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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#161

Post by Apocryphon »

HEmanZ wrote: post #144
rckt wrote: post #103

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 empl…

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 sou…

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#162

Post by martindbp »

maccard wrote: post #13
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 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? H…

> 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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#163

Post by lm28469 »

lr4444lr wrote: post #85
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…

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.

> 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

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#165

Post by twald »

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#166

Post by alabastervlog »

robertlagrant wrote: post #75
closewith wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#167

Post by Apocryphon »

Retric wrote: post #142
esperent wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ve…

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.

Except for, perhaps, Clint Eastwood.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#168

Post by 13hunteo »

BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote: post #160
horsawlarway wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately all managers focus on push rank, so why loyalty to them?

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#169

Post by dasil003 »

bsnnkv wrote: post #96

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.

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#170

Post by II2II »

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.

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