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Loyal to the Company

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Re: Loyal to the Company

#51

Post by rmason »

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.

My late father worked for Morton Salt for close to forty years. Then Morton got a new 38 year old CEO and he wanted to shake up the company. He figured out that the employees over 55 years old tended to be the highest paid and if he got rid of all of them it would goose profits and he'd be a hero to Wall Street so he did it.

For a quarter or two it worked and then the company descended into a death spiral and he was fired. My Dad got another good job and did OK. Poor Morton Salt never recovered, they've been sold a half dozen times and aren't even the largest salt company in America anymore.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#52

Post by maybeinsured »

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…

When I worked for a regional water company, we were setup as a non-profit with a very old-school feel. Everything from dress codes and PTO to IBM mainframes.

“We’re like a family” was the motto and that was true, in the same way you have that dirt bag uncle and drama queen aunt that you invite to all the functions because they’re blood, we had the “he’s three years from retirement so we can’t get rid of them” relationships with tenured staff nearing their pension. We had a Network Analyst pulling around 90k a year that failed to train up over the years and fell behind to the point of uselessness. The entire job for this person was to “maintain our antivirus” which entailed installing and updating Macaffee, manually, on a few hundred machines. Maybe manning the help desk at lunch if they had to go out for calls here and there. No more, no less.

That, to me, is loyalty. It’s an awfully kind of loyalty in some sense but a beautiful kind at the same time.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#53

Post by lliamander »

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…

> If my services are a net disvalue to the company they should continue on as though that's not the case?

Loyalty is not about accepting a lower value relationship for the sake of not wanting to change, it is trying to optimize the value of relationships over a longer period of time. That means, among other things, ongoing investment from both parties to improve the mutual value of the relationship.

This applies to all forms of relationships, not just employment.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#54

Post by jewayne »

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.

Umm...I'm sorry, but it very much is a form of survivorship bias. "Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not."

"I worked hard, my employer treated me well, and I retired early. It's not that hard!" Does not take into the account the workers that worked hard and in return were abused by their employers.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#55

Post by efsavage »

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…

> What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though?

I think there are different flavors of this but they generally fall into one of two categories:

1. Short-term vs. Long-term

  * Employee: I'm not getting a raise this year but I trust that they'll make it up to me.  This project sucks but they'll put me on a better one next time.
  * Employer: We don't need to keep this person on the payroll right now but we will in the future.
2. Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior

  * Employee: The company cut me some slack when I was going through X, or kept me on even when the economy tanked, so I'll forgo a slightly higher salary at a place that might not happen, in case that situation happens again.
  * Employer: This person stuck it out when times were tough and didn't quit when we cut hours last quarter, so we're going to keep them around.
I'm not saying these are always this clean, or always the right decision, but I think they answer the "what does it mean" question in terms most people could identify with. You're probably going also going to see this more in companies that have a higher learning curve or where there is more personal attachment involved (e.g. small town/community where you're going to see them every day). If you're a Shiny Widgetmaker at the only company that makes Shiny Widgets, loyalty is probably worth it. If you work for a megacorp and were hired and fired by spreadsheet formulas, loyalty probably makes less rational sense for either side.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#56

Post by kube-system »

lliamander wrote: post #53
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…

> If my services are a net disvalue to the company they should continue on as though that's not the case? Loyalty is not about accepting a lower value relationship for the sake of not wanting to change, it is trying to optimize the value of relationships over a longer period of time. That means, among other things, ongoing investment from both parties to improve the mutual value of the relationship. This applies to a…

Yes, it's part of social capital. It is intangible, and hard to measure, but it definitely exists. Humans are not machines, and they will respond differently depending on how others treat them, even if those circumstances are not contractual.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#57

Post by simplotek »

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…

> I agree. The only reason it’s “inhumane” to lay people off is because of our horrible safety net and ridiculous cost of education.

It goes way beyond that point. Your tenure in a company requires you to specialize and develop your skills to meet the needs of your employer. When you are fired then the employability of those skills might be none or even detrimental to finding jobs anywhere else. The longest you work for an employer, the more potential you risk losing.

Also, you will leave an employer at a different stage in your life. Your ability to allocate your time and energy to onboard onto the requirements of another company can be severely limited due to factors like your family responsibilities or even your health and energy levels. Working for a company always requires you to waste potential that could be used.

Lastly, you will make life decisions around your work. For example, you might buy a home based on factors such as where your workplace is, your job requirements, and your salary range. If you're forced to switch jobs you might be forced to sell your home at a point in time that is detrimental to your interests.

For a company, an employee is expendable. For an employee, being fired can and often has a profound detrimental impact in their life, physically, mentally, emotionally, economically, and socially as well.

A job is not a mere business deal. A job is a social contract. An employer demands employees to make life changes around them, and employees are expected to comply. It's profoundly unfair and one-sided to make believe that an employee's social responsibilities only go as far as their paycheck.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#58

Post by mianos »

rmason wrote: post #51
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.

My late father worked for Morton Salt for close to forty years. Then Morton got a new 38 year old CEO and he wanted to shake up the company. He figured out that the employees over 55 years old tended to be the highest paid and if he got rid of all of them it would goose profits and he'd be a hero to Wall Street so he did it. For a quarter or two it worked and then the company descended into a death spiral and he was…

the "MBA Playbook". You would think those MBA courses that instruct on how to do this would also include the downside.

Maybe they do and people make the moral choice not to care as they plan on being long gone before the failures?

Maybe they teach that bit too?

Sorry for more questions and answers as I have NOT done an MBA myself.

Re: Loyal to the Company

#59

Post by somesortofthing »

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…

Loyalty in general can be thought of as a line of credit for employers and employees to informally "borrow" from each other to smooth things over. Explicitly enumerating all of a given job's duties in an employment agreement is functionally impossible, and a key part of what people mean by an employee's "loyalty" to a company is that willingness to go slightly outside of their expected duties. Meanwhile, a company's "loyalty" is willingness to tolerate downturns in returns on a given employee and protect employees' jobs even when doing so might cost them in the short term. A company's "loyalty" might take the form not punishing an employee for being unproductive for some time after a family tragedy or keeping employees on the payroll during an economic downturn even if that might cost them.

If you want to completely get rid of that, even the slightest imperfection in designing the bounds of a given employee's duties is going to result in whatever processes that person relies for grinding to a halt and everyone being trapped in a constant run-around of "That's not my job".

That said, given that companies have been increasingly unwilling to extend even the most basic loyalty to its employees, the right move for workers is to become more transactional. Normally, the accrued "credit" gained through loyalty might dissuade you from switching jobs even if you get a nominally better offer, but if that's no longer a factor, workers have no reason to hesitate about just looking at the bottom line on their employment agreement. This might be damaging to the broader economy since job hopping has considerable productivity costs, but on the individual level, it's the clear right choice.

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