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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#181

Post by Apocryphon »

stego-tech wrote: post #109

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 sto…

> 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...

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#182

Post by simpaticoder »

horsawlarway wrote: post #152
HEmanZ wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

>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?

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#183

Post by pkdpic »

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…

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?

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#184

Post by Apocryphon »

simpaticoder wrote: post #182
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.

>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 stateme…

Perhaps it should be refined to say that "profit-oriented things" that view existence as purely transactions don't deserve loyalty.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#187

Post by academia_hack »

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…

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#188

Post by robertlagrant »

oofManBang wrote: post #101
robertlagrant wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then sell your labour for more than a pittance, if you're just haggling over the price.

Ahh, silly me, I should have just starved on the streets until someone recognized my value.

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#189

Post by TheGRS »

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…

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.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#190

Post by robertlagrant »

alabastervlog wrote: post #166
robertlagrant wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

How do you define "retirement"?
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