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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#51

Post by kjellsbells »

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#52

Post by OutOfHere »

romanovcode wrote: post #17

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.

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#53

Post by brookside »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #4

> “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 m…

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#54

Post by justin66 »

closewith wrote: post #38
CharlieDigital wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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.

> 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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#55

Post by mytailorisrich »

Propelloni wrote: post #32
closewith wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

> 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!

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#56

Post by motorest »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #4

> “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 m…

> 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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#57

Post by 4ndrewl »

agubelu wrote: post #41
Haul4ss wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Yeah,that's loyalty in the same way that a hostage is loyal to their captor.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#58

Post by paulcole »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #35
paulcole wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

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.

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#60

Post by alganet »

borgster wrote: post #46

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.

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.

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