people than self-indulgent
| ecotourism. Many would rather work until they die in full
| knowledge that doing so might help free thier children from
| work altogether. And a fair number still see productive work as
| a greater good than sloth or vanity.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| You can go hike the Appalachian Trail for free. Explore
| national parks for a nominal fee. Explore the sights and
| sounds of your nearest city without much cost at all.
| comradesmith wrote:
| I have rent and calorie upkeep costs
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I saw an interview with Cesar Milan a few years back
| where he talked about how he survived after first coming
| to the US. He said something to the effect of
| (paraphrasing) > "America is amazing,
| you could get two hotdogs for $1 at 7-11. That's all I
| needed to survive."
|
| When we visited Tokyo last year, we ended up eating a lot
| of 7-11 onigiri for breakfast as there weren't many
| places open when we were up and heading out. $2 will take
| you a surprisingly long way if you're not picky.
|
| The same for housing. I know folks that are making mid
| 6-figures who live in shared houses because housing is
| not something that they value; it's a place for them to
| sleep at night.
|
| It's about what you value and then how you exchange your
| time on Earth.
| maccard wrote:
| > That's all I needed to survive.
|
| That sounds like a pretty grim way to live. As a tech
| worker, I'd rather "live" than survive. Each to their
| own.
|
| > It's about what you value and then how you exchange
| your time on Earth.
|
| I think you should take a look at this thread with this
| comment in mind - not everyone else values the same
| things as you and that's ok.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| $2 7-11 onigiri is surprisingly good!
| speff wrote:
| Along the same lines, my parents - immigrants into the US
| in the late-80s - would always tell me that food in the
| US is cheap. Granted, this was more true for
| restaurant/fast-food prior to a few years ago. But the
| point still holds for grocery store items if you know how
| to cook/shop.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| Not sure if you meant hiking the whole AT or not, but thru-
| hiking the AT costs an estimated $1k per month (most thru-
| hikers take 5-7 months and spend about 5-7 grand).
| Equipment, food, occasional lodging and doing nice things
| on the way, and you'll still likely have to be paying all
| your normal expenses while you're doing it.
| lud_lite wrote:
| The travel things you describe to me are work (in a good way)
| getting away from it all can give you the clarity to know what
| big moves to make. I recently went to Tokyo and didn't touch
| work at all. The only way!
|
| For those who can't afford that like the sister comment you can
| explore your own city (or suburbia or countryside). Everywhere
| is exotic to someone. In all 3 cases a bicycle does a good job!
| maccard wrote:
| I think the middle ground is healthy.
|
| I'm in my early 30's, I have a job that I get to "create" in (I
| make video games).
|
| > I immediately wondered if this individual had a family,
| friends. Had this person already seen the world and its many
| sights and wonders? Had they already experienced everything
| good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were
| so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead? Had they
| already swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles,
| climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and
| backstreets of Tokyo, etc.
|
| Lots of these things are best done when you're younger,
| healthy, and able to do these things. I would _much_ rather
| live in a nice house in a nice area with exciting things to do
| from my mid 20's onwards and enjoy those things for years and
| years and years, rather than live in a smaller/cheaper/farther
| out place so that I can retire 10 years earlier and start
| living. I'd rather have 1-2 of those things to look forward to
| every year than say "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can
| finally start doing all those things".
|
| My dad counted down the days until he could retire, talked
| about how he would finally get to do X Y and Z. About 2 years
| before that, health conditions caught up and now he's not fit
| to do so many of those things that he was so excited and happy
| to do. If the tradeoff for me is working until I'm a little
| older while getting to enjoy the journey, rather than minmaxing
| the time that i can work and retire, then I'll choose to enjoy
| the ride.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing
| all those things".
|
| I had an uncle pass last year and he was only 30 years older
| than me. He had already retired and a multi-millionaire in
| assets. Yet my aunt refused to retire because of a high
| paying job with little actual work. She kept working.
|
| When he passed, the family asked me to put together a montage
| video and shared their photos with me spanning his lifetime.
| The moments when he was the happiest seemed to be when they
| were traveling together. As students, as parents, as a couple
| after my cousins had graduated and started their own lives.
|
| In those last years, he was "waiting" for my aunt to be ready
| and it felt sad that he didn't get to travel more because my
| aunt thought more about the money than the short lifetime
| they had left. His passing was like a wake up call of sorts;
| a reminder that life is shorter than anyone can expect. It's
| very hard to convey this in words until one experiences this
| first hand and feels the shock.
|
| More recently in my own travels, I've realized the same as
| you: that traveling in your youth makes much more sense than
| traveling in your "golden" years. You have greater mobility,
| more energy, less ailments. 20's and 30's are prime for
| exploring the world. Work will always be there!
| maccard wrote:
| Travelling isn't the be all and end all of things either
| remember. That might be something that you prioritise but
| isn't as important to other people. They might value time
| with family and friends, and that's ok too. A bit like with
| food, "variety is the spice of life"
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > I immediately wondered if this individual had a family,
| friends.
|
| That was one of my first lines in my OP. My point is that
| exchanging your life time for money isn't the end all.
| motorest wrote:
| > Travelling isn't the be all and end all of things
| either remember.
|
| I think you're missing the whole point. For you,
| traveling might not be that fun. For OP's uncle,
| apparently it was. He had to forego that because of
| reasons.
|
| I do a fair share of traveling. I love it, and a few of
| my most cherished memories come from trips I did. This
| might come as a surprise to you, but the whole point of
| traveling is not to go from point A to point B or spend
| time in airports. The whole point is to do things you
| personally enjoy, including and not limited to spending
| time with people you enjoy being with. Most of the time,
| the destinations and the things we do are only the
| backdrop to the things we actually enjoy.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Yup, many of the folks responding are glossing over this
| line in my OP: > Had they already
| experienced everything good there is to experience in
| this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they
| would prefer to work instead?
| maccard wrote:
| But every other point you r made in the the replies here
| has been about travel and how it can be done when people
| have suggested other priorities
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| I'm telling it from my perspective; and travel means
| different things to different people. Sightseeing? People
| watching? Cultural immersion? History? Exploring the
| outdoors? More generally, I look at it as "experience
| this Earth while you're here".
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Spent my 20s grinding away at getting great at building
| software. I enjoyed it mostly, but there are definite
| regrets, esp with tech never being able to shut up about
| how awesome AI is in killing off any notion of craft.
|
| Re: travel: this is one of the big takeaways from the book
| Die With Zero: travel is much easier when you are younger
| even if it is more expensive (relative to your assets).
| Just got back from an Italy trip where I averaged 5mi a day
| walking. 10 years from now (50s) it's a coin flip if it
| would be possible for me to sustain that much walking over
| 10 days. Probable? Yes. But not guaranteed.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > even if it is more expensive (relative to your assets)
|
| A lot of this is relative to one's standards and
| objectives. You are certainly right that it is expensive
| relative to assets in one's youth, but it can still be
| quite attainable if backpacking, hostels, and street food
| are options.
|
| When we went to Tokyo recently, the room we booked was
| tiny! The bed was only 6 or so inches away from the walls
| on each side. But for me, it was only a place to sleep at
| night and keep my luggage. If I had spent any more time
| than that in the hotel, it would have meant we did not
| spend enough time exploring Tokyo.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| years ago i stayed in a capsule in tokyo with shared bath
| house for something like $20!
| HPsquared wrote:
| The cheapest hotels are often more interesting /
| memorable.
| TimPC wrote:
| I think it depends a lot on your finances though. If you
| come from a rich family and have parental support by all
| means it is amazing to travel young. But if your travel
| budget is coming out of your downpayment on your house that
| could easily be the difference between buying before house
| prices got out of control or not. For example if you could
| have bought in 2013 without travel and it takes you till
| 2015 to save up a 2013 downpayment but in 2015 house prices
| have gone up and your downpayment needs to be larger and it
| takes more time, etc.
| geodel wrote:
| After reading a bit if history on travel/tourism I
| understood that this whole travel thing itself used to be
| luxury, upperclass thing. Most people would work and live
| where they are born, visit a few times in life outside
| for religious purpose or to attend important/relative's
| wedding etc. And that's about it.
|
| For myself I didn't travel much for leisure when I was
| young, I am not traveling when I am middle aged and have
| more money and I do not plan to when I am old/retired.
| Even when I did whatever little travel, my memories are
| just about fight, arguments, or endless waiting for
| admission to a sight which finally after visiting is
| "What's the fuss was all about?".
|
| On food the less I say the better. It was either over-
| hyped, over-priced. To top it all, concluding _fine
| dining dinner_ of the trip when people after ordering
| table full of meal didn 't eat a thing because they are
| far too drunk by then.
|
| Overtime I have come to conclusion the people with
| sensibilities and resources to travel and enjoy are far
| fewer than people actually travel due to exhorting by
| incessant marketing of travel.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Different strokes I guess! I will say that there's
| something unique I get from travelling that I don't get
| from anything else- the visceral in-person reminder that
| people are, at their core, very similar everywhere-
| mostly decent people just living their lives. It's like
| an antidote to the "other"-ing that sometimes creeps into
| the psyche from our media landscape.
| geodel wrote:
| I wouldn't doubt a bit you said. It is just I come to
| conclusion that people are essentially same by reading
| (fiction, non-fiction) literature etc. So I do not feel
| the urge to go and confirm nonetheless :)
| latentcall wrote:
| For me it's like being a kid again. All your routines go
| out the window so you wake up in Amsterdam and it's a
| whole new world. It's a total mental refresh
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Travel has always been something people do. People are
| unaware of historic travel, because it was called
| "pilgrimage" and not "tourism", but in many ways the
| same. Discounting for all forms of migration, voluntary
| or involuntary, and discounting for all forms of trade
| travel, fishing expeditions and nomadic life.
|
| So while maybe most people through history stayed put,
| travel has never been just a luxury thing.
|
| Maybe you should find a reason for travel that interests
| you, and it will be more enjoyable? Instead of taking the
| tourist wholesale perspective?
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| Travel need not be expensive nor extravagant.
|
| I love this interview with Rick Steves and how he
| traveled Europe in his early days:
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/05/974090406/rick-steves-
| europe-...
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| > Work will always be there!
|
| I really wish this were true; I'd take a year off to work
| on "life", but any sort of career pause, especially in this
| environment, seems to be a huge risk.
|
| Ageism is a concern--hell, even finding a new mediocre job
| in today's market is very difficult.
|
| I think it's "make hay while the sun shines". Seems the
| future has less opportunity, and there's plenty of time for
| underemployment later.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > but any sort of career pause, especially in this
| environment, seems to be a huge risk.
|
| My experience is on the contrary. My largest gains in
| income have always come after a break. I'm making 2x what
| I made in 2020 after taking almost a year off to work on
| some side projects and startups (a YC submission)[0].
| Then in 2023, decided to take another 8 months off to
| work on other side projects[1]
|
| But I also used those times to make the things _I_ wanted
| to make; what I learned along the way is that oftentimes
| the biggest barrier to getting a better offer is actually
| the lack of free time and patience. If you can create
| time for yourself and put that time to good use, you will
| come out of it better for it as long as you apply that
| time productively.
|
| I've always guided junior engineers I've worked with to
| save as much as they can because that is what will give
| them opportunity and freedom. You need to be able to have
| free time to cram leetcode, for example, or build up a
| portfolio, or wait out bad offers.
|
| [0] https://www.thinktastic.com/#/
|
| [1] https://turas.app (I had to get this one out of my
| system and a partner and I tried to see if we could make
| this one sustainable)
| martindbp wrote:
| > I would _much_ rather live in a nice house in a nice area
| with exciting things to do from my mid 20's onwards and enjoy
| those things for years and years and years, rather than live
| in a smaller/cheaper/farther out place so that I can retire
| 10 years earlier and start living.
|
| That's a false dichotomy. You can retire at least 25-30 years
| earlier than normal if you are a bit mindful of your spending
| and earn a decent salary. That makes the decision a bit
| harder doesn't it? Be frugal in your 20s and 30s, retire at
| 35-40 when you still mostly have your health, or so that you
| can actually focus on your health and increase your health
| span, and your 60s and 70s might be better than you expect.
| Whether this is worth it depends on your individual
| situation, how much do you earn, how painful is it for you to
| save, is there something you'd be retiring to, not just away
| from? I also wouldn't trade a life of misery for 10 retired
| years, but I don't think it's that simple.
| kubb wrote:
| If normal is 65, then you're saying you can retire at 35. I
| have a great salary and I pretty much don't spend except
| necessities (rent, food, clothes, healthcare). I'm not even
| close.
| margorczynski wrote:
| > You can retire at least 25-30 years earlier than normal
| if you are a bit mindful of your spending and earn a decent
| salary
|
| I love how detached from reality some people on HN are. I
| assume by "decent salary" you mean $150k+ per year?
| arjonagelhout wrote:
| Speaking as a person who can't see themselves stop working, I
| think an important factor is how one derives meaning from their
| life. For some it might be living amazing experiences, and for
| others it can be in helping others (which could qualify as
| work). The healthiest seems to be a combination of the two,
| with a different ratio depending on the person.
|
| Here in the Netherlands it's common to see retired people do
| volunteering work, as it can bring great pleasure and
| satisfaction to help people. There's of course also the
| communal aspect of it.
|
| It's also common to see business owners for example in family
| businesses to keep working at the company after the official
| retirement age.
|
| So I'd argue work does not have to be a chore and can be a
| source of meaning and purpose. But if it is just a means to an
| end, it makes sense to not want to work your entire life and
| good labor and retirement laws should protect people from
| having to work their entire life.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| "Work" here I would define as exchanging time for money.
|
| Volunteering is not work.
|
| For me personally, I make a distinction between "working" and
| "creating". I will always want to create (a very broad term),
| but I will not always want to work. In fact, I don't want to
| work now; I only want to create. The best is when I can
| exchange my creation for money -- then it is no longer work.
| closewith wrote:
| No, work is effort expended to achieve a result. Whether
| it's paid or not is irrelevant, and many people work harder
| for free than they ever do in employment, because the
| incentives are right.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Whether it's paid or not is irrelevant
|
| When someone contemplates the wisdom of an entrepreneur
| who says he's going to work until he dies, they're not
| worried he might volunteer too much.
| closewith wrote:
| That's short-sighted. Most entrepreneurs, once they're
| financially stable, work for reasons other than money.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > No, work is effort expended to achieve a result
|
| By this definition, going to the toilet is "work". If
| that's the case, I never want to get to a point where I
| stop working.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| I like to use a fuzzy definition (though, all definitions
| are fuzzy--what's a chair? Good luck...) based on whether
| it's common for someone with the means to do so, to pay
| others to do it for them, by choice and not due to
| disability or something like that.
|
| Taking a shit? Not work. Cleaning the toilet? Work.
|
| Eating dinner? Not work. Cooking dinner? Work.
|
| Playing badminton on your lawn? Not work. Mowing the
| lawn? Work.
|
| Napping on your Ikea couch? Not work. Assembling that
| couch? Work.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| How do you define "retirement"?
| fwip wrote:
| When you have enough money that you no longer do work for
| more?
| closewith wrote:
| Well, it is, and the workload of ablution becomes greater
| as you age.
| esafak wrote:
| In the context of this discussion, the result has to be
| of value to someone else, that's all. Then you can haggle
| over how valuable it is. When it is for yourself, the
| currency is time and energy; you ponder how much to
| invest on one task versus another.
| peepee1982 wrote:
| This is a useless definition, especially in this context.
| Washing my dishes is not work, because it's ultimately
| irrelevant whether I do it or not, although I'm doing it
| still because I have a result in mind.
|
| It also comes across as very out of touch and privileged,
| because unless you have a relatively cushy job, you would
| definitely not see the difference between being paid or
| not as irrelevant. There are plenty of people who have to
| work very hard just to make ends meet, be it physically
| exhausting work, or repetitive and monotonous work. And
| they will not have the capacity to work even harder once
| they clock out of work, no matter the incentives, because
| they'll be spent and unable to.
| closewith wrote:
| > This is a useless definition, especially in this
| context.
|
| No, it's a very apt and useful definition. It's just not
| one you appreciate.
|
| > It also comes across as very out of touch and
| privileged, because unless you have a relatively cushy
| job, you would definitely not see the difference between
| being paid or not as irrelevant.
|
| This comment is a straw man, because I didn't say pay was
| irrelevant. I said work is work whether you're paid or
| not.
|
| It also ironically shows that you are out of touch and
| privileged, as your comment completely ignores two of the
| heaviest workloads in the world, housework and child-
| rearing. Neither are generally paid and both are most
| definitely work.
|
| Only a completely out-of-touch and privileged person
| could think otherwise.
| oofManBang wrote:
| You might enjoy a fella named marx. Labor is labor, my
| friend. It should be mostly devoted to things that enrich
| the lives of us and those around us. It is normal to want
| to work. It is the alienating nature of selling our labor
| for a pittance that ruins our lives.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Then sell your labour for more than a pittance, if you're
| just haggling over the price.
| oofManBang wrote:
| Ahh, silly me, I should have just starved on the streets
| until someone recognized my value.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Unless you're in a country that embraced the teachings of
| Marx, you're more likely to die from too much food than
| not enough, or a class-based murder spree.
| glimshe wrote:
| "I work at a nonprofit"
|
| "I worked on my yard today"
|
| Your definition is arbitrary and goes against the
| established use of the word. Work can be many things. When
| people say they don't want to stop working, they are just
| saying they want to keep changing the world in big or small
| ways until they die.
| mid-kid wrote:
| I wish I could do unpaid volunteer work and still afford
| live. By which I mean, I really hate that certain kinds of
| work are not deemed worthy enough of financial compensation,
| yet are still beneficial to people and society at large.
| paulcole wrote:
| Maybe the person just doesn't care about swimming with whales
| or having friends? Does everybody really think the dense Amazon
| jungle is neat?
|
| You're projecting what you think makes life worth living onto
| someone else.
|
| Can you really not imagine that for another person working is
| what they love as much as you seem to love climbing snowy
| mountains?
|
| > Life is too short
|
| I agree with this. It's too short to think about how someone
| else is spending theirs.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| You're missing the forest for the trees.
|
| You have one lifetime on this Earth and it is a big place
| with many experiences and sights. Do not regret in the end
| that you exchanged too much of that one lifetime for money
| rather than enriching it with many experiences be it with
| family, friends, or even by oneself.
| paulcole wrote:
| Your trees are not someone else's trees.
|
| Is someone who climbs snowy mountains for a living (but who
| loves working on spreadsheets) trading too much of their
| one lifetime for money?
|
| Different things enrich different people's lives.
|
| Can you not imagine that what you call "work" is the
| experience that gives this person enrichment?
|
| To be honest from what I can see it seems like you are the
| person with a narrow worldview.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Your trees are not someone else's trees
|
| I never said they were; only that life is short -- find
| your forest. Quoting myself: > Had they
| already experienced everything good there is to
| experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored
| of it that they would prefer to work instead?
|
| And I'm pretty certain that forest isn't exchanging your
| limited time in life for money. I'm giving concrete
| examples, not exclusive examples.
|
| Touch grass, my friend, and find your forest.
| paulcole wrote:
| You're changing your tune pretty quick here and have
| artfully dodged essentially all of my questions.
|
| > I'm pretty certain that forest isn't exchanging your
| limited time in life for money
|
| A simple question -- what if your forest happens to hand
| you money back? Are you still "pretty certain" of this?
| kevmo314 wrote:
| If you're reading r/startups or r/entrepreneur, I suspect
| original OP drives some satisfaction and meaning from
| building a money-making machine themselves.
|
| Not everyone wants to travel the world their entire life,
| and working is an experience in itself that similarly may
| not resonate with everyone.
| brookside wrote:
| Honestly - leave the whale, jungles, and over-touristed Tokyo-
| ites alone.
|
| Travel lightly, get a feel for different environments and
| cultures, then take that perspective to your hometown.
|
| Travel is frosting. The cake can be building a meaningful life
| that involves community, maybe family, and possibly meaningful
| work.
| motorest wrote:
| > I immediately wondered if this individual had a family,
| friends. (...)
|
| The saddest thing I ever witnessed in a FANG was a participant
| of one of those workplace empowerment events. Even though her
| interview was focused on her bending over backwards to praise
| their employer's health insurance, the devil was in the
| details.
|
| The interviewee was praising her employer for providing a nice
| health insurance, but she mentioned as side-notes that
| throughout her career she felt so much pressure to perform that
| she postponed having children until a point where her fertility
| doctor warned her that she might risk not be able to have
| children. When she finally felt her job was secured, she
| decided to not focus on her career anymore and finally went
| ahead with having children. Except that she was already in her
| 40s. She had to undergo a couple of years worth of fertility
| treatments until she finally managed to get pregnant, which was
| supposedly the focus of her intervention because her employer
| was so awesome for allowing her to seek medical treatments.
|
| Everyone decides what's best for themselves, but being robbed
| of having children because you want to bend over backwards for
| your employer sounds like an awful tradeoff.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| It's a tough trade off. On the one hand, having a child in
| your 20's is how our biology is wired. On the other hand, in
| the modern age, those are also prime years for work and
| professional growth; I get it.
|
| Last year, I (in my 40's) did a trip to Terceira[0] and after
| a few days of hiking, had shooting pain in my knee. I
| immediately wondered if I had torn something! It would be
| quite the pickle since I had traveled with a backpack.
| Luckily, it was ITBS (Iliotibial band syndrome) and went away
| with some Acetaminophen and rest.
|
| But it made me regret that in my 20's I spent more time
| playing computer games than doing things like this hike that
| would be even challenging if I were to wait until I retired.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/DlFKc4OfbpM Terceira is a spectacular
| destination, by the way, and easy to access from JFK.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| 20s in tech is basically show up, do your work, and get
| paid a pittance of the value it generates.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That's just "employment", or at least "not realising how
| many other people contribute to that value".
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Sure. But the pay gap can be huge compared to your 30s,
| regardless of your ability level.
| int_19h wrote:
| It applies to those other people as well, though.
|
| When you get down to it, all profit any company makes is
| quite literally the value generated by its employees that
| was extracted from them.
| p3rls wrote:
| This is such a retarded modern take on things, not everyone
| derives meaning from checking off a bucket list they read about
| on some internet listicle. For some of us, creating and
| contributing is the goal.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| That wasn't the point and you've completely misread it. The
| very first point was "family and friends" and _for me_ ,
| travel is something that helps me experience the broader
| world. It's not a bucket list, it's the fact that this world
| is immense, filled with experiences and that we only have one
| lifetime to find those experiences that enrich our short time
| here.
|
| The hypothetical question is is whether this individual has
| already experienced everything there was to experience and
| decided "No, working 9-9 is what I value in life!"
| paulcole wrote:
| > The hypothetical question is is whether this individual
| has already experienced everything there was to experience
| and decided "No, working 9-9 is what I value in life!"
|
| This is a foolish question.
|
| A person can't experience "everything" even if given a life
| of 10,000 years.
|
| Everybody has to decide what they value in life before
| experiencing everything.
|
| The question is whether someone has decided that the thing
| they're doing is what they personally find value in or not.
|
| The alternative which I'll admit is sad (and which is not
| what you have said to this point) is that someone is doing
| something that they do not find value in. Your whole point
| has been that working is not a good way to spend limited
| life, without acknowledging that what you call work someone
| else calls enrichment.
| zelon88 wrote:
| The irony of this statement is; most of the people who have
| adopted the views you're criticizing used to believe what you
| believe. I am one of those individuals.
|
| I used to think that my worth could be measured by the amount
| of work that I produced. That there was some big tally board
| and everytime I did something valuable I would get a "tick"
| and that the "ticks" would eventually be tallied up and there
| would be some reward. Some relief. Something.
|
| Only after having been literally told "This is my company, my
| revenue, my profit, and there's no relief coming for you no
| matter how hard you try" by not one, but TWO different
| employers did I finally start to adopt the thinking of
| prioritizing my own well being.
|
| And only after prioritizing my own well being did I develop
| this sense of value in things I enjoy. Armed with the
| knowledge about the value of myself I was able to finally
| prioritize between work and home.
|
| I highly recommend the book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a
| F*ck" by Mark Manson. It is really good at demonstrating how
| "if everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred."
| p3rls wrote:
| Jesus christ, used to believe what I believe? bro there's
| literally a pop self-help recommendation at the bottom of
| your reply. I guess we should be grateful it's not a ted
| talk or betterhelp.com review.
|
| No one is measuring your soul by jira task completions.
|
| What I'm saying is such a 'live, laugh, love' philosophy
| (but with more profanity) is equivalent to jira task
| completions and your soul is measured entirely differently.
| zelon88 wrote:
| > Jesus christ, used to believe what I believe? bro
| there's literally a pop self-help recommendation at the
| bottom of your reply. I guess we should be grateful it's
| not a ted talk or betterhelp.com review.
|
| Have you read the book? It sounds like you could use some
| of it's teachings. Or maybe you'd be amused by them.
| Either way, this reads like a Reddit comment. Please try
| harder.
|
| > No one is measuring your soul by jira task completions.
|
| Your words, not mine.
|
| > What I'm saying is such a 'live, laugh, love'
| philosophy
|
| Really? Here's what you said.
|
| > This is such a retarded modern take on things, not
| everyone derives meaning from checking off a bucket list
| they read about on some internet listicle. For some of
| us, creating and contributing is the goal.
|
| Can you point out the "live, laugh, love" for me?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| The loss of work for its centering, routine, mental challenges,
| socialization across the generations, and sense of
| accomplishment is harmful to mental and even physical health.
|
| Sure, a construction worker can't be climbing the rafters at 80
| years old, but this idea that we just transition to leisure and
| getting together with friends at a certain point is both fairly
| novel and of dubious value.
| moolcool wrote:
| I don't think that's contradictory to OP though. You can find
| enrichment and fulfillment in work, while also maintaining
| balance with the other aspects of life.
| Retric wrote:
| The idea of retirement is literally thousands of years old at
| this point. Hell the Roman Empire even had the idea of
| pensions though it wasn't that common at the time.
|
| Aging inherently means being unable to be an independent
| productive member of society at some point. (Ed: well past
| what we consider retirement age.) Historically in agrarian
| societies few people reached this point so it wasn't
| generally a significant burden to support them. What changed
| is lowering the retirement age and increased the number of
| people who live long enough to see it.
| esperent wrote:
| > Historically in agrarian societies few people reached
| this point so it wasn't generally a significant burden to
| support them
|
| This isn't true.
|
| https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/15/three-
| scor...
|
| > ...in England, average life expectancy at birth varied
| between 35 and 40 years in the centuries between 1600 and
| 1800. It is a common misconception that, when life
| expectancy was so low, there must have been very few old
| people. In fact, the most common age for adult deaths was
| around 70 years, in line with the Biblical three score
| years and ten.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Yep, infant mortality skews the average and has often led
| to this kind of misconception
| Retric wrote:
| You misunderstood what I was describing. 70 year olds can
| be quite productive doing manual labor in a way that
| basically no 90 year olds can.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Except for, perhaps, Clint Eastwood.
| tomashubelbauer wrote:
| I was thinking about John B Goodenough
| esperent wrote:
| Or Michaelangelo.
| stetrain wrote:
| There are options other than working to the exclusion of
| other fulfillment right up until a specific age cutoff and
| then having zero work.
|
| Honestly saving all of that until retirement is not a great
| idea when you look at how many people die in their 60s and
| 70s and that if you have children and raise a family that's
| going to happen well before retirement as well.
|
| You can also find routine, mental challenges, and
| socialization across the generations without "working" in the
| traditional sense of a full time job for an employer or your
| own business.
|
| There are lots of ways to balance these things out, and to
| find that balance along the way instead of hoping you'll find
| it in some theoretical future retirement.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| That Samsung exec that died suddenly recently at 63 from
| cardiac arrest[0]?
|
| You wonder: yeah, this guy made a fortune, but did he get
| to enjoy his life? If he had just stepped back and said,
| "I'm going to take a break and take it easy" on his 60th,
| would he still be alive?
|
| [0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/tech/samsung-co-ceo-han-
| jong-...
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| You can work, can do all that, without big w Work as the only
| format. Surely if society can compel people into work as a
| means to accomplish those positive ends you mentioned, it can
| be made in a way that still pushes towards those positive
| ends without many of the drawbacks our current system comes
| along with.
| Frieren wrote:
| > Sure, a construction worker can't be climbing the rafters
| at 80 years old, but this idea that we just transition to
| leisure and getting together with friends at a certain point
| is both fairly novel and of dubious value.
|
| Peopled died and killed for the right to a pension. And many
| more are still fighting for it around the world. To disregard
| that so costly-gain right so lightly seems quite a privileged
| position.
|
| A cosy job, stress-free, well paid, creative... may be worth
| keeping if you do not have hobbies nor family. But that is
| not the case for most people. Rich people lives longer than
| the poor, job conditions is one important factor.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| How exactly could those people get the right to a pension
| from the unborn? A scam is a scam, but all Ponzi schemes
| blow up in the end.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > The loss of work for its centering, routine, mental
| challenges, socialization across the generations, and sense
| of accomplishment is harmful to mental and even physical
| health.
|
| Most jobs aren't any of these though. With automation and the
| shift to a service economy jobs have became more and more
| alienating
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| I have enough hobbies/interests/projects and community
| engagement that I'm not super worried about what I'll do when
| I retire. This isn't true for everyone but it would be good
| for society in the US if we focused less on work and more on
| joy.
| v3xro wrote:
| There is still a rather large area of things that you can do
| that are not passive sitting-on-couch/sipping-cocktails
| "leisure" but are nevertheless not classed as "work" because
| there is no monetary compensation (hobbies being a nice
| example). Especially if you are self-motivated, you don't
| need monetary compensation and a boss to tell you what to do,
| and still enjoy all the benefits of "work".
| apercu wrote:
| I would like to have some meaningful part-time work when I
| retire.
|
| Sure, I garden, landscape, play with my tractor, spend more
| time playing guitar than any other hobby and go to the gym 3
| times a week, but I would still want some sort of additional
| "purpose" to keep me engaged with society (I'm not exactly an
| introvert but left purely to my own devices I tend to entertain
| myself pretty solitarily).
| relwin wrote:
| I help out at the local library part time. You meet a variety
| of people (some you know already) and can help them in some
| way. You're also exposed to a wide range of humanity from
| assisting kid's activities (fun!) to tolerating confused
| transients (less fun.)
| apercu wrote:
| A (plant) nursery, a library, elections are all stuff that
| I've considered.
|
| Thanks for reinforcing the library thing (I live in a
| somewhat rural area so maybe different issues there).
|
| I've also thought about machine operating in landscaping (I
| know how to run a tractor and a skid steer so I think I
| would pick up an excavator pretty quickly) but I worry they
| won't want a part-timer.
| jsemrau wrote:
| I'm part of the GenX crowd here. I can't imagine a day when I
| am not building or solving something.
| shapmeans wrote:
| same here, until I closed our startup ~6 months ago and
| decided to do nothing after 19 years of working hard and
| pushing upwards. I lived with my partner so I wasn't paying
| rent, and now I changed my mind about retiring - I can't
| wait. I still got to dabble, I helped a founder friend with
| her core tech, I visited friends, played a bunch of video
| games, spent more time with my partner, and I loved it. Time
| felt comfy, I purposefully was not looking for work, my
| stress levels went down, I walked my dog at least an hour a
| day. I'm now going back to work, even harder problems and
| responsibilities, and while I'm likely to enjoy that, I am
| now looking forward to when I don't have to (assuming that
| happens)
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| That's different from working (as the exchange of your time
| for money).
|
| I love building stuff, I love creating things. If I can
| exchange those things that I want to create for money, that's
| a bonus, but I create because I enjoy that process not
| because I intend to exchange that time for money.
| int_19h wrote:
| > the exchange of your time for money
|
| That's employment.
| codazoda wrote:
| I probably say something similar to this. I plan to create for
| the rest of my life. I'm also trying to build a business out of
| this because I hope that someday it will give me even more
| freedom and maybe even extend that to my kids and grandkids, if
| I were successful enough. It also means that I can set my own
| priorities. I'll likely retire when I'm 65 (too late but I
| don't think I'll be prepared enough to do it earlier) and
| continue to "work" on my own stuff, maybe until I die.
|
| But, yes, I've seen some of the world and I want to see more of
| it. I have a couple groups of friends that hang out more than
| once a month and I've traveled with them multiple times this
| year. I have family that I see pretty often. There's really not
| enough time for all the stuff I do but I'm still driven to
| create.
| eunos wrote:
| I do think some individuals much prefer work over family or
| friends since 'work' relations are professional, formal and
| regulated while personal relationships lack those and are
| chaotic and random.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I always think this is very biased. Basically there are two
| things to consider:
|
| 1. People at deathbed usually don't think very clearly, and it
| suggests the deathbed experience overrules everything before
|
| 2. Many people just have work. They don't have a calling, and
| neither do they have a career. It does sound reasonable to drop
| work for something else, as long as money is fine.
| geodel wrote:
| Excellent points.
|
| Considering I have heard these "Deathbed Quotes" so many
| times with similar sounding refrain I am just inclined to
| ignore them.
|
| And most people I know and see do drop work for family and
| friends ever so often as much their situation permits.
| gamerdonkey wrote:
| > And most people I know and see do drop work for family
| and friends ever so often as much their situation permits.
|
| Your experiences today may well be the result of this idea
| becoming more and more pervasive over the past 30 or so
| years, and the resulting reduction in employee loyalty to
| their employers.
| geodel wrote:
| To be honest this _loyalty_ thing seems to me was
| promoted by corporate management hucksters and now _no
| loyalty_ phenomenon is getting promoted by alternate
| lifestyle peddlers. Most people I have seen at work and
| outside in all these years just work enough that bleak
| alternatives don 't become reality.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Yeah, the usual corporate management stock basically
| stays in a place for a few years, do something (probably
| better if they just do nothing), then jump to another
| one.
|
| There are two sorts, one eventually jumps to politics,
| and one stays in more modern software companies and
| eventually jumps to VC.
| no_wizard wrote:
| Not everyone finds 'the work' to be an interrupt either, to be
| fair. Sometimes the work is the fulfilling part of life, its
| not having more traditional societal roles. Not to say family
| and friends aren't important, they absolutely are, but the way
| I think of it is this way:
|
| When I started working on my own independent venture, I was
| worried about time. I'm not in a position to quit my job, and I
| don't think its going to be a VC thing. So I was struggling to
| find time, so I timed _everything_ I did in a day.
|
| When I did that, I found time I used to idle (IE, not simply
| relaxing or taking needed down time) with TV watching to be a
| few hours a day. Didn't even realize it was something I did, it
| was simply baked into the nightly routine.
|
| Once I replaced that time with working time, I was able to get
| alot farther along. I suspect if my idea ever takes off, I can
| examine things more closely and find and shift more time like
| this.
|
| This is all to say, that you can still enjoy working,
| prioritize work, but not leave family and friends completely in
| the lurch at the same time.
|
| All that said: IMO, if you're putting in the hours, do it for
| yourself, unless you're either moving up to an executive role
| (or equivalent) at a company where you can cash out big, you're
| unfortunately a cog in the machine. The best course of action
| if you really love your work, is to find a sustainable way to
| work for yourself.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| I don't think it's _that_ crazy in certain careers; I 've seen
| a similar sentiment in academics.
|
| Back in grad school, we had several professors emeriti who were
| teaching a class or two, or collaborating with a lab, because
| they just enjoyed it.
| hamburglar wrote:
| I retired last year. Decided I've got enough money to last me
| the rest of my life if I live reasonably, and that's good
| enough for me. I have a 40 hour a week job doing development,
| but it's a passion project that I'm doing purely for enjoyment
| (and I'm working completely for equity). I felt my life
| instantly get easier the moment I quit my old job. It's
| conceivable that this job will make me a pile of money, but I
| know it isn't likely. I see my kids a lot more, I take time off
| when I need it, and I still feel like I'm doing something
| useful. I have decided that this is truly the way to live.
| zelon88 wrote:
| A lifetime is a long time. Viewpoints, opinions, standpoints,
| circumstances and plans rarely last a lifetime.
| calderwoodra wrote:
| Been there and done many of the things you described, have a
| family today and I still love being a founder and working very
| long weeks. I know not everyone is like this though.
|
| The only unmet desire I have left to work towards is to serve
| others and improve everyone else's life. And building a big
| successful business is the best way to maximize that desire.
| The clearest derivatives of my work efforts are the great jobs
| and work created for everyone at the company and the
| improvement on our customers lives.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> I completely get the drive to create; I have various side
| projects I make for fun and to learn._
|
| Some of my side projects would be straight up finically
| impossible if I didn't have willing buyers for the product. I
| agree that creation is my ultimate motivation, but so long as I
| continue to enjoy and wish to pursue this those specific modes
| of creation, I have to accept that it will also be work.
| Perhaps that is where those other perspectives are also coming
| from?
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| First, you can do all those things while you work. They are
| called vacations, and in most of the World, you get 5
| weeks/year minimum. With the rise of remote work, and nomadic
| lifestyles, you might even be able to do this while working in
| different ways.
|
| A few people have said they can empathise with the notion of
| never retiring - which I think is a different thing - and I can
| kind of understand that too.
|
| Work doesn't need to be 40+ hours/week of grind, and it doesn't
| need to be something you don't enjoy. Making money from those
| side projects - that can be your work. The reason why so many
| people want to be influencers, is because their work becomes
| something fun, where they learn, and where they create. I can
| imagine doing that for a long time.
|
| So while I can't imagine working in a corp environment doing
| 40+ hours/week when I'm 70, can I imagine having my own side
| business? Maybe a few non-exec directorships? Perhaps help with
| a fractional/part-time gig one or two days a week? Sure.
|
| Can I imagine just being on holiday for the rest of my life,
| where I'm constantly "exploring", or "experiencing" and never
| "applying" or "creating"? Not so much.
|
| The old saying goes that if you earn money doing what you love,
| you never work a day in your life - and that might be where
| there's a disconnect, you're interpreting work as something not
| enjoyable, whereas for many of us, there's really deep pleasure
| in some aspects of it. All we want to do is dial that bit up,
| dial the other stuff down, and still do all those other things
| you mentioned too, perhaps as part of the "work".
| trallnag wrote:
| Traveling all over the world is very bad for the environment
| and climate...
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I hate that quote, it is so trite and stupid.
|
| What poor person wouldn't want to have provided more for their
| family. What scientist would say I discovered enough. What
| engineer would say I built enough.
|
| When you are alone who or what do you think about? People have
| different goals, dreams and desires. Claiming yours are the
| only ones worthy of pursuing seems rather arrogant.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Lost my grandpa a couple years ago and he said almost exactly
| "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" on his deathbed.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I think you might be creating a backstory for this person
| without any knowledge to ground it on. That's inevitable, we
| all do it, but be careful about drawing conclusions based on
| unevidenced assumptions.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm happily married, have plenty of friends and family and I
| don't see myself not working until someone won't hire me. I'm
| 50.
|
| My wife and started traveling a lot after Covid lifted and I
| started working remotely. We did the "digital nomad" thing for
| a year across the US until the year before last and even since
| then we are on a plane to do _something_ for fun around a dozen
| times a year. Going forward, we have 6-8 "vacations" planned
| per year for the next few years and sometimes we stay in
| another city for a month at a time.
|
| This was before I had unlimited PTO and plan on averaging 30
| days a year. _Work_ isn't a limiting factor.
|
| It's a lot easier to spend $20K-$30K+ a year (plus playing the
| credit card points game) when you have income coming in. Also
| everything you mentioned is a lot easier to do when you are
| young and healthy than when you are 65.
|
| I couldn't possibly see having our travel schedule later in
| life. True we aren't "young". But we are both gym rats
| IMTDb wrote:
| > "When I'm on my deathbed, I won't look back at my life and
| wish I had worked harder. I'll look back and wish I spent more
| time with the people I loved."
|
| On the other hand; when they interview people and ask them to
| "give advice to your younger self", I can't count how many
| times the guy / girl said: "work harder in school".
|
| Ultimately it's all about balance, money absolutely does buy
| happiness; and so does doing an interesting job. Reach a point
| where you have enough money that it does not occupy a
| significant portion of your mind; and work hard enough to reach
| a position where you don't look at the clock the moment you
| arrive at your workplace.
| einpoklum wrote:
| When I'm on my deathbed, I'll probably wish I'd worked harder -
| on trying to stop Israel (= where I live) 's genocide in Gaza.
| That's what I feel most guilty about.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| My grandfather was a doctor and lived a modest life. But he
| worked all his life. In his 70s he was still volunteering at a
| local hospice. In fact on his 78th birthday, he went to work in
| the morning, then attended his birthday party, then had a
| stroke and died a few weeks later. He never
|
| > swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed
| snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets
| of Tokyo, etc.
|
| But I think he enjoyed his life just as it was.
| antimoan wrote:
| I think it boils down to differences of point of view. One
| enjoys travel, one enjoys work, one get satisfaction from
| creating art, one enjoys being athletic, one wants to do it
| all. All perspectives are valid and none is better than the
| other. I think the world would be pretty boring if everyone
| thought the same way and acted the same way.
|
| IMO what matters in all this is not identifying with the
| activity or people. Of course work and employers can disappoint
| you, but so do people who you love. Your partner might leave
| you, your kids might disappoint you, your friends might become
| busy and distance themselves from you. What if there is an
| accident and cannot travel the world anymore? Where does that
| leave you? All those destinations and experiences, and you
| cannot experience them.
|
| I think Woody Allen says it best:
|
| "It's just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying
| our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as
| possible so we don't have to really face up to the fact that,
| you know, we're just temporary people with a very short time in
| a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And
| everything that you value, whether it's Shakespeare, Beethoven,
| da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone.
| The sun will be gone. There'll be nothing. The best you can do
| to get through life is distraction. Love works as a
| distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract
| yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract
| yourself."
|
| Except the key is not to distract yourself but instead try to
| know yourself deep down. And you reach a point where there is
| no destination, person, job, or activity that holds your
| happiness hostage, everything is just is and you go with the
| flow.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Systemically, there is a bias to find/retain employees that
| overcommit, and a bias for employers that will undercommit to the
| "relationship".
|
| Rationally you can agree it is a purely transactional state.
| Working hours for compensation. Emotionally in tech many love the
| work itself, or the nerdy glamour of the industry, or the
| inherent intelectual bravadory and oneupmanship, and so are ripe
| for exploitation.
|
| HR will draw you in, infecting your social life with company
| perks, values and "we are a family" messaging only to turn all
| process when it comes to an end.
|
| But as the systemics are clear, each new generation will get
| drawn in. And tbh, often it can still be a good deal.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Eh, I'm okay with doing more than required, as long as the
| employer also does so on their part.
| Chinjut wrote:
| They won't.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| Well right now they do for me at least...
| chii wrote:
| butif the employer also do their part, then you're not doing
| more than required - you're doing _exactly_ what is required.
|
| The only way to do more than required is when one party
| benefits more (e.g., employer gets free overtime, or an
| employee clocks more hours than they actually did).
| pydry wrote:
| I haven't seen much of a bias towards seeking out a
| _predisposition_ to loyalty in employees except among
| authoritarian small business owner types who invariably
| underpay.
|
| I don't think offering perks is necessarily supposed to
| engender loyalty. It's still a transactional relationship ("ok,
| google might pay less than the startup but I do get free
| lunches at google...").
|
| In most companies I have more often seen not even a shred of
| expectation of loyalty. It's pretty normal to see critical
| employees quit at an inconvenient time on a critical project
| and the only person who expresses any bad feelings is the
| employee in question feeling a bit guilty.
| mancerayder wrote:
| >I haven't seen much of a bias towards seeking out a
| predisposition to loyalty in employees except among
| authoritarian small business owner types who invariably
| underpay.
|
| It's easy. Some red flags:
|
| "This is not a 9 to 5 job, you should know that. But that's
| normal in this industry"
|
| "We're looking for people who are passionate about their
| work"
|
| "I won't sugarcoat it, there are good and bad weeks" in terms
| of workload and hours
|
| "We see a gap in your resume here a decade ago - may I ask
| why you took time off during this time"
|
| etc
|
| Those are signals.
|
| There's a normalization of sociopathy in the hiring process.
| That's how we filter. Or maybe it's just financial services?
| pydry wrote:
| Yours are signals that a company is selecting for people
| who will consent to being overworked. That's not about
| loyalty.
|
| Loyalty would be "we're looking for candidates who have
| long job tenures. do not apply if you never stayed at a job
| longer than 3 years".
| dasil003 wrote:
| I agree with your first paragraph, but I don't really like the
| exploitation framing for tech jobs. Sure there is exploitation
| but there is also a lot of rest and vest going on. When you
| look at who's delivering value in software it's very unevenly
| distributed and only loosely correlated with raw work hours. A
| big part is collaboration and team dynamics. The ground
| dynamics are much more relevant than HR narratives when it
| comes to how a job feels and whether high expectations are
| motivating or seem exploitative.
| alganet wrote:
| I quit.
| ohgr wrote:
| I am not loyal to my employer. I am loyal to doing competent
| work. If our goals align, then we will get on.
|
| Any gaslighting or bullshit past that will be fucked off
| instantly.
| dismas wrote:
| > I am loyal to doing competent work. If our goals align, then
| we will get on.
|
| 100% agreed here, but I've also noticed I've had a fair few
| managers who didn't know what to do with someone like this.
| Sure, promotions are nice and what not, but if I'm not
| producing interesting work (or managing a team of people
| producing interesting work), it's pretty difficult to care
| about said job, and I'll move on quickly.
| romanovcode wrote:
| I think one of the most important part of an employee is being
| loyal to the company. But if there was some other company that
| pays more for my loyalty...
|
| I'm going to wherever they value my loyalty the most.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| That's not what loyalty means. It means that the employer will
| pay you fairly and treat you decently. It doesn't mean they
| will pay you top dollar. What you described is a purely
| contractual relationship, and such job hopping comes with its
| own strong risks.
| agubelu wrote:
| I dislike the word "loyalty" when talking about employment.
| Loyalty is for your spouse, friends and family. Your relationship
| with your employer is a contractual one.
|
| When it comes to my job, I believe in doing your best possible
| work, being professional and acting in good faith. I expect to be
| paid fairly and treated with respect. If this relationship is
| mutually beneficial, it can go on for a long while. But it's
| important to remember that, as soon as it stops being beneficial
| to one party, it will be unilaterally rescinded.
| shinycode wrote:
| 100% agree, loyalty goes both ways and we rarely see loyal
| employers (massive layoffs including hi-profile employee who
| dedicated their life to the company)
| dasil003 wrote:
| Loyalty to a corporation is misplaced because it can only be
| as loyal as its agents are, and those are numerous and
| constantly shifting.
|
| I think its fine to be loyal to individuals that have earned
| it, but don't make the mistake of thinking your boss can
| guarantee your employment in all circumstances, that's not
| how the corporate world works.
| Haul4ss wrote:
| This is a very rich-world view of work. Most people can't just
| "unilaterally rescind" their employment if they decide they
| don't like it anymore.
|
| I don't disagree with what you're getting at, just understand
| that loyalty is a necessity to a lot of folks, and I don't
| think it is because their values are misplaced.
| agubelu wrote:
| I understand your point, but I wouldn't call that loyalty
| either. Loyalty is a choice, you could cheat on your partner,
| but you choose not to.
|
| What you're talking about is necessity. If you don't have the
| possibility to simply walk away from a job, then you're
| sticking around because you must, not because you're loyal.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Yeah,that's loyalty in the same way that a hostage is loyal
| to their captor.
| k__ wrote:
| They said "stops beneficial to one party", not that any of
| the parties stops liking it.
|
| Many people don't like their jobs, that doesn't mean they
| don't benefit enough from it to pay bills.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| >Most people can't just "unilaterally rescind" their
| employment if they decide they don't like it anymore.
|
| I suspect what's meant here is that most anyone can take a
| different job and leave one that no longer serves them, not
| that most anyone can walk away from a job without another
| lined up.
| xp84 wrote:
| I agree, and also, if it becomes not beneficial to me (for
| instance, large increase in responsibility for no raise), I
| will move from "do my absolute best mode" to "minimum
| effort mode" until I can line up something else -- which is
| just me realigning my effort level to match the standard
| set by the Company.
| energy123 wrote:
| Red flag if bosses use that word, it's either an attempt to
| manipulate or they have a weird entitled view of what you owe
| them.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I don't like the word "loyalty" when talking about anything.
| It's not a virtue in any circumstance. Spouses, friends and
| family are just as likely to abuse it. A bullshit concept
| celebrated by those who crave power. It's Religion Light.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Note: This post originally appeared in HackerNoon in 2018. I'm
| republishing it here in order to preserve and share the original
| piece.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Hustle hard! Work is not everything! You are what you do! Life is
| adventure! Your team is your family! It's just business! Don't
| have expectations! No, do have expectations! This company is
| different! Wait, all companies are the same! Go on vacation! No!
| Come back! Be more productive! No, wait, be less productive, have
| work-life balance...
|
| Just don't be an asshole. Some loyalty is fine... or not! It
| depends!
| oofManBang wrote:
| > I'm constantly witness to colleagues in the tech industry
| posting on LinkedIn about how great their employer
|
| Whatever happened to dignity?
| keiferski wrote:
| Meta comment: the situation with employee-employer loyalty seems
| pretty similar to the loyalty situation in other aspects of
| modern life like dating/marriage partner-partner, politician-
| constituent, or friend-friend: you're not incentivized to be
| loyal and in a lot of situations, you're actually incentivized to
| not be loyal and to continually look for better opportunities.
|
| To me, that feels like a failure of the deeper social system. I
| _want_ to be loyal to the people I work for /with, not treat our
| relationship like a transaction that is socially acceptable to
| end at any minute. And in a bigger sense, I don't think it
| results in organizations that do truly good work over longer
| timescales.
|
| Maybe the solution isn't Japanese-style one megacorporation for
| life employment...but a few steps toward incentivizing loyalty
| probably wouldn't hurt.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| That's complete nonsense. An employer is nothing like a
| partner. And as for those who are not loyal to friends, they
| will quickly find themselves without any.
|
| As long as the employer is not solving world hunger or finding
| a cure for disease, the relationship is strictly transactional,
| and will remain as such.
| keiferski wrote:
| I didn't say that they are similar types of things, but that
| similar incentive structures are at play across them. That
| seems pretty obvious to me if we look at 1) the way employees
| make more money by changing jobs often and 2) how people
| using dating apps are always complaining about FOMO, infinite
| choice, and so on. In both situations the "user" is
| incentivized to not be loyal.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| They're not the same. Commitment is a thing in personal
| relationships. In a professional relationship, it is still
| a thing, but it is contingent on the employer demonstrating
| it. The first side to break the commitment is the one who
| is in the wrong.
|
| Infinite choice is something to exercise before making a
| commitment, not after it.
| stuxnet79 wrote:
| > To me, that feels like a failure of the deeper social system.
| I want to be loyal to the people I work for/with, not treat our
| relationship like a transaction that is socially acceptable to
| end at any minute.
|
| Great comment. The confounding variable here is culture.
|
| American cultural norms devalue stable relationships in favor
| of personal fulfillment and self-actualization.
|
| It isn't like this everywhere. There's a reason why business
| culture is different in Asia. The underlying attitudes there
| regarding social norms and how people can relate to each other
| i.e. what's acceptable and not acceptable, are very different.
| As a result, commerce there is conducted differently as well.
| Richard Nisbett wrote a book that goes into detail on this
| topic [1]
|
| I will not make a judgement on which approach is better, or tie
| it into economic metrics but the bottom line is that attitudes
| towards work such as this one are highly influenced by the
| underlying behavioral norms. Without acknowledging this I don't
| think you can have a productive conversation on the topic.
|
| [1] The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think
| Differently...and Why - Richard Nisbett
| smokel wrote:
| This article is written by a recruiter. Recruiters make less
| money if everyone stays put. So repeating this trope about
| employees being transactions might be great for them, but it does
| not contribute to a more friendly society.
|
| A bit of trust and loyalty makes working together a lot more
| enjoyable. And not every CEO is a narcissist. Just stay away from
| the really big companies, and you might be fine.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > So repeating this trope about employees being transactions
| might be great for them, but it does not contribute to a more
| friendly society.
|
| And repeating the trope that employees should be loyal to
| employers only benefit corporations and those that profit from
| them, to the detriment of labour.
| Peroni wrote:
| I hadn't considered the idea that my motivation for writing
| this might be interpreted as a ploy to generate more business.
| :)
|
| Most of my perspective comes from working for and with
| startups. There's nothing wrong with _a bit_ of mutual trust
| and loyalty. I 'm simply warning that too much of either can be
| detrimental.
| borgster wrote:
| Most wars involve deception at some level and then loyalty is
| vital. You need to prove that to the command center in stages.
| But when you get in you're rewarded handsomely.
|
| Many low quality engineers have accidently stumbled upon this
| lucrative truth, simply because they had low optionality to move
| elsewhere and therefore also rank ethical considerations very low
| as a motivating criterion.
| alganet wrote:
| A company is a machine, it cannot give loyalty back. Ever.
|
| Loyalty in people disappeared decades ago (I would say earlier,
| but I wasn't there). You are mistaking strength by numbers for
| loyalty. What you describe is nothing like it.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Individuals within a company can be loyal, and sometimes
| corporate decisions are made based on perceived loyalty
| alganet wrote:
| I think you are mistaking hierarchy and obedience for
| loyalty.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Even if you are content at your job, there are risks in staying
| for very long periods of time.
|
| If you've ever joined an org where key people have been there for
| decades then you'll know of the immense amount of interior
| knowledge that these folks have. At best, they become
| instituional memories of the org, at worst, a cabal. The worst
| case is obvious: you can't get anything done barring their
| approval, and as a newbie you aren't in the club. But the best
| case is more insidious: because of the long timers, no one has
| documented processes, recorded the special tricks needed for the
| job, or done a simulation of what would happen if one of these
| key people were to evaporate. (And it does happen, because after
| 20+ years on the job, they are at the age where sudden death
| strikes happen, eg heart attacks.)
|
| If you become one of these people, great, but you may find that
| you have expert knowledge in a very small domain, which is
| difficult if you get laid off. Which brings me on to my next
| point.
|
| If you stay at a place for a long time, you are going to build a
| network of work friends, who, naturally, also stayed at the same
| place for your tenure. This is great, but also dangerous, because
| the network of people who can help you find a new job are not
| dispersed and at the same risk of layoffs as you.
|
| If you work in the widget industry, and you and all your buddies
| work for WidgetCorp, what happens when WidgetCorp lays you off?
| Who do you call to start finding work in widgets? You need a
| diaspora of people in your industry who you knew from WidgetCo
| but who moved on to WidgetInc or whatever, and likewise, you
| yourself can be that person by moving on from your company after
| a few years.
| chii wrote:
| > what happens when WidgetCorp lays you off?
|
| While you're at widgetcorp, make your name known in the
| industry as the expert of widgets. Essentially, it's a sort of
| public portfilio. Surely, there are widgetcorp competitors out
| there, which if they get wind of your immenent layoff, might
| take a bet at hiring you. Not to mention you might be able to
| poach the other members of widgetcorp as an entire team.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| My view is that you can't be loyal to a company because a company
| can't be loyal to you.
|
| Loyalty is personal. You can be loyal to a boss because that boss
| has earned it over time by demonstrating that they are also loyal
| to you and will have your back.
| begueradj wrote:
| Everybody hides his true opinion about this subject.
| k__ wrote:
| You should be loyal to your craft, not to your employer.
|
| You might have a job as a developer at some company that could
| get terminated at any time. Your skills and reputation remain
| irrespectively.
| catmanjan wrote:
| What about the loyal loom operators?
| francisofascii wrote:
| I am guessing some of those loom operators transitioned to
| mending and patching, and operating the new machines.
| Guessing we will do the same. Just not all of us will make
| it.
| k__ wrote:
| Transfer skills are important too.
|
| I saw quite some Flash devs struggle after the iPhone
| release. Still, there were some that were good Devs that
| transitioned into other technologies.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| > Do not buy into the bullshit hype of "hustle" to appease your
| employer
|
| I completely disagree here. Hustling under the right leadership
| is as good for you as for the business. You learn the industry,
| hone your skills, network, and improve your understanding of the
| interactions between different business functions. IME, people
| who go above and beyond and produce value beyond just doing what
| their immediate supervisor tells them - even challenging them in
| the right ways for a better outcome - tend to survive through
| layoffs too. You can make work a reasonable part of your life,
| but still try your damndest during those hours.
| Loughla wrote:
| There's a difference between trying your damndest during
| working hours, and hustle nonsense. In my experience, employers
| see time spent on site as a measure of success more than how
| productive you are during your regular workday.
|
| So I read that to mean, don't kill yourself working unpaid
| overtime. You can still do a great job, working established
| working hours. I agree with that 100%. While I'm at work, I'm
| at work. But the moment that the day is over, work does not
| exist and will not exist.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Spot on. Modern jobs are 100% transactional with very few
| exceptions.
|
| This is a relatively new development, and there ARE some
| counterexamples available among the large employers local to me,
| but you can't assume you'll get one. (In Houston, for example, if
| a long-term employee of an oil major is on the "layoff list"
| close to a tenure milestone, they'll find a way to keep them --
| 20 years is a magic number for retention of insurance here.)
|
| PEOPLE can be worthy of loyalty, but in a large corporation being
| loyal to a manager who is 4 layers down the tree is silly. You
| can and will be laid off by people who don't know your name. It's
| one reason I've stayed in smaller firms. I'm loyal to MY boss,
| because he owns the firm, and because he's showed ME loyalty.
| grvdrm wrote:
| How much are jobs then attained in purely transactional ways?
|
| Perhaps I am too invested in people, but relationships matter
| my industry (insurance). I think you develop them in part by
| not being purely transactional, and they later help if you need
| to love, explore, or change.
|
| Am I wrong about that dynamic?
| ubermonkey wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're asking.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Others have already written in their comments on this post about
| how silly the idea of loyalty to a company is.
|
| I think all I'll add to that is that I have ended up at the point
| where I doubt I'll ever give my "best" work to an employer again
| - I'm just there to put the JIRA tickets in the bag, so to speak.
|
| My best work is now exclusively reserved for things in my free
| time that I have a personal interest in.
| dasil003 wrote:
| What does loyalty have to do with the quality of your work?
|
| I'm all for boundaries by the way, not overworking etc, but my
| "best" work tends to come out unpredictably when the conditions
| are right. The people and project matter, but the fact that
| employment is transactional doesn't really factor in for me.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| > What does loyalty have to do with the quality of your work?
|
| For me? Everything
|
| Maybe this won't be the case anymore when I get assigned to
| the severed floor, but until then...
|
| > but my "best" work tends to come out unpredictably when the
| conditions are right
|
| I get this, but the moment this "feeling" comes up during my
| 9-5 I nip it in the bud
| dasil003 wrote:
| > I get this, but the moment this "feeling" comes up during
| my 9-5 I nip it in the bud
|
| I hear this sentiment a lot, and after 25 years in the
| software industry I have a visceral understanding of why it
| is the appropriate response in certain
| environments/situations. On the other hand, I've been in
| situations where going above and beyond has been well
| rewarded (both monetarily and in terms of work
| satisfaction).
|
| To me this has to be contextual to a specific
| job/team/project or you risk cutting off your nose to spite
| your face. Doing the bare minimum is a necessary defense
| mechanism in a toxic environment--and no judgement on
| anyone doing what they have to do to survive--but the flip
| side of this attitude is it disqualifies you from the best,
| most satisfying teams to work on.
| grvdrm wrote:
| Did a switch flip or was it a gradual turn?
|
| I think about this too: should I just have a job to do the job
| well enough / adequately so to speak and then focus my brain
| power elsewhere (kids, house, amateur trades, etc)
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Switch flip after I was unceremoniously laid off from a
| Series C (now D) company (along with 25% of my fellow comrade
| workers) that I went many extra miles, many times, to stop
| from going under between Seed - Series C.
|
| I'm still what people refer to as a "10xer" (though I don't
| like this term) when it comes to my own projects[1], but at
| this point if an employer wants this kind of quality from me,
| they'd need to x10 whatever initial salary offer they present
| me with.
|
| Besides my own software projects, I now put the extra brain
| power into music, dance, videography, editing etc., and life
| is good.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Don't do it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
| rckt wrote:
| I got it pretty early in my career that loyalty for a company is
| concept to make you work harder without asking anything in
| return. And the moment the company shifts focus and you are out
| of it, then suddenly you understand that this loyalty wasn't kind
| of a credits account which you've been saving all this time. It's
| simply nothing. You are on your own and can fuck off.
|
| So there's simply no place for loyalty in employer-employee
| relationships. One side pays money or whatever, the other is
| delivering the job being done. That's all.
| StormChaser_5 wrote:
| Agree 100% but for my own mental health I like to pretend
| loyalty does exist day to day but give myself a wake up call if
| that credit account as you call it is getting too big
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Employer? No. But I've seen some very smart coworkers value and
| reward deep, specialized knowledge that is built through
| working in the same area (of not just tech but also business
| application) for many years.
| xingped wrote:
| Doesn't really matter how much your coworkers value you when
| your employer suddenly decides tomorrow that they've decided
| to change focus for the 5th time this month and it's your
| department getting cut this time.
| jayd16 wrote:
| After a layoff is when your reputation matters most, no?
| thunky wrote:
| That's experience, which has nothing to do with loyalty.
| mycall wrote:
| There is some coorelation. To get the experience, you need
| to appear be a team player and show some signs of loyality
| to continue obtaining the experience. Different employers
| have different checks on this, often ego based.
| thunky wrote:
| > you need to [...] show some signs of loyality to
| continue obtaining the experience
|
| That may be true for a bad employer but no good employer
| should ever demand loyalty in exchange for continued
| employment.
|
| If you hire a landscaping service to mow your lawn every
| week do you demand loyalty from them? I hope not, because
| that would be ridiculous.
| hylaride wrote:
| It's camaraderie. Some of the best professional
| relationships I've had were in terribly run organizations
| with like-minded peers. I don't know why, but strong bonds
| form in those situations (and taken to the extreme in the
| military).
| thunky wrote:
| > It's camaraderie
|
| Ok, but it's not loyalty. At least I hope not...
|
| Those like-minded peers you've had owed you no nothing.
| You had a fair, respectful, professional relationship
| with them that was self sustaining and therefore did not
| demand allegience in either direction.
|
| If a better opportunity came along for them I would hope
| that you would want them to take it despite your history
| and the camaraderie you've established with them. And
| same for you.
| hylaride wrote:
| > If a better opportunity came along for them I would
| hope that you would want them to take it despite your
| history and the camaraderie you've established with them.
| And same for you.
|
| To me, it was not about people leaving you behind, but
| calling you up when opportunities arise (though I didn't
| feel that way when it first happened at the beginning of
| my career). Camaraderie doesn't mean you owe people or
| are owed anything, but is a mutual level of trust and
| support.
|
| Of the 6 jobs I've had over the past 20 years, 5 of them
| have been from former colleagues reaching out.
| thunky wrote:
| I think we're agreeing. I just don't think loyalty
| (necessarily) implies mutual trust and support.
|
| I've been accused of being disloyal simply for being
| honest and not agreeing with someone else's stance. So in
| my gut, loyalty implies abondoning your principals or
| compromising yourself in some way in order to gain or
| keep favor with someone else.
|
| I suppose others may think of loyalty as a positive
| trait. But in the context of of a profressional
| relationship, I can't see any reason we should want
| loyalty to play a role.
| teucris wrote:
| This is the trap I fall into. I have had so many amazing
| colleagues and I want to do right by them. Sometimes it's
| been trench camaraderie, sometimes just really great working
| relationships, but I almost always feel like I owe it to my
| fellow employees to work hard, do well for the company, etc.
|
| It's taken me a long time to learn, but that form of loyalty
| doesn't equate to employer loyalty.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| All loyalty is a risk. Even loyalty to your spouse is a risk.
| Just like how all love and human trust is a risk.
|
| To feel human you have to take these emotional risks. You
| shouldn't bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute and utter
| loyalty to you. You shouldn't bet your entire life that your
| spouse has absolute loyalty to you (we have divorce, pre-nups,
| and post-nups for a reason). But it strikes me as a pretty
| soulless existence to have no loyalty to your place of work, in
| the same way it would be a pretty soulless existence to never
| form loyalty with the people in your life, even if it isn't
| absolute loyalty.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Things don't deserve loyalty. Your company is a "thing".
|
| People - people can absolutely deserve loyalty, and those
| people can be managers, coworkers, spouses, family, etc.
|
| But don't mix the two up in your mind.
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| Unfortunately all managers focus on push rank, so why
| loyalty to them?
| 13hunteo wrote:
| This is an overly broad generalisation - there are many
| cases of managers that do their best to primarily look
| after those under them, not just focus on getting higher
| up.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> Things don't deserve loyalty. Your company is a
| "thing"._
|
| A country is a thing and loyalty to it is called
| "patriotism". A sports-team or TV show or band is a thing,
| loyalty to it is called "fandom". Loyalty to an idea or
| philosophy is called "being principled" or "idealism". Do
| you believe that things don't deserve loyalty, such that
| all of these are errors? Or do these examples not capture
| the sense of your statement?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Perhaps it should be refined to say that "profit-oriented
| things" that view existence as purely transactions don't
| deserve loyalty.
| OpenDrapery wrote:
| Sports franchises are the ultimate trick, in that they
| are profit-oriented, yet they somehow play on our tribal
| nature and fool us into forgetting about the profit part.
|
| I guess you could argue the same for a church.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Thanks to the financialization of everything, perhaps the
| same can be said of colleges and universities!
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| That's right, they do not deserve loyalty. All of these
| things hijack our loyalty to people in the name of some
| higher-order goal. Sports team and TV show loyalty is
| there to get us to consume more. Loyalty to a country
| gets us to be reliable cogs in someone else's grand
| project. Loyalty to a philosophy gets us to be a cult
| leader's acolyte.
|
| Skip the substitute and go for the real thing: loyalty to
| people. You can still join grand projects, but do it
| consciously rather than on instinct.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Your examples are bizarre (sports teams are a matter of
| petty entertainment, not proper objects of loyalty).
| Philosophy isn't an object of loyalty either.
|
| However, you should acquaint yourself with the principle
| of subsidiarity. Loyalty, duty, and love radiate outward
| from those who are owed the most diminishing to those who
| are owed the least (spouses, then children, then parents,
| etc., all the way through extended family and then
| community and nation and finally the human race). The
| loyalty is to the objective good. How that is expressed
| will be modified by contingent factors particular to a
| given person's situation.
| bee_rider wrote:
| They didn't come up with the sports team example, it
| comes from the comment they are responding to.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Sports team and TV show loyalty is there to get us to
| consume more._
|
| A less cynical take: there seems to be some research that
| following sports fosters greater social connectivity and
| well-being. It may just be that we're hardwired to be
| tribal. From that context, sports seems to be a
| relatively benign way to tap into that.
| senderista wrote:
| "If I had to choose between betraying my country and
| betraying my friend, I hope I would have the guts to
| betray my country."
|
| --EM Forster, "What I Believe"
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The problem here is that Forster is relativising the
| good.
|
| I am not betraying my country by refusing to follow laws
| or decrees that require that I engage in intrinsically
| evil deeds. I am not loyal to my friend if I do evil
| things he asks me to do.
|
| Our loyalty is to the objective good of our country and
| our friend. Otherwise, there is no such thing as loyalty.
| int_19h wrote:
| There are situations when you genuinely must betray your
| country to protect your friend, or vice versa.
|
| For example, if your country is a multiethnic empire that
| is unsustainable as a single entity without compulsion
| and forced assimilation, and your friend happens to be an
| ethnic minority in it.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Patriotism is mostly just propaganda to make people
| willing to kill and die for some old cynical geezers'
| delusions of grandeur. The guy said it right, countries
| don't deserve loyalty either. Lots of Russians are
| figuring this out firsthand these days.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Yes, all of these things do not deserve loyalty. There
| are values i hold dear, if a philosophy or state holds on
| to the same values, i support them. If they turn away
| from them, no reason to be loyal.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Are you perhaps confusing loyalty to an incumbent regime
| with loyalty to a nation or people?
| willcipriano wrote:
| A nation? Or a economic zone?
|
| A people? Or a population of foreign guest workers?
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| A nation can change, a people can become corrupt, the
| values stay and if for example a democracy steered by
| corrupted peoples betrays itself, a democrat with values
| can just soldier on without getting into any loyalty
| conflict. A sadness for what has fallen may linger.
| int_19h wrote:
| Not really. Have you ever heard a saying, "right or
| wrong, my country"? That's exactly the kind of toxic
| stuff that loyalty to entities leads to.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Strictly speaking, a philosophy can't turn away from
| values. A person can, but philosophy itself is, to a
| first order approximation, an immutable bundle of values.
|
| Of course this naive view quickly falls apart when
| interpretation comes into play, as it always must. In the
| extreme, one may assert that "philosophy" is encoded in
| the behavior of it's adherents, and these behaviors may
| have little or nothing to do with the "canonical"
| representation of the philosophy as immutable text. Or
| more precisely the behavior and words can be profoundly
| decoupled. Many examples of this decoupling occurs to
| your thought (and mine). So when you say that a
| philosophy can "turn away" from values, in this sense
| that is true.
|
| I prefer to think of philosophies as a kind of Platonic
| ideal, which are then subject to all the foibles of the
| humans who associate themselves to them. There are some
| subtle problems with this view, which I'd rather not
| confront.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Strictly speaking you are right. But words change
| meanings and philosophies get hijacked, deformed and
| loaded with barely affiliated concepts or movements.
|
| So the idea as it was might be a value, but what the word
| means may decay into something frankenstein wouldn't
| recognise as his handy work .
| dspillett wrote:
| _> A country is a thing and loyalty to it is called
| "patriotism"._
|
| That sort of loyalty is not quite the same: protecting
| your own to indirectly protect yourself. People often see
| their "external tribes" as an extension of their self
| much likely they do family/friends, rather than them
| being part of it like a company. I am a Spillett. I am a
| Yorkshireman, I am English, I am UKian, I am European, I
| work for TL. Notice the difference in language in that
| last one.
|
| This is part of why some get so offended when you poke
| fun at their town/county/country: if they see it as an
| extension of their identity more than just somewhere they
| live then your disrespect is a personal attack. They
| would not likely defend their employer nearly as
| passionately.
| nemomarx wrote:
| notice the mirage version of this with some companies -
| one can be a "googler" or so on, and companies try to
| encourage this identification
| int_19h wrote:
| > That sort of loyalty is not quite the same: protecting
| your own to indirectly protect yourself.
|
| I would argue that this is a tit-for-tat, and as such,
| not really an example of loyalty per se. Loyalty would be
| protecting your country even when it doesn't actually
| benefit you and yours in any tangible way. And it has all
| the same problems as corporate loyalty, really.
| bumby wrote:
| > _protecting your country even when it doesn 't actually
| benefit you_
|
| Perhaps this needs some nuance. It seems like duty has
| some relevance here. Military service may not actually
| benefit someone directly, and it could easily be a
| detriment at the individual level. But societies struggle
| to operate effectively for very long when everyone takes
| an individualistic transactional mindset. At some point,
| it becomes a collective action problem that needs to find
| a balance between serving a sense of duty to society as a
| whole and society not taking advantage of such
| sentiments.
| amelius wrote:
| What about your boss, then.
| eitally wrote:
| It depends. I posted why in more detail in a different
| reply to this thread.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| not that binary lmao
| convolvatron wrote:
| i think we can draw a distinction between loyalty to the
| company, either as an abstract entity or its concrete
| leadership, and human relationships with people who may also
| be employed there. there are two companies here, one has a
| stock ticker and the other is an organic collection of
| people. i dont owe either of them loyalty, but the second
| company might easily earn it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| This soullessness wasn't always the case. Prior to the cost-
| cutting minmaxing of Jack Welch's _industries_ -influential
| tenure as CEO of General Electric, corporate America wasn't
| quite so brazen about layoffs, because they weren't viewed as
| a way to maximize shareholder returns- and shareholder value
| wasn't viewed as the only priority for corporate leaders. (He
| also introduced what would later become stack ranking at
| Microsoft and other tech companies.)
|
| On the other side, certainly a fluid labor market such as
| tech was a couple of years ago would foster a lack of
| loyalty, as employees hop from employer to employer for rapid
| career growth.
|
| None of this necessarily contradicts with your point. It's
| just labor relations don't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes a lot
| needs to be done to earn trust in a low-trust cultural
| environment.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| But also there were actual benefits to loyalty that don't
| exist anymore. Labor union participation was huge in the
| post WWII, pre-Welch time frame. They used that leverage to
| negotiate benefits, many of which rewarded loyalty. Pension
| plans vs 401ks, significant pay raises based on seniority,
| clear paths to promotion, job security prioritizing senior
| workers, etc. Those things permeated through job markets
| and companies without unions as well, given the labor force
| competition. People were loyal because they had real
| tangible compensation and benefits for it.
|
| I think another shift around Welch was that companies used
| to focus more on long term value, which would result in
| stock price increases in the long term, even if not in any
| given short term. That if a company was healthy and
| valuable, one of the many benefits would be rising stocks.
| The shift to focus on short term stock increases as almost
| the only goal, means companies will pull the copper piping
| out the walls and destroy the house if it means a juicy
| bump in the Q3 earnings call.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yeah, there's certainly been a steady erosion of labor
| benefits in the postwar. To dial back my own great man
| theory a bit, Welch was active in the '80s when Reagan
| and Thatcher were in power, and those "great men" were
| also operating in a milieu where the Chicago Boys were
| very influential, and they had the political mandate to
| institute management-favoring policies thanks to economic
| crises of the '70s.
| sanderjd wrote:
| In addition to what others have said about loyalty to the
| _people_ who happen to work at a company, which I agree with
| entirely:
|
| I think it's good to have _admiration_ for the company (or
| any organization) you work for. If you can 't find anything
| you admire, it might be better to find another place to work
| where you can.
|
| This implies having the privilege of having options. For me,
| it's probably the primary reason I try to direct my career
| toward having skills or connections that give me options.
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| Being able to take pride in your work also helps a lot. In
| academia, my work may not be the most well compensated
| (it's perfectly reasonable for the area but I'm not going
| to be retiring early), but it is modern software that
| meaningfully helps others at my institution and doesn't
| actively make society worse.
| sanderjd wrote:
| Yes. This is _very_ closely tied into the ability to
| admire the organization, at least for me. It 's very hard
| for me to take pride in my work for an organization I
| think is bad.
| atoav wrote:
| Yes, all loyalty is a risk. But the expectation in
| interpersonal relationships is typically that if you are
| loyal to someone they are loyal to you. There are literal
| rituals for people to swear that to each other in front of
| witnesses. Most people also intuitively understand that an
| unilateral breach of loyalty is a legitimate reason for
| ending this agreement.
|
| With hypercapitalist corporations loyalty is a one-way
| street. The employee is expected to be loyal, while
| corporations drop them casually if it benefits them. Loyalty
| is realized when one of the sides endure some downsides in
| thr expectations that these will be resolved in the long
| term. So if you dump someone the minute that downside
| appears, you aren't and never have been loyal.
| pkdpic wrote:
| I think I agree with both perspectives. And it makes me
| realize that in the past when I've tried to draw hardcore no-
| loyalty / emotional attachment boundaries teammates /
| employers pick up in the vibe and it slowly becomes mildly
| but chronically toxic.
|
| It's 100% an emergence scam behavior of corporate entities to
| trick their employees into developing loyalty and tricking
| managers / founders etc into thinking its not just a way of
| scamming lower-end employees imo... I never got the feeling
| that managers were consciously trying to trick us into
| developing loyalty, felt more like they were then ones
| drinking the most coolaid on it...
|
| Also agree with the base human need to feel at least some
| loyalty in any relationship to feel like it's healthy.
|
| I think my hack has been to develop loyalty to people on my
| team laterally. Seems to work but sometimes leadership /
| management still seems like they catch a whiff that I dont
| have a deep emotional need to respond to their frantic 8pm or
| Sunday afternoon Teams messages...
|
| But if they fire me for not being loyal who cares, the
| economies doing great right?
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It's not about feelings. It's about making human life
| _possible_ , as we are social animals. We develop through
| relationships.
|
| Loyalty is a commitment to the objective good of the other,
| of skin in the game. Loyalty is hierarchical and the
| particular variety and its entailed commitments depends on
| the particular nature of the relationship.
|
| In a hyperindividualist liberal society, the presumption is
| basically Hobbesian; life is taken to be _intrinsically_ and
| thoroughly adversarial and exploitative, and relationships
| are taken to be basically instrumental and transactional.
| (This even informs scientific interpretation, as science is
| downstream of culture.) Society is taken to be
| _intrinsically_ a matter of "contract" or a kind of Mexican
| standoff. Loyalty is a quaint and anachronistic notion, a
| passing emotion that expires the moment the landscape of
| opportunities shifts. Provisional and temporary.
| kijin wrote:
| Loyalty develops naturally in a good relationship. It's a
| fruit to be cherished, but it's not a goal that you should
| pursue for its own sake.
|
| There's no point in asking first, whether employers should
| be loyal to their employers or vice versa. The important
| question is whether they are good to one another. If they
| are, you might also find loyalty among them, but that's not
| where the focus should be.
|
| Someone who gets obsessed with loyalty too much, I think,
| is likely to have sinister intentions. They probably want
| you to be loyal to them but don't plan on being good to
| you.
| bitwize wrote:
| Loyalty is worth it if you can reasonably assume it will be
| repaid in kind. Assuming you didn't make a huge mistake in
| partner selection, that assumption is valid for your spouse.
| It emphatically does NOT hold for your employer, who will
| drop you the instant you become a problem. Therefore, it
| makes no sense to be loyal to your employer beyond the bare
| minimum.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >You shouldn't bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute
| and utter loyalty to you.
|
| But your mega corp _doesn 't_ have loyalty to you. They have
| loyalty to their shareholders, and you are a means to that
| end. The shareholders are the spouse, and you are just the
| person they paid to make the yearly birthday present. If a
| little flattery gets them a better price, then they flatter.
| If their spouse's interests change, you'll never see them
| again.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > you are just the person they paid to make the yearly
| birthday present
|
| Equally, if you presenting yourself well and negotiating
| well gets you a better wage to make that birthday present,
| then you should do those things. It's a two-way street.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Your soulful loyalty should be all for personal and family
| relationships like a spouse, zero for any corporation.
|
| Employer employee relationships are completely financial.
| Almost legally required to be that way on the employer's
| side.
| kemayo wrote:
| You can think of mutual-loyalty as an extended transaction, if
| you prefer. If, in exchange for you not planning on leaving the
| company, the company actively does its best to treat you well
| and preserve your job long-term, that can be a good trade-off.
|
| The mutuality is important. You absolutely shouldn't think of
| yourself as "loyal" to a company that won't stick up for you.
| (And many companies won't, to be clear. If asked to choose
| between cutting executive salaries by 2% and firing you, most
| companies won't think too hard about that. You shouldn't be
| loyal to those ones.)
| pc86 wrote:
| I like the thought of this but how does it work in practice?
|
| The company treats me well and preserves my job while I'm
| planning not to leave. Until they don't. Because once the
| transaction is more trouble than its worth - either
| financially, or politically, or interpersonally - I'm gone.
| But if I _am_ planning to leave, the company doesn 't know
| that and treats me the exact same way.
| harles wrote:
| It's definitely not a transaction. Every time I've seen push
| come to shove, companies prioritize the folks they see as
| critical to their company's success with loyalty not even
| being a small factor. And if it's a moderate to large sized
| company, many of the decisions will be made by a consulting
| firm with 0 context (or care) for loyalty.
| dogleash wrote:
| > the company actively does its best to treat you well and
| preserve your job long-term
|
| Like fuck they do. They make a cost-benefit guess about
| proactive moves to reduce attrition, and the amount they do
| is tied the cost of replacement for the role in question.
| kemayo wrote:
| There's a reason I put "if" before that.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Keep in mind that the benefits of loyalty vary with the size of
| the organization and the number peers your name gets lost among
| in the org chart.
|
| The larger the company, and the more they're ballooned out with
| abstract drones chomping on abstract work items, the more
| loyalty becomes a means for abuse. Turnover is rampant and
| their processes are built to optimally accommodate it. They're
| egregores, not people, and they don't experience loyalty or
| attachment. But they do benefit from yours, and so they'll milk
| it until you give up
|
| But in smaller groups and smaller communities, where you're
| actually working with _people_ , loyalty and even _affection_
| can really make a difference in how satisfying your worklife
| is, how much security you can feel in your opportunities, etc
|
| It's not so much that there's "no place for loyalty in
| employer-employee relationships", it's just that the place for
| loyalty is different depending on what's inhabiting the
| employer role opposite you -- and the high-profile large
| employers of the modern age are incapable of reciprocating. But
| if loyalty comes naturally to you, and feels good to you when
| reciprocated, you have the option to look elsewhere instead of
| seething in resentment and disappointment.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| I agree in parts. Loyalty and corresponding benefits are a
| local optima. But when the macro is controlled and influenced
| by external (to the local) forces, and these forces have
| power, loyalty means nothing in terms of security. But you
| will still have good relationships with people and new
| opportunities may surface as a benefit.
|
| But loyalty to a company is complete, utter BS.
| bbarnett wrote:
| There are good and bad companies. How you are treated is
| how you gauge it, and good companies do deserve "working"
| loyality.
|
| This is different from personal loyalty.
|
| It's a little like politeness. Social grace. Don't demean
| yourself of course, but treating entities which treat you
| well reciprocally is valid and even moral.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| A good or a bad company is really defined by people you
| work with - your team. Countless conversations in other
| forums where you'll see radically opposite opinions about
| the the "company" from different employees. It all boils
| down to the local working context. Companies are
| companies - maximizing profit is their primary goal (at
| least in the US). There may certainly be _some_
| exceptions. Entities don 't treat a person in any way. It
| is the people in the entities that treat you well or not.
| Entities are impersonal.
|
| If the CEO, who is 6 levels removed from me makes a
| decision to cut an entire department, it is hard to see
| how "company" loyalty makes sense. As far as I'm
| concerned, the CEO is an external force.
|
| Social grace, treating people well who treat you well - I
| agree with all that. But that is not loyalty. It is
| simply transactional reciprocality. If you are calling
| that "working loyalty", fine, we are on the same page.
| kermatt wrote:
| The term loyalty is dangerous for an employee.
|
| Having seen companies of all sizes lay people off for the
| exact same reason - Returns did not match expectations - my
| personal perspective is to treat all employers the same.
|
| No company with a balance sheet is loyal to employees.
| Keeping that idea in mind, and thus on an equal perspective,
| is healthy for both sides. "It's just business" is good
| advice and not just in movies.
| mystraline wrote:
| I applied to a job in the 'Who's Hiring' thread this month.
|
| Had an interview. I'm a professional good at my craft, with
| tenure at hard positions.
|
| I get hit with "we don't just want someone who checks in
| does work and leaves, 9 to 5". Like, are you wanting
| 60h/week and pay 40h/week? Or is this you're not wanting a
| slacker?
|
| Or better yet, since you want skin in the game on my side,
| what's my equity as a partner?
|
| My understanding is that I shop up and work well, and you
| pay me. And I'm in an at-will employment state, so it
| really is 1 day at a time.
|
| Loyalty is bought at 1 day increments, since that is all
| the loyalty is afforded to me.
|
| However, I will definitely lie, since no recruiter or HR
| wants to admit that their candidate is here because you
| pay. Its the verboten secret everyone dances around.
| ivape wrote:
| That sounds disgusting. Thank you for sharing that. Why
| don't they just advertise "Over-time expected and over-
| time compensation provided"?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Most likely because they expect overtime but won't
| compensate overtime
|
| So they are hoping to hire someone who will do it for
| free
| mystraline wrote:
| I couldn't get an exact good gauge on what their aim was.
|
| They made a point at 'work-life balance', decent but not
| great PTO. Pay was from 150-300, but glassdoor shows
| around 175.
|
| It did have on call, but my profession does.
|
| But the conversation was weird - what were they REALLY
| asking for that they couldn't outright say? Were they
| trying to ask if I have a family and obligations?
| Pregnant wife? Willingness to slave away hours above my
| negotiated pay?
|
| It definitely felt strange. This is a job, not a calling.
| And they would 'transact' (read: fire) me just as fast if
| the economics didn't pan out.
| gorbachev wrote:
| There is a special form of small company that's even worse.
| It's the kind where "we're a family". Those are worse than
| anything a big company bureaucracy / bean-counting could ever
| be.
| fwip wrote:
| The small and successful company (~100 people) my brother-
| in-law works at is currently self-destructing, specifically
| because the CEO is that exact kind of family-loyalty
| "father figure" wannabe.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Is it failing because he is being taken advantage of or
| is it failing because he is trying to take advantage of
| others?
| groby_b wrote:
| That depends. A lot of them are. A lot of them have owners
| that _actually_ treat you like family.
|
| Differentiating between the two based on signals during
| hiring is almost impossible, though.
| nine_k wrote:
| But I don't want to be treated like family. In
| particular, I am not ready to have the same level of
| obligations towards my employers, even if these were
| reciprocated faithfully. I have my own family to which
| I'm always going to have a stronger loyalty than to any
| employer.
|
| A company as a group of close friends? Be my guest. A
| company that pretends that we have bonds of blood, or are
| married? Not for me (unless we're actually family, as in
| family business).
| tidbits wrote:
| Differentiating between them is impossible until things
| go wrong. They can treat you as family 99% of the time,
| but when the options are: take a pay cut or fire some
| employees, in my experience everyone goes with the
| latter.
| mohaine wrote:
| Small companies really magnify the extreems. Good ones are
| really great but bad ones are extra bad. Sadly, they are
| also nimble enough to switch between them, at least in one
| direction.
| usrusr wrote:
| Not only the extremes, also the speed: good employers can
| turn into bad employers (has the opposite ever happened?
| I'd love to learn of an example!), but big companies at
| least have some inertia while it happens. There's
| probably even some "Sun" still left, all those years
| after the Oracle takeover. Compare this to what happened
| at Komoot.
| kshacker wrote:
| I do not have an example of the opposite, but I can echo
| your comment.
|
| I was the first US employee of an Indian consulting
| startup. I was their engagement lead for a marquee
| account for the first 4 years and while I do not take all
| the credit, my management and I grew the account from 1
| person to 250 by the time I left. What did I get in
| return? A 10% reduction in salary from my previous job,
| almost no pay hikes (there were some) for 4 years, a
| whole lot of "we are family" talk, and zero stock. Of
| course I was naive and did not have things in writing,
| but I still believe they owe me 3% of an 80 M exit price
| because that's what they verbally told me. But no, good
| employers turned into bad employers very quickly.
|
| Of course there is a lot more to the story, I had my own
| faults, but I am not naming anyone and I am not
| publishing my story here. That life is over, I am not
| fighting that battle, this was 15-20 years back and I
| finally did move on and do other stuff.
|
| But that 3% after a decade or more of (well managed)
| growth would have been awesome.
| belthesar wrote:
| I have seen the opposite happen, but I'm fairly confident
| that few people that felt the pendulum swing from good to
| bad stick around long enough to feel the upward swing.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| Anecdotally, a bad employer turns into a good employer
| only after a death.
| djhn wrote:
| Was there something specific at Komoot you're referring
| to? Did I miss something in the article or the news cycle
| in general?
| shrikant wrote:
| I'm OOTL, what happened at Komoot..? Vaguely interested
| because I'd considered applying there for a role a year
| or so back but never went through with it...
| usrusr wrote:
| Founder(s) sold to Bendinggspoons who specialize in the
| kind of takeover where the buyer stops all development
| and tries to keep the money inflow from a service running
| with minimal maintenance crew. Evernote is the most
| famous example I think.
|
| Apparently 80% are already gone:
|
| https://escapecollective.com/how-komoot-lost-its-way/
|
| (paywalled, but I think it's the definitive aftermath
| writeup, as opposed to all the older news that stop at
| speculating about layoffs that had not happened yet)
| ok_computer wrote:
| You cannot take a week off who will cover your
| responsibilities?! Lol, that kind of small company.
| wubrr wrote:
| Often comes with 'unlimited PTO' advertised during the
| interview/offer process :)
| int_19h wrote:
| The difference is that in a small company, it's the _owner_
| who is abusing you (or not). It 's all down to the
| qualities of the person itself.
|
| In a large company, it happens regardless of the qualities
| of the people involve, because it's baked into the
| processes. Good-natured people can mitigate it to some
| extent, but they cannot prevent it.
| sarks_nz wrote:
| Yep. They forget there are all sorts of "families" and some
| are very dysfunctional.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| tbh that feels completely backwards. In large orgs, you are a
| number and transparently so. People come and go, processes
| are set up that assume attrition.
|
| In a smaller shop, there's less flex overall for departures
| and more incentive to abuse the personal relationships built.
|
| You are right that loyalty changes depending on org chart,
| but it's how senior you are. Senior execs have more vested in
| the company, both in their career and stock options.
| jjmarr wrote:
| My parents told me to be loyal to _people_ , not _companies_.
|
| People get me a job when I look for one.
| espinchi wrote:
| Good advice. The company gets your loyalty as a side-effect
| xp84 wrote:
| Exactly- and if they screw the people I'm loyal to, FAFO.
|
| One of the most satisfying things that's ever happened to
| me in my career is when, after I turned in my notice to
| my last job, less than a week later my boss gave his.
| emgeee wrote:
| I agree. Tenures may be short but careers are long and tech
| is (surprisingly) small. Credibility builds trust and trust
| between people is ultimately what business run on. "Do
| right be people" is a good strategy.
| nine_k wrote:
| Exactly what I always proclaim. I'm loyal to my team, to my
| coworkers, the living beings, not to the org chart that
| pulled them together.
|
| (Another thing I keep repeating is "You are not your job".)
| usrusr wrote:
| Only in moderation. When employees start forming cells
| inside the org things quickly become toxic.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| IME smaller communities make firing/layoffs _different_ but
| not less likely. Startups will lay people off for money
| regardless of any level of loyalty regardless of size. In
| fact it is even more disappointing to work very very closely
| with people who would lay you off overnight if their investor
| decides they want heads to roll.
| ivape wrote:
| _The larger the company, and the more they 're ballooned out
| with abstract drones chomping on abstract work items_
|
| I was actually thinking about this the other day. When an
| employer implements an "aloof" layer between the work done
| and the bottom line, the employer and employee don't get to
| bond. You and your company should be on the same page when it
| comes to generating business and on the same page when it
| comes to concerns. Shipmates, for real. With layers of
| management of all varieties (middle management, project
| management, developer management (this is tricky because the
| Dev Lead becomes your only connection to the bottom line)),
| the "aloofness" leads to unfulfilled lives. That's when the
| employee doesn't feel fulfilled or understands _who they are
| on the ship_. And it follows that the captain(s) of the ship
| (leadership) are unfulfilled because they are no longer in
| love with the crew (can easily fire, hire, layoff, disconnect
| from the employees lives). I haven 't fully thought this
| thought out so I will probably expand on it as time goes on,
| but this is my line of thinking at the moment.
|
| It's a love issue due to a lack of direct bonding (and no,
| company social gatherings and "fun" is not the bonding I am
| talking about. I am talking about taking on Moby Dick
| together). The love is indirectly routed through these other
| layers until it's been fully diluted and misunderstood,
| unfulfilling to all. Everyone must love the ship, the crew,
| the captain, the ocean, and the whale they are hunting.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| You might want to read Moby Dick all the way to the end.
| ivape wrote:
| Right. Well, that's how it goes. I mostly wanted to
| capture a shared pursuit. Take Elon, he's obsessed now.
| Love is not easy or perfect between captain and crew.
| Sometimes the crew needs to step in.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| That loyalty and affection your are feeling is only going one
| way. I've worked for small and large places. Work is always
| transactional. The day the CFO at your 10 person startup that
| "feels like a family" gets some pressure from investors to
| cut costs, well, your loyalty does not factor into the
| decision making.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >But in smaller groups and smaller communities, where you're
| actually working with people, loyalty and even affection can
| really make a difference in how satisfying your worklife is,
| how much security you can feel in your opportunities, etc
|
| I've been in IT for over 20 years, mostly working in small to
| mid-sized companies. Small companies will let you go as soon
| as they feel a pinch. every company is the same, no matter
| their size.
|
| You're expected to give two weeks' notice, but they can let
| you go without any notice.
|
| Corporate loyalty is the dumbest trick employers ever pulled.
| metters wrote:
| > You're expected to give two weeks' notice, but they can
| let you go without any notice.
|
| Luckily, this is not the case where I live. Both sides have
| the same amount of notice
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Same here. And the usual amount is 2 months, not weeks.
| Of course it can be (and often is) shorter if both
| parties agree.
|
| That said, the real safety is in accumulated money you
| can live on when all goes south. I'd personally take
| bigger salary over longer notice any day of the week.
| int_19h wrote:
| This difference is because smaller organizations are less of
| an entity in their own right, and more of an actual group of
| people doing things together (even if legally the company
| might still be a separate entity).
|
| As organizations grow, they become more than a mere sum of
| its parts. It seems to be an emergent phenomenon driven by
| complexity - as humans interact, this very interaction
| creates something resembling an entity in its own right past
| a certain scale, with its own agenda (distinct from
| individual agendas of its constituent humans) and drive for
| self-preservation as a whole - the egregore that you
| mentioned. My pet theory is that this starts to happen when
| you scale beyond the Dunbar number, but the effect is only
| obvious at scales where most members of the organization are
| faceless strangers to each other.
|
| Either way, this emergent entity is decidedly amoral.
| Exoristos wrote:
| I've worked at large companies (a Fortune 50 for ten years),
| and small (current employer is six people), and in my
| experience the small businesses treated employees the worst.
| At a large organization, there is a sense of orderliness and
| process that sometimes works in the employee's favor; your
| "loyalty" is on the record and categorizes you in a specific
| way. In a "family"-size company, it's often the case that
| only family members, family friends, or family co-
| religionists are of value to the owners; this truth then
| emerges at the worst time for you.
| academia_hack wrote:
| At least to me, loyalty _is_ the benefit. I can't conscience
| working for someone I hate or someone who I don't feel like I
| want to help succeed. I've definitely quit jobs before just
| because the senior leader in my reporting chain was replaced
| with some smarmy windbag I didn't believe in.
|
| That's not to say it's _much_ of a benefit, but if the only
| thing a job gives me is a market-rational amount of dollars and
| health benefits in exchange for life-hours, the invisible hand
| ensures I can find that virtually anywhere.
| TheGRS wrote:
| I think that loyalty counts when the decision-makers are more
| localized. People who show up and demonstrate that they care
| will generally get the bonuses from their direct managers or
| higher up managers who recognize the effort (because it
| happened to cross their path somehow). But these monetary
| decisions are more and more just calculations on a spreadsheet
| - here's your 3% annual pay increase and we can allocate 10% of
| the workforce gets a larger raise to ensure 80% retention. When
| the layoffs come it has nothing to do loyalty and often has
| little to do with competence in the role. _Hopefully_ the guy
| with the spreadsheet is considering whether they can continue
| to run the business with certain individuals or not, but I don
| 't think it ever gets that granular. This is the MBA era of
| business.
| seneca wrote:
| This isn't always true. I've been in engineering leadership a
| long time, and I've absolutely gone out of my way to cover for,
| or help out, engineers that I know put in the extra work, and
| I've seen other leaders do it too.
|
| It's not unlimited, but it exists.
| tomrod wrote:
| Loyalty to a company is broken because companies are typically
| too big.
|
| Loyalty to people still has significant returns, _especially_
| when you are specific with what you want and take control of
| how your interactions should work.
|
| When I started my own business, a few-times-former employer
| became a client. The way they interacted with me changed
| dramatically overnight -- the CxOs treated me as a peer versus
| an employee. Was very strange to experience and a very welcome
| change.
| eitally wrote:
| This isn't universally true (and I'm saying this as someone
| who's been laid off three times in my career). When searching
| for a job, it's important to perform due diligence to ascertain
| whether the company is on solid footing, their strategy makes
| sense, and your role will be valued. But once you're there, who
| your boss is, including how well they mentor you and what their
| political clout is within the business, can absolutely make
| "loyalty" worthwhile because the ROI can be career acceleration
| (in terms of compensation, job title and also breadth/depth of
| experience/exposure) that goes far beyond just the direct pay
| when you consider the overall value.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Not even specific to the tech industry (not that you were
| saying it was).
|
| My ex- was working towards becoming a veterinarian. During a
| gap in schooling, she looked at some jobs as a tech or
| assistant.
|
| She found a good fit, and got to the point of having an offer.
| But she was having a crisis of conscience. The ad, and
| interviewers, had talked about how they wanted people who would
| be invested and committed in the practice. Not in and out in a
| few months. But she knew that in 9-10 months she would be doing
| more schooling. Could she take the job in good conscience,
| knowing that?
|
| Absolutely she could. I said this to her:
|
| Okay, so they're asking for someone who'll be there for years,
| is committed to them.
|
| Say you start work, and in three months there's a recession, or
| just a downturn in their business. Is their response more
| likely to be:
|
| 1) "Business is hard, times are tough, but you are committed to
| us and we are committed to you, so no layoffs, no firings, no
| pay decreases. Let's get through this together."
|
| or will it be
|
| 2) "Business is hard, times are tough, so today will be your
| last day at XYZ Vet Hospital, thank you for your service."
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Agreed, unless you see real, tangible reasons to do so.
|
| While I was talking to my partner (at the time) about her
| taking a part-time job while waiting on school, I worked for an
| employer that absolutely earned my loyalty:
|
| She had enrolled in school for her pre-vet med course. But due
| to a mix up with financial aid or loans or similar, she woke up
| one morning to find that at about 6am the university had sent
| her an email saying that they'd not received tuition from her,
| and that they would soon be dropping her from her course. By
| the time she'd woke up they'd already done so. She panicked. I
| knew we'd done most of the work so I told her to jump in the
| shower and we'd go to the college and try to get it taken care
| of.
|
| I told my boss (co-founder and CTO, though not so much a
| startup - small, but established a decade or more and
| profitable) I'd be out of touch for a few hours trying to deal
| with an issue. He and I talked a lot, and he could tell
| something was up so he asked what was up and I explained. His
| response earned a lot of loyalty from me (though we managed to
| get it taken care of without this):
|
| "Let me know how everything goes. If there's nothing else that
| can be done, give me a call and we can put her tuition
| (remember, this isn't even his employee, but an employee's
| fiancee) on my corporate Amex, and we'll work with Chuck
| (company accountant) to figure out how we can handle it all on
| the back end."
|
| I realize you can be cynical too, and look at this akin to the
| FAANGs offering laundry, daycare, etc., with the ultimate goal
| being "the less time you spend doing these things, the more you
| spend making us money", and there are of course aspects of
| that, but this was also very human and going above and beyond
| (like I could never in any world imagine a situation where your
| boss says "We can pay your partner's tuition and then we'll
| figure out payroll deductions or something to get it
| reconciled").
| aprdm wrote:
| I feel this is a pretty cynical view. We can all be adults and
| understand it is a business relationship.
|
| The "reward for loyalty" varies greatly per company, but I
| would like to see it defined. I have worked on 12 companies
| since I started my career, some of them would probably rank
| very high for your definition and others very low.
| usrusr wrote:
| There's more to loyalty than imagining it as a credits account.
|
| The baseline is absence of disloyalty, which does not mean
| "stay aboard despite lower pay or benefits" but simply not
| cheating the organization you are (or were) part of. An
| employer who has to distrust every move of their employees will
| inevitably be a terrible employer to work at. No matter how
| hard they try not to be.
|
| Not going below that baseline won't magically protect you from
| bad employers, but going below will inevitably turn any
| employer you work at into a bad employer, at least if enough of
| your peers aren't above following your example.
| __xor_eax_eax wrote:
| Be loyal to people (your boss, your peers), but don't be loyal
| to tne entity that is your company. It has one job, and that is
| to make money. If it could do it without you, it would
| goostavos wrote:
| I similarly got this lesson early in my career. One of my first
| jobs. I was young and excited to be at a startup. Learning a
| ton. I poured hours into that job. Then, one day we were pulled
| onto a call, told they couldn't afford us any more, and fired
| on the spot. We were immediately locked out of everything and
| that was that.
|
| It was shocking at the time. To young me, it was a big "....oh"
| kind of realization about what kind of relationship you
| can/should have with any kind of business.
|
| Now, I'm here cause you pay me. I don't keep stuff at my desk
| or decorate 'my' space. I show up, do the job, and leave. Once
| I close this laptop, work is dead to me until the next day.
|
| I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally work more than
| 40hr/week, but most of the time my work/life balance is
| fantastic by choice.
| seer wrote:
| If your loyalty is to your team / admin people, it could be
| quite profitable.
|
| Plenty of examples of people (me included) that when their
| superior changes projects or leaves the company etc, they know
| and trust you and they want to move you with them.
|
| I for example managed to switch from a dull team that drove me
| to almost the verge of quitting to a very exciting skunkworks
| team that I had a blast working in for almost 2 years, let
| alone doubling my compensation.
|
| That happened because I was loyal to my SEM, in the sense of
| giving extra time if he was on the line, giving honest feedback
| and generally trying to make them "succeed", the moment a risky
| and important project was on the table at the org he was like -
| "let's organize a crack team" and invited me on board ... and
| it was such a cool experience.
|
| "The company" itself doesn't "feel" anything towards the people
| working for it, it's the people behind it that are influenced
| by such things.
|
| The best orgs would have those personal loyalties also align
| with the orgs mission, but they are still personal - given from
| humans to humans.
|
| Of course there is a fine line in "being a good resource" and
| "sucking up", but good managers usually know the difference.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Its better to think of your reputation than some kind of
| loyalty score you can cash in. Some people in the org care
| about your rep and some don't and that's all there is.
| nick__m wrote:
| I am loyal to my employer because I have almost absolute job
| security, work for my almamater and agree with our mission :
| 1- research 2- teaching 3- service to the community
|
| But if I had a corporate job I would be loyal as much as a
| mercenary can be!
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| The jobs that pay > 2 million a year do require loyalty.
| Loyalty in commoditized work positions is a completely
| different thing, and as noted a mistake. But once there is alot
| of money on the line, trust is actually as important as
| anything else.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > the idea of spending 30 years working for the same employer is
| mind boggling
|
| I've never seen someone staying at a job for 10+ years explain it
| by loyalty.
|
| For some it's pure habbit and no need to move on, for others it's
| an equilibrium and they get better benefits from staying than the
| money they'd get leaving.
|
| And in so many places, the people who were staying there their
| whole life just loved the job. They loved what they were doing
| either for society or for themselves. Some actually hated their
| employer, but it was a price to pay to do the job (I'd expect a
| ton of the Publix service people to be in that bucket)
| Peroni wrote:
| My Dad would agree with you. He enjoys his work, he likes the
| people, and he'll be the first to admit that he's been happy
| enough with the convenience of it all to prevent him from
| wondering if the grass might be greener elsewhere.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I think we lost something important when company loyalty was
| thrown aside in favor of the present "every person for
| themselves" attitudes.
|
| We lost long-term planning. When companies and employees both
| view their relationship as inherently limited to just a few years
| before one or the other tires of them and trades in for a new
| model, we lose the ability to envision a real, tangible future
| for the organization. We stopped building institutions meant to
| withstand the tests of time, and built an armada of startups
| solely designed to cash out as quickly as possible, sold to
| corporate conglomerates leaping from fad to fad without any
| inkling as to how everything comes together or integrates. We
| deluded ourselves with maths, formulas, models, spreadsheets of
| information demonstrating that this attitude was the most
| valuable approach, tacitly admitting that long-term planning and
| execution was so difficult that the only viable approach is
| making more money tomorrow than we did yesterday, and everything
| else will work out fine because that's someone else's job.
|
| Not related to OP's article (which is excellent and concise,
| highly recommended in general), but just a personal mourning of a
| lost future by someone who thrives in said environments, but
| can't find any that exist in this world. I'm a literal dinosaur
| in that regard, I guess: thriving through consistent adaptation
| and execution on long-term strategies and plans, built for a
| fifty-year tenure but living in a society where gig work doesn't
| even last fifteen minutes.
|
| Alas.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > We lost long-term planning. When companies and employees both
| view their relationship as inherently limited to just a few
| years before one or the other tires of them and trades in for a
| new model, we lose the ability to envision a real, tangible
| future for the organization.
|
| Yeah, and there is an actual historical moment and culprit to
| pin this on:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1101505691/short-term-profits...
| stego-tech wrote:
| YEP. No joke, when I started making this observation in
| organizations I worked at over a decade ago, that name was
| the one that started me down a rabbit hole of learning,
| reading, and discovery.
|
| Every era has a Jack Welch, but ours was particularly awful.
| vintagedave wrote:
| > Do you treat your people well? > Glassdoor is your friend.
|
| I have read, here on HN, that Glassdoor is not accurate. How do
| you realistically tell from outside if a company does treat their
| people well, or has a difficult culture? I've heard people
| mention churn, but people stick around even in those environments
| (especially for financial reasons) and churn is not always an
| indicator.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| There is also a bias on Glassdoor. I would imagine, much like
| product reviews, people are more likely to go out of their way
| to leave a negative review than a positive review of an
| employer.
| noname120 wrote:
| Unless you have stock in the company I suppose
| Peroni wrote:
| Glassdoor isn't gospel but it is a useful data point.
|
| >How do you realistically tell from outside if a company does
| treat their people well, or has a difficult culture?
|
| The challenge there is that everyone has different
| interpretations of 'a difficult culture'. What's important
| (albeit difficult) is establishing an understanding of the type
| of environment you thrive in and the types of environments you
| struggle in. With that understanding, it's important to spend
| time during an interview process asking open-ended questions
| that might reveal the aspects you love/hate.
| curiousllama wrote:
| Never confuse loyalty to a person with loyalty to an employer.
|
| I have found loyalty to managers - when reciprocated - is the
| most valuable currency I have. It's led to both rewarding
| experiences & safety from the exact type of organizational change
| that makes loyalty to an employer useless.
|
| Loyalty is for people & ideas, never organizations.
| vb7132 wrote:
| After working at the same (big tech) company for nine years, I
| feel like an outlier. My career has had phases of intense hard
| work and periods of rest. However, my happiness was influenced by
| many other factors. While working hard and being in the flow can
| be incredibly gratifying, it can also be stressful. Additionally,
| the relationships at work play a significant role, more so than
| the work itself.
|
| In my friend circle, I've noticed that the happiest people are
| those who are pursuing their own interests and achieving moderate
| success in them. Ultimately, this seems to create a sense of
| purpose. And I am envious of such people.
|
| Work is also a crucial component of the "work-life" balance
| dichotomy. If you're not working enough, you're likely to feel
| unhappy.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I have found that in the age of work from home its increasingly
| difficult to have any loyalty or community with the people I work
| with. Been in my current company for ~4 years and I just feel
| nothing for them. The pay is good so I work hard. Other than
| that, 90% of my co-workers are off shore so I have almost no
| interaction with them aside from a 2 hour or so overlap in the
| morning. Couldn't tell you what most of their names are or what
| they do. They are just a series of letters sending me teams
| messages asking me for help or to work on a ticket.
|
| The entire thing is a black box. I put work in and I get money
| out.
| sudofoo wrote:
| Honest question: Is being 'loyal' to a company any different from
| being 'loyal' to a slot machine that sometimes pays out? Both
| keep you playing with the promise of future rewards...
| o11c wrote:
| Yes, there's a difference. Slot machines are regulated.
| BlueTie wrote:
| The sad fact is that the people best suited to thrive in a
| context where relationships are transactional and mostly
| dependent on continued usefulness to both parties - are
| sociopaths/machiavellian types.
|
| And these are precisely the people who are most okay with
| shouting from the rooftop that their company is the best in the
| world - then doing so from a different company 2-3 years later.
|
| It's good for mental health to understand that. These people do
| not have better jobs or work for better companies on average -
| they just say they do because it's better for their career and
| have no shame or accountability in doing so publicly.
| runeblaze wrote:
| I write from a new grad perspective, but as said, put your well-
| being and the well-being of those you care about above all.
|
| Meanwhile don't beat yourself up if you are young (bonus if you
| just relocated for work) and spent too much time at work or feel
| "loyal" to your employer. Wind down, of course, but don't beat
| yourself up.
| davidw wrote:
| Personally I would be willing to accept a slightly lower salary
| to get off the merry-go-round. I'd like to be in one place for a
| while where I can do some good work without so much of the
| craziness.
| twald wrote:
| I've worked with many "Mittelstand" companies in Germany--often
| fourth-generation family businesses. Time and again, I've seen
| how the board and CEO go above and beyond to ensure their
| employees are taken care of, in both good times and bad. And when
| you talk to people working there, you can feel this mutual sense
| of loyalty reflected in their words.
|
| I'm not saying this is common in the tech industry at all, but I
| can confirm that loyalty between a company (and yes, I'm
| deliberately using company over people here) and its employees
| does exist--on a broader scale and in the most positive sense.
| This doesn't mean that hard, economical decisions don't need to
| be made or that people live in a cloud of blind loyalty.
|
| But there's a lot of beauty and wellbeing in this dynamic, if
| you're willing to explore it--and it's definitely something I
| personally strive for.
| II2II wrote:
| While I strongly disagree with the framing of loyalty, it is also
| important to remember that there is a relationship between what
| you put into a job and what you get out of it. I'm not going to
| claim that the relationship is always going to be fair, but
| walking into a job while seeing everything as transactional is
| going to have a negative impact upon your employer, your
| coworkers, _and_ yourself.
|
| By all means, set boundaries. Make it clear that your time off is
| for you to pursue your own things (hobbies, families, friends,
| etc.). Also ensure that you are balancing your personal are
| professional obligations, which is to suggest that it is not
| reasonable for your priorities to become other people's problems
| just as it is not reasonable for other people's problems to
| become your problem. And if you do cross that line, don't view
| your trip to the unemployment line as a lack of "loyalty" from
| the company. It is you failing to hold yourself accountable.
|
| Now I'm not going to claim that my words apply to every
| workplace. Some workplaces are seriously messed up and are truly
| exploitative. On the other hand, I have also seen workplaces
| where the employers try to be accommodating to an employee, yet
| the employee is "doing their best", either intentionally or
| unintentionally, to spread their misery.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Well, I won't say I had it major good, but I did stay with my
| last job for almost 27 years.
|
| That tends to draw some pretty nasty stuff from this crowd, with
| the most charitable, accusing me of being a "chump," but there
| were reasons, and I don't regret it.
| hosh wrote:
| Counterpoint - while the "company" itself (the gestalt of the
| group) are not incentivized to reciprocate loyalty, the
| relationships with individuals you work with within the team,
| across the company, and into customer and vendor relationships
| are worth cultivating. At the very least, a wide professional
| network is helpful and can extend beyond your current employment.
| ge96 wrote:
| Delicious swag mmm on that desk
| moribvndvs wrote:
| I am just old enough to grow up amongst company men, believing
| that if you take care of a company, they will take care of you,
| and that a career at one organization is a prosperous and
| beneficial one. I found out the hard way (worked 20 years at
| essentially the same company) that this notion was dead or dying
| before I was even born, is virtually non-existent in tech
| companies, and is kinda dangerous to your career in this
| industry.
|
| I still _like_ the idea, but remember loyalty much like respect
| is earned, not demanded or obligated. When it comes down to it,
| they don't give a shit about you, so take care of yourself.
| jbs789 wrote:
| I always scratch my head when someone refers to the "company". A
| company is a bunch of people, and that's the level at which I
| build relationships and make decisions about loyalty.
| waiquoo wrote:
| There's a level where institutions are separate from the people
| that make them move. If your boss can get replaced without
| destroying your department, then that institutional layer
| exists.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It's not 1950 anymore. Workers are no longer employed by people
| with a sense of community, duty, patriotism/nationalism, or
| anything else involving loyalty. The only loyalty is to the
| bottom line.
|
| As such the employers will receive the same in return.
| FredPret wrote:
| On the one hand, you are a single-person service provider and
| should act accordingly.
|
| On the other hand, the individuals you work with will remember
| how much you helped them and how you made them feel, which will
| go a long way towards future engagements.
| jp57 wrote:
| I find it interesting how starkly bimodal attitudes toward
| employer loyalty are.
|
| There _is_ a middle ground between getting a company logo tattoo
| on one hand and on the other being a clock puncher, who fulfills
| the minimum job requirements and begrudges any request to put in
| extra effort.
|
| It's possible, even admirable, to be diligent and take pride in
| one's work for reasons other than drinking the company kool-aid.
| It's possible to be diligent and work hard, and still leave if
| you are mistreated.
|
| Yes, employment is inherently transactional, but for jobs like
| software engineering, machine learning engineering and other high
| education jobs, the aggregate of the transaction is much closer
| to a year of work than an hour or day of work. Also, the terms of
| the transaction often include a variable bonus for performance,
| as judged by the employer. It seems reasonable to incent people
| to work harder by offering more compensation in return. It's up
| to everyone to decide whether the terms of the transaction work
| for them, but there isn't One True Way(tm) for everyone regarding
| company loyalty.
|
| It's also possible to be loyal to the people you work with--even
| your boss, if she merits it--without being loyal to The Company.
| I've worked in great teams in companies that have a reputation
| for being shitty employers. In one case, that didn't stop me from
| leaving because the job wasn't the right fit for my family and my
| wife was unhappy. I felt somewhat bad about leaving, but I still
| left.
|
| Mixed feelings are okay.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Companies don't appreciate craftsmanship, in fact they openly
| state they would rather replace craftsmen with llm-based blop
| generators. So why not spend your time on your own thing? Be it
| your family/hobby.
| nyarlathotep_ wrote:
| This is underdiscussed. The gap between the perception
| (accurate, largely) between the 2010s and now for "software
| jobs" (broad term for all related professions) is stark.
|
| We'd hear stories of ballpits and "20% time" (or whatever
| Google had), and now we've seen rounds of layoffs,
| thunderdome for even marginal employment, and Big Names
| publicly saying they intended to replace staff with LLMs.
|
| How could anyone have loyalty in this environment?
| kemiller wrote:
| I was leaving a company recently and the fresh grads, with whom
| I had a good relationship, asked if I had any advice.
|
| I said, "Always remember that the company is not your friend. I
| don't mean your boss or your coworkers, they might well be or
| become your friend. I mean the company itself. If all is well,
| it may be an excellent ally, but the company can and sometimes
| will turn on you in an instant if its goals change. Your boss's
| job, even if they are your friend, is ultimately to serve the
| company.
|
| Go out there, work hard, have fun, but put your needs first in
| the bigger picture."
| pklausler wrote:
| My version of this: "The company gives you their best and
| final job offer every two weeks on your paycheck, and if you
| get a better offer, it's okay to take it, no hard feelings."
| scarface_74 wrote:
| A "bonus" is not worth me consistently putting in more than 40
| hours a week. That means I'm sacrificing time with my wife,
| family and friends, my vacation, my time at the gym, my time
| learning Spanish since we have decided to establish residency
| in Costa Rica and live their part time before and after I
| retire, etc.
|
| I am going to give my employer 100% of my knowledge and close
| to that amount of energy for 40 hours a week. I love the
| company I work at now. It's the best employer I have had (10 in
| 29 years). But I still treat it very transactional. They can
| ask me to go the extra mile occasionally. But only because they
| pay me well and stand by their word of "unlimited vacation as
| long as you meet expectations".
|
| The other the compsnies I really enjoyed were startups. But
| they always go to shit one way or the other - get acquired, get
| big and go public or go out of business.
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| This is basically how I approach it with my employees.
|
| I'm very clear with anyone who works for me that our interests
| won't always align. I'm also clear with them that I'm not going
| to screw them over and that I won't take any offense if they
| negotiate with me or ask for things. I lay out what my lines
| are: I will not knowingly lie to them, and I will usually
| provide complete information except when I have a good reason
| to. I ask the same of them. Beyond that, we're adults who can
| negotiate _like_ adults.
|
| There's nothing wrong with a transactional relationship, and it
| doesn't mean you can't be human. Things only get unfair when
| the relationship is only expected to be transactional in _one
| direction_ , where employees are supposed to have undying
| loyalty to a company that will lay them off as soon as it
| becomes convenient to do so.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| "Loyalty" is also worth something to self - to the loyal
| employee. It is a signal on CV that given the right
| environment, you commit to projects and people value your
| input. That's not to say, stay at all cost, but that when you
| leave, _you_ pay a price too, and sometimes it 's not worth it.
|
| In my line of work, it can easily take 6-12 months until people
| are _really_ productive, I 'm reluctant to hire someone who
| will be a time sink for all this time then leave 3 months
| later.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| By default I give loyalty and dedication to my employer until
| and unless my trust and respect are broken. I'm one of those
| engineers that will happily give 115% for extended periods, but
| only if I feel I'm being treated fairly and with the respect my
| abilities and position deserve.
|
| Once that social contract is broken, I'm just a clock puncher
| until I find a new job. If my employer doesn't appreciate the
| amount and quality of my work, I'll just find someone who will.
|
| I don't think my standards here are particularly high, but I've
| never worked anywhere that didn't wind up treating me like
| trash after a year or two. I guess they just take me for
| granted after a while and assume I'll never quit. I dunno, I
| can't make sense of it.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| A person that is happy with their job, but not in love with it,
| will often not engage in these conversations at all. They're
| too busy living life. They're probably the majority of workers,
| if you ask them how the feel about their job, they'd probably
| say they like it, but they have no strong feelings. It's the
| people who have been ground to nothing that get online and talk
| about it, and the true believers who get out to defend the
| status quo.
|
| And really, it only takes a small push for a person who
| diligently does their work to become an overworked husk of a
| person. A bad manager, a raise that didn't come when expected,
| or even a tough project, and the relationship has soured--
| sometimes forever.
|
| And sometimes, those people move on to a different job, and the
| attitude moves back to the center. And then they're not as
| vocal about it.
| jp57 wrote:
| True, though I'm still surprised, on a site run by a startup
| incubator, at the number of seriously jaded clock-punchers
| who chime into these threads with their cynicism and proud
| declarations of how they go through their careers phoning it
| in.
|
| I have to wonder if those people interact with the "Who's
| Hiring?" and "Who Wants to be Hired?" threads and if they get
| any interest from employers.
| shusson wrote:
| > I find it interesting how starkly bimodal attitudes toward
| employer loyalty are.
|
| It's because employers create a narrative which makes people
| think they are valued beyond the transactional. People develop
| relationships with employers and have trust in them. In my
| experience it is very easy to fall into this narrative unless
| you have experience otherwise.
| synergy20 wrote:
| I read a book 20 years ago(forgot the name), one chapter is
| called "work as a mercenary', since then I detached my personal
| feeling from the companies I worked at, it served both sides well
| over the years.
| j45 wrote:
| If you die, would the employer bat an eye before they reposted
| your position, or would they hold your position and chair to
| honor you.
|
| Loyalty doesn't last. At the most you can build up some good will
| and favour, and that almost always has a clock running.
| DrBazza wrote:
| It's a reciprocal agreement.
|
| If my employer is decent and goes the extra mile, I'd be
| encouraged to do the same. If they're shitty, then they get
| what's in signed the contract, and that's it.
|
| But... don't fall for the "we're family" nonsense. You're not.
| You're a disposable asset in a column on a spreadsheet somewhere.
|
| "No-one's final words are ever: 'I wish I'd worked more'"
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| This is one of the things that make me suspect we live in a
| simulation or something.
|
| Companies are legal entities. They don't even have an existence
| but a lot of people live just to work for random legal entity and
| cherish the accomplishments. They care more about the legal
| entity than their own life.
|
| And the stuff in LinkedIn. Either there is mass Psychosis going
| or a lot of people are philosophical zombies.
| okwhateverdude wrote:
| It isn't like we're born with a guide book on how to live life.
| Drinking the kool-aid is very tempting when you don't have a
| good reason not to drink it. If you never have the self-
| awareness to ponder your place within the org and how it
| functions, and just accept the good vibes corpoganda, what
| other outcome could there be? "They showed up to be exploited
| and are getting exactly that," thinks their sociopath exec.
|
| I suspect that a lot of the virtue signaling on LinkedIn is
| only sales puffery for their personal brand. If they can show
| just how exploitable they are, then maybe riches, recognition,
| and power will magically materialize for them. And they think
| this because they were fed tall tales all their working lives.
| trefoiled wrote:
| There's an exception to this I've seen since a relative started
| working in the game industry. There are executives in that
| industry who have a retinue of loyal followers. The studios the
| executive works for may change regularly, but his followers come
| with him each time. These workers will spend their entire career
| serving one man, and in exchange he always has a job lined up for
| them and seems to trust them the same way they trust him. It's
| very different from my experience in the rest of the tech
| industry, but I'm sure it happens to a limited extent there too.
| stephen_cagle wrote:
| That's interesting. I wonder what other industries are like
| that, where a single person keeps bringing his (mutually)
| trusted cadre of employees with them?
|
| I've heard in the past that the skill of a surgeon is actually
| more a reflection of the surgeon's team than the actual
| surgeon. So "great surgeons" are actually people who have
| "great teams". Sounds similar to me.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Finance can have this at times; software engineering can have
| this at times as well (especially at the senior levels and in
| specialized fields OR at the startup level - people like
| working together and will often work together again).
| pvtmert wrote:
| This is true in mid-sized startups. I actually witnessed it
| three times during my _short_ period of experience (7 years of
| different startup contracts) with different startups.
|
| Firstly, it does not have to be immediate or deliberate. The
| cycle happens approximately through period of 6-months. The
| followers per-se does not have to actually _follow_ or loyal to
| the main person. The said main person is generally the CTO or
| an engineering manager.
|
| Essentially, one way or another, the company needs to hire a
| CTO to fill their technical gaps and propel their growth. The
| company looks for an experienced and preferably startup
| experience in a certain field. There are already very limited
| number of folks satisfying these conditions. In which, mostly
| will already be working somewhere.
|
| From the available ones, company hires 1 person, the CTO. CTO
| identifies several gaps in tech stack and hires couple of
| _senior_ folks, with of course, recommendations/references.
| (now called staff engineers mostly, as the seniority sort of
| lowered at the 5-6 years mark).
|
| After couple of months later, the senior folks hire couple of
| mid-level folks because there are too much work to do. Since
| the senior engineers were busy both with design _and_ the
| implementation, they need to focus more on the design and make
| big-picture decisions, cannot be bothered with bug-fixes
| anymore. Therefore, they need some mid-level engineers to
| cleanup things and keep the lights on...
|
| After 6 to 9 months period, the newly hired folks become 7 or
| greater in the numbers. As now they are the majority in the
| organization's technical hierarchy, they can easily push-out
| _older_ members which are not part of their circle and let more
| folks from their circle in.
|
| As you guessed, this is a pyramid scheme in employment, as the
| lower level folks look up to people who hired them (created a
| position/opening).
|
| Even if the actual scheme is not intended initially, usually
| this is what happens. It doesn't even have to be a grand plan
| to take-over, the unconscious biases and past relationships
| always prevail, causing the same cycle to repeat.
|
| Also another perspective is the people whose boss (CTO) has
| just left. These folks also leave over time not just they
| blindly follow their CTO or loyal to them, but because the
| _new_ CTO changes how things work, maybe a new tech stack
| people are not familiar with. In turn, it stagnates peoples'
| carreers, causes confusion and even takes them one step back.
| (i.e. An engineer on a promotion path now has to re-prove their
| skills to a new manager/CTO)
|
| I think for all the cases, I did not find this approach useful
| in the business sense. Because in all cases, it took the
| startup at least a year to adapt into a new CTO and the tech
| stack. As the new CTO always assures X is better than Y, all
| the problems are there because Y is older, and X is the new
| paradigm. Just to be replaced by Z when the next CTO arrives
| after several years...
|
| So the moral of the story is, people don't need to be loyal,
| the incentives make them so.
| xp84 wrote:
| I've seen this in software in various roles. Usually a CTO will
| be hired, and will draw from his previous lieutenants to build
| a leadership team and key IC roles such as architect or staff
| engineer. I think it's a very smart way to quickly build out a
| trusted team by simply hiring people who have delivered
| successfully for you in the past. I've worked with a cadre of
| brilliant former-Zappos people in one job brought over this
| way, and in another, a CTO was hired away from a Hollywood
| talent agency and he brought over some stellar people from
| there to lead some teams.
| Magi604 wrote:
| This happens in sports too. GMs of teams will always make room
| for players that delivered or were loyal to them in the past,
| even on lesser contracts.
| foolinaround wrote:
| In general, people leave or stay for their managers, not their
| companies.
|
| In retrospect, in one of the earlier companies, I could see the
| company not doing well, but had a great boss and stayed, and then
| got hit by downsizing.
| mnemotronic wrote:
| I misread this as "On loyalty to your emperor". As it turn out I
| ain't got that either.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| There's a lot of discussion whether you should be loyal to your
| company, what the company does to earn it, etc.
|
| My question would be, what does loyalty to a company actually
| mean, as far as how it impacts your choices?
|
| - You're willing to work on a Saturday one week instead of
| Thursday, because there's something critical that needs handling?
|
| - You're willing to work longer hours, possibly unpaid, now and
| again when there's something critical that needs handling?
|
| - You're willing to work longer hours, possibly unpaid, on a
| regular basis because the company needs it to survive?
|
| - You're unwilling to leave for a better job offer, because it
| will cause problems for the company?
|
| - You're will to do more than your own job (underpaid) because
| the company can't afford to hire someone to fit that job?
|
| There's a ton of different things, and different ones fall
| into/outside the loyalty bucket depending on who you ask.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Do you believe in the mission statement? Why are you doing this,
| here, at this company? In tech companies like Sun and DEC are
| gone but they had loyalty from employees because the employer has
| leaders who didn't lie, didn't sugar coat it, were honest with
| employees at all times, had a product(s) that people believed in,
| etc.
| mymacbook wrote:
| The valley is small. Loyalty to your peers and friends will
| outlast the companies you stop at to work throughout your career.
| It's all about the people you surround yourself with.
| samspot wrote:
| Article points are mostly all valid, don't give your loyalty in
| return for abuse, etc. etc.
|
| But I've been at my employer 11 years now and I have greatly
| prospered. They took care of me in many ways that aren't required
| by law, and gave great benefits. They didn't abuse me or take
| undue time from my family. They constantly invest in my career --
| for their ultimate benefit, yes, but I benefit too. If and when I
| get transactioned out, I'll have no regrets.
|
| It's ok to reward an employer with some loyalty for treating you
| well.
|
| But also, this quote needs to be here :)
|
| Would I ever leave this company? Look, I'm all about loyalty, In
| fact, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my
| loyalty, But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty
| more highly... I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most. --
| Dwight Schrute
| asr wrote:
| Exactly the right attitude. If you're dealing with an employer
| that thinks everything should be transactional and that it's no
| issue if they nickle and dime you on small things, it gets
| tiring (ask me how I know). When your employer acts in ways
| that value their employees, it's ok to put a value on that,
| even if you recognize they're not your spouse and they may lay
| you off or act in other un-loyal ways in the future.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| I refer to this as my "Work for Money" scam. At any point, one
| side can pull the rug on the other, but in the meantime, I do
| work and you pay me full freight for it.
| darkhorse222 wrote:
| The true issue is that many middle and upper level managers are
| sycophantic and short term incentivized, while valuing loyalty
| only really shows its benefit over the long term. If you're
| leadership is always trying to have a green number for next
| quarter and your manager is always trying to only please his boss
| to get promoted, those two will disavow loyalty the moment
| anything gets in the way of that. I truly think public companies
| have the worst incentives in this regard.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| Corporate loyalty is the dumbest trick employers ever pulled. I
| hope Gen Z don't fall for that shit.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > Do not buy into the bullshit hype of "hustle" to appease your
| employer.
|
| Oh gosh that's the first time I've seen anyone put that concept
| into words. I wish we had a word in English to mean this.
| hintymad wrote:
| I think a strong loyalty towards a company will work only in a
| society like Japan: companies are culturally committed to taking
| care of them employees until their death. In the meantime, the
| income gap between ordinary employees and the executives is
| small. Per this article
| (https://japanoptimist.substack.com/p/japan-reality-
| check-4-i...): "The biggest difference between the Salaryman CEO
| and the Superstar CEO is, of course, the absolute gap in CEO
| compensation relative to average employee pay: in Japan this is
| now just about 50-times (for top 50 CEOs; the average is about
| 12-times)". And there is a seniority system. In contrast, the US
| companies have none of those.
|
| I'd rather subscribe to Reed Hoffman's notion on company-employee
| relationship: alliance. That is, a company and its employees are
| allies. It is a two-way relationship that enables companies and
| employees to work together toward common goals, even when some of
| their interests differ. If either a company or an employee feels
| that the alliance does not exist any more, they part ways. Note
| that this notion is orthogonal to the power dynamics between a
| company and its employees. The power dynamics has to do with
| supply-and-demand of the market and the negotiation power of the
| employees.
| devmor wrote:
| "Mutual Respect" is the key term here for sure, and I
| wholeheartedly agree.
|
| I have worked for a lot of employers that did not respect me, and
| I, despite all intentions, eventually came to not respect them
| with my work effort.
|
| My current employer does a lot to show that they respect my time
| and effort. As such, the lethargy in my work effort that has been
| present while working for other employers does not exist. I am
| just as energetic and invested in my work here as I was when I
| started.
|
| I think that this is certainly a lesson not just for employees
| when considering career moves, but a lesson for employers who are
| interested in retaining talent. In my opinion, it _should_ be a
| no-brainer; treat your employees well and they will treat you
| well. Conversely, treat your employees as an expendable resource
| and do not be shocked when their resourcefulness to your company
| is expended.
| pipes wrote:
| Why would anyone be "loyal" to a company? What does that even
| mean?
|
| It makes about as much sense as expecting shareholders to be
| loyal to the companies they hold stock in.
| beastman82 wrote:
| very strong antiwork sentiment these days. It's sad. The
| employers are taking a risk by hiring you and paying you, and you
| should work as hard as you can during business hours. That ethic
| is very rare in tech but is somewhat common in every other
| industry I've worked in.
| necessary wrote:
| Why must employees put in 100% effort? Where does that
| expectation come from? I'd be surprised if most companies put
| in 100% effort to support each employee.
|
| Isn't it all about expectations in the end? The company expects
| you to meet some set of goals. Conversely, you expect the
| company to give you benefits and payment.
| catigula wrote:
| Work in a zero sum environment is pretty cut-throat, even moreso
| the increasingly scarce resources are or higher competition is.
|
| The idea that you'd apply interpersonal principles that also
| exist to help you in your time of need to entities that, by
| definition and literal fiduciary duty to shareholders law, do not
| have to adhere to interpersonal mores, seems a little silly.
| conductr wrote:
| I'm a mid-career executive that has earned more money from perks
| related to joining new companies (bonuses, stock, etc) than I
| have in salary & annual bonus programs; which would be my main
| compensation if I stayed long-term at a company.
|
| I simply don't see an economic incentive to loyalty with a sole
| exception; I'm currently working through a retention bonus
| period. I actually just signed it a month ago and will be paid 3
| years salary a year from then. The full amount pays out if they
| terminate me beforehand. So, my short term loyalty has been
| incentivized but I'll likely move on soon afterwards. (FWIW, the
| CEO left and the board feared I would follow them or leave due to
| uncertainty so that is what prodded them to offer this, it kind
| of fell in my lap - but it's also not the first time this has
| happened)
| nemomarx wrote:
| it seems silly to be that companies will budget for new hires
| more than they budget for retention incentives. I'm sure they
| have measured which one pays off better but it feels backwards
| conductr wrote:
| The best retention incentive is paying good people well to
| begin with. And, it doesn't have to be huge. Paying people
| 10% above market when you know they are a strong asset
| defends you from that person ever wanting to leave. [Aside -
| but, Budget's should be offensive versus defensive so the
| whole retention bonus strategy should be an exception
| (unplanned) in my opinion. Granted that's from an operational
| view. From a cash flow planning view, the CFO knows it's
| going to spend money somewhere and probably needs to account
| for that somehow in their financial plan, but it's best to
| keep it out functional budget - otherwise department heads
| will be tempted to spend it, or repurpose it on something
| else.]
|
| Instead, companies try to hire people 10% below market, end
| up passing on high quality talent that knows their worth, and
| obtaining talent that is effectively only delivering 70% or
| less than the high performer would. A lot of companies rely
| on HR or recruiters to do the initial 'expectation within
| budget' screen, so the hiring managers never even see the
| talent that gets turned away or disinterested by a
| potentially small budget discrepancy. Also, budgets almost
| always have exceptions especially for outstanding talent that
| may come along so really think this is unnecessary sacrifice.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Given the general sentiment in the comments here, why aren't co-
| ops more popular? Or any model with a shared ownership. If you
| eliminate the employer/employee, hierarchical relationship then
| the 'transactional' model goes away and you can have loyalty that
| matters for all parties. But there are almost no such places.
| I've always thought it was more a regulatory issue, but would be
| curious what others think.
| nemomarx wrote:
| coops have great difficulty raising money, and this is a VC
| forum.
| eikenberry wrote:
| That would explain way they aren't discussed here to much but
| doesn't explain why there aren't more out there.
| neilv wrote:
| Some people need to be told not to have loyalty to the company.
| Such as when the company is screwing them (which might or might
| not be necessary). Or when you can tell just by talking with the
| leadership that they will screw the employees. Decent people at
| such companies need to extricate themselves.
|
| But other people need to be told not to be toxic baby diaper
| loads. People exhibiting the same kinds of thinking as the
| leadership in those other companies.
|
| I've seen companies show a degree of loyalty to people, and much
| more of that from managers and teammates. In that environment,
| someone coming in and priding themself on their savvy at thinking
| this is all purely transactional-- that person is going to be
| toxic, if they don't quickly realize their misconception, and
| join the others more cooperatively.
| kinow wrote:
| My father worked for many many years at IBM Brazil with
| mainframes.
|
| When I got into IT, his first advice for me was (translating from
| Portuguese): "Companies do not have feelings. So do not harbor
| feelings for it. The moment they have to fire you, they will".
|
| I followed his other other advices and experimented several
| companies and industries. No regrets so far (20+ years gone since
| I started).
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I've identified 4 distinct attitudes I've had towards work, and
| I'm constantly fighting not to slip into full psychopathy:
|
| 1) I have a meaningful job where I work towards a goal that is
| personally meaningful. I would do this work even without being
| paid, although I probably couldn't spend 40-hours a week doing
| it.
|
| 2) I have a job where I work towards making the company money. I
| may not be personally invested in the business, but I can work
| with a team of good people towards the mutual goal of making the
| company profitable.
|
| 3) I have a job where I can't identify any logical reasons behind
| decisions and what I'm being asked to do. The only logic (or lack
| thereof) seems to be towards making those with the power to fire
| me happy. Any attempts at finding a higher purpose fail because
| the company is taking actions contrary to those higher purposes.
|
| 4) My job is just a source of money, there is no purpose or
| logic. This encourages a full-psychopath mercenary approach to
| work and power--like study "48 Laws of Power" and use them--screw
| anyone over for a buck.
|
| Obviously #1 is the ideal, and the hard part is I'm always quite
| close to it, because I love programming, even in my spare time.
|
| I see #2 mentioned on HN fairly often as a supposedly clear-eyed
| view of work. I would be relatively happy to remain at #2, but
| corporate infighting and other stupid decisions quickly break it
| down. It's also hard to maintain #2 because society itself isn't
| the meritocracy that #2 pretends it is.
|
| I'm usually going back and forth between #3 and #4, both of which
| are miserable--layers of hell. I'm not a bad person so I have a
| hard time remaining at #4, but #3 is miserable in-between land.
|
| What level are you?
| imoreno wrote:
| First of all, loyalty happens when both sides have moats. I'm not
| talking here about the case where one side is very loyal and the
| other is very disloyal - I'd rather call that "suckering". But in
| the US, government jobs have lots of mutual loyalty. The business
| can feel confident the employee isn't likely to leave, because
| for those jobs a huge part of the package is the pension which
| you only get after staying 20 years. And they heavily reward
| tenure. Meanwhile the employees also feel confident they won't be
| dumped (DOGE aside) because these orgs are structured in such a
| way that it's very hard to fire people due to process and
| culture. Lo and behold, plenty of loyalty in government jobs. US
| companies fire much more easily.
|
| In European companies both firing and quitting is much more
| complicated, so you get employer loyalty in Germany or UK for
| example, because you actually get long term benefits there and
| termination is not as simple. The US companies of 50-80s like the
| author's father's employer were similar as well.
|
| By the way, US companies don't actually demand loyalty. They pay
| lip service to it, but complaining about that is like complaining
| that people in clothing catalogs are too attractive. That's just
| how the field works, nobody takes it seriously and you look silly
| complaining about it. "Demanding loyalty" doesn't look like this.
| If an employer offered a $1 million bonus on your 10 year
| anniversary, _that_ would be demanding loyalty for real. But
| neither the employee nor employer side has interest in this, not
| to mention the implied slowing down of the termination process.
| Plus the can of worms of knowing the company will even be around
| then.
|
| Everything is fine, zoomers are not some insanely disloyal alien
| changelings. We're just in a transitional economy.
| jl6 wrote:
| I have never felt loyalty to an employer but have often felt
| loyalty to a manager, and in turn to my own teams. Mutual loyalty
| between humans is a natural outcome of mutual trust and respect,
| which every manager should be striving to cultivate. The highest
| functioning teams I have worked with have had that bond, and it's
| quite independent of whether the overarching corporate org is
| shitty at the macro level.
|
| I've also felt disloyalty to a manager. That's when it's time to
| move on.
| freitasm wrote:
| My second job, in the late 80s and early 90s was with a mainframe
| company. Not the Big Blue, but the red one.
|
| I mentioned to my uncle, a MD. He was happy for me because I had
| "found a job for life".
|
| This was his world view. Being a self-employed, practice-owner MD
| he had a job for life. He thought this was the same in other
| careers.
|
| I worked that job 18 years, in two countries. Then I left and
| have had three jobs since then. Changed careers. But I never
| thought being loyal gave me any credit with the employers.
|
| One of them dropped me like a lead balloon as soon as the
| acquiring company found someone in another office to kiss
| someone's behind.
| eschneider wrote:
| I've worked for some genuinely great companies (and some not so
| great) over the course of my career and companies change, just
| like people. A great company you joined, might not be so great in
| 3-5 years and there's rarely much one can do about that. If it's
| no longer a good fit, it's not disloyal or unethical to move on.
| palata wrote:
| Spot on. There is no loyalty, it's a partnership.
|
| You wouldn't pay 20% to Netflix to watch your shows, would you?
| But it doesn't mean you're a bad customer. And when Netflix
| raises the prices or includes ads, they won't say "oh, you've
| been paying us for 5 years, we won't do it to you".
|
| If extra time is not compensated, don't do extra time. Even for
| startups: startups are ponzi schemes for the founders. Like for
| any job, you should consider what they _offer now_ , not what
| _they promise_. Because startups generally don 't meet those
| promises (that's the whole point of a startup).
|
| But if the company respects you, you can respect it in return. It
| means meeting the expectations. If one party doesn't, the other
| party is free to end the contract.
| hintymad wrote:
| > When I'm on my deathbed, I won't look back at my life and wish
| I had worked harder.
|
| An inconvenient truth is that not everyone can find a meaningful
| career in their own eyes. Case in point, to me tech industry is
| such a wonderful industry. We are paid exceptionally well. We get
| to be creative every day. We largely control our own output. We
| blend product design with engineering design and implementation.
| We get to geek out on college maths and statistics. We build
| things that get used by many people, if not millions of them. The
| list can go on and on. Yet, I'm sure everyone on HN knows at
| least a group of tech people who are miserable doing their jobs.
| tasuki wrote:
| > Do you pay reasonable salaries?
|
| So overrated.
|
| I work for what I feel is a very non-competitive salary (order of
| magnitude less than I used to earn), in a programming language I
| hate, and couldn't be happier: it's a small company with a(n
| actual) mission, interesting problems, nice people, chill
| environment. I couldn't ask for more. Well, it could be not-
| Python. But, can't have it all - it'd be too perfect!
|
| You can do your job hopping and earn your high salaries and spend
| them on things you don't actually care about...
| jefftk wrote:
| _> When I'm on my deathbed, I won't look back at my life and wish
| I had worked harder. I'll look back and wish I spent more time
| with the people I loved_
|
| If you don't imagine yourself wishing you'd worked harder,
| consider whether you've chosen the right work. There are massive
| problems in the world on which we can make real progress, and if
| you're not working on these, why not?
|
| Definitely spend time with your friends, family, and those you
| love. Don't work to the exclusion of everything else that matters
| in your life. But if your work isn't something you look back on
| with intense pride, consider whether there's something else you
| could be doing professionally that you would feel really good
| about.
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