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Loyal to the Company

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Re: Loyal to the Company

#41

Post by unregistereddev »

gspencley wrote: post #37
AlbertCory wrote: post #21

My Dad worked for Swift & Co. for 45 years. Nonetheless, when I quit my first job, he said to me, approvingly, "They're not loyal to you, so why should you be loyal to them?" There are companies loyal to their employees. They tend to be small and family-owned, though, and when the family retires or loses control, the new owners tend to be markedly less loyal.

What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though? Maybe I'm just overly cold and "literal", but an employment agreement is just that: an agreement to exchange value for value. In general, I loathe the idea of an agreement that I can't renegotiate. Do I owe my employer something? Yes, to the extent that it is agreed upon contractually. Does my employer owe me something? Same deal. I just don't understa…

While I understand this is rare (and becoming rarer), part of my employment agreement includes incentives for staying with the company long-term. These incentives include a pension, increasing amounts of vacation time, training, and other smaller perks. These longer-term incentives demonstrate the company's commitment to a long-term employment agreement.

In exchange, I have more reason to stay and provide continuity, preserve domain knowledge, etc.

It's ok to have a cold or literal view of an employment agreement. In my opinion that's valid, and looking at your agreement through that lens gives you a lot of information about the intended term or duration of the agreement. Sadly, it's increasingly common for that duration to be "until the next re-org or downturn".

Re: Loyal to the Company

#44

Post by dmn322 »

gspencley wrote: post #37
AlbertCory wrote: post #21

My Dad worked for Swift & Co. for 45 years. Nonetheless, when I quit my first job, he said to me, approvingly, "They're not loyal to you, so why should you be loyal to them?" There are companies loyal to their employees. They tend to be small and family-owned, though, and when the family retires or loses control, the new owners tend to be markedly less loyal.

What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though? Maybe I'm just overly cold and "literal", but an employment agreement is just that: an agreement to exchange value for value. In general, I loathe the idea of an agreement that I can't renegotiate. Do I owe my employer something? Yes, to the extent that it is agreed upon contractually. Does my employer owe me something? Same deal. I just don't understa…

I agree. The only reason it’s “inhumane” to lay people off is because of our horrible safety net and ridiculous cost of education. If we could solve those issues, then we wouldn’t need any loyalty from companies. Imagine if we had that in place and instead of the job destruction by ChatGPT being a tragedy, it was an opportunity to update our economy, with hundreds of thousands of people trained in new industries. Not drowning in debt, but ready to work at innovative new places or start new companies themselves.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#45

Post by masterof0 »

qup wrote: post #31
FredPret wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a business relationship and should be treated as such by the employees. Employee loyalty is ridiculous because it's clearly only one-way loyalty.

Only if you believe loyalty can only be bought with loyalty. Companies provide some value for employees that they don't get back from them, and vice versa.

What value besides money? A company paying a employee to be "loyal" is nothing more than a business transaction, and "loyal" really is "please, don't go to another company, we will pay you to stay here". I'm assuming the employee is not also the owner.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#46

Post by [deleted] »

gspencley wrote: post #37
AlbertCory wrote: post #21

My Dad worked for Swift & Co. for 45 years. Nonetheless, when I quit my first job, he said to me, approvingly, "They're not loyal to you, so why should you be loyal to them?" There are companies loyal to their employees. They tend to be small and family-owned, though, and when the family retires or loses control, the new owners tend to be markedly less loyal.

What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though? Maybe I'm just overly cold and "literal", but an employment agreement is just that: an agreement to exchange value for value. In general, I loathe the idea of an agreement that I can't renegotiate. Do I owe my employer something? Yes, to the extent that it is agreed upon contractually. Does my employer owe me something? Same deal. I just don't understa…

[deleted]

Re: Loyal to the Company

#47

Post by AlbertCory »

version_five wrote: post #38
gspencley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though? Maybe I'm just overly cold and "literal", but an employment agreement is just that: an agreement to exchange value for value. In general, I loathe the idea of an agreement that I can't renegotiate. Do I owe my employer something? Yes, to the extent that it is agreed upon contractually. Does my employer owe me something? Same deal. I just don't understa…

There's almost always some measure of what people call loyalty. For example, people work late sometimes, and companies accept that there are going to be slow days where employees aren't working full out. You could call this inertia, and of course it's self interested: new hiring or a getting a new job takes effort so it's mutual beneficial to ride out bumpy spots. Over an extended period of time, that's essentially w…

This.

The cold market-oriented view other HN'ers are espousing is certainly valid, but there are many, many small employers whose owners have a personal relationship with the employees.

It IS naïve to expect that from a very large company, though, where the managers' span on one job is a couple years, at most.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#48

Post by AlbertCory »

lisper wrote: post #36
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather owned rice plantations as a young man... up until the bank which held the mortgages on the properties decided that it wanted to sell the land to a refinery. He then went to work for Shell for the next 25 years. My godfather worked for Shell for 30 years. So did my father. And when my dad ended his career there, they were about to start dismantling the global data warehousing implementation team, so he…

It's called "survivorship bias", and it's not just for people who "roll out of bed and get a life-long career." It applies equally well to pretty much everyone, including ultra-successful company founders. "Hey, if I can do it, anyone can do it, and the ones who don't are obviously just not willing to work hard enough or take enough risks."

It's not called "survivorship bias." That's a term for looking at, e.g. mutual funds' 5-year records, where the only ones you see are the ones who've been around for 5 years, and not the ones that failed.

Company "loyalty" is sometimes a valid concept, but the probability goes down the bigger the company gets.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#49

Post by jhallenworld »

dmn322 wrote: post #44
gspencley wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though? Maybe I'm just overly cold and "literal", but an employment agreement is just that: an agreement to exchange value for value. In general, I loathe the idea of an agreement that I can't renegotiate. Do I owe my employer something? Yes, to the extent that it is agreed upon contractually. Does my employer owe me something? Same deal. I just don't understa…

I agree. The only reason it’s “inhumane” to lay people off is because of our horrible safety net and ridiculous cost of education. If we could solve those issues, then we wouldn’t need any loyalty from companies. Imagine if we had that in place and instead of the job destruction by ChatGPT being a tragedy, it was an opportunity to update our economy, with hundreds of thousands of people trained in new industries. Not…

>our horrible safety net

This is intentional- an employee who feels secure is an expensive employee.

Mitch Mconnell debating $200/wk Covid relief funding: "my god, they won't work!"

Re: Loyal to the Company

#50

Post by [deleted] »

AlbertCory wrote: post #48
lisper wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "survivorship bias", and it's not just for people who "roll out of bed and get a life-long career." It applies equally well to pretty much everyone, including ultra-successful company founders. "Hey, if I can do it, anyone can do it, and the ones who don't are obviously just not willing to work hard enough or take enough risks."

It's not called "survivorship bias." That's a term for looking at, e.g. mutual funds' 5-year records, where the only ones you see are the ones who've been around for 5 years, and not the ones that failed. Company "loyalty" is sometimes a valid concept, but the probability goes down the bigger the company gets.

[deleted]
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