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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#241

Post by karaterobot »

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 you might be creating a backstory for this person without any knowledge to ground it on. That's inevitable, we all do it, but be careful about drawing conclusions based on unevidenced assumptions.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#242

Post by b112 »

throwaway7783 wrote: post #229
swatcoder wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that the benefits of loyalty vary with the size of the organization and the number peers your name gets lost among in the org chart. The larger the company, and the more they're ballooned out with abstract drones chomping on abstract work items, the more loyalty becomes a means for abuse. Turnover is rampant and their processes are built to optimally accommodate it. They're egregores, not people, and the…

I agree in parts. Loyalty and corresponding benefits are a local optima. But when the macro is controlled and influenced by external (to the local) forces, and these forces have power, loyalty means nothing in terms of security. But you will still have good relationships with people and new opportunities may surface as a benefit. But loyalty to a company is complete, utter BS.

There are good and bad companies. How you are treated is how you gauge it, and good companies do deserve "working" loyality.

This is different from personal loyalty.

It's a little like politeness. Social grace. Don't demean yourself of course, but treating entities which treat you well reciprocally is valid and even moral.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#243

Post by kijin »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #207
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…

It's not about feelings. It's about making human life possible , as we are social animals. We develop through relationships. Loyalty is a commitment to the objective good of the other, of skin in the game. Loyalty is hierarchical and the particular variety and its entailed commitments depends on the particular nature of the relationship. In a hyperindividualist liberal society, the presumption is basically Hobbesian;…

Loyalty develops naturally in a good relationship. It's a fruit to be cherished, but it's not a goal that you should pursue for its own sake.

There's no point in asking first, whether employers should be loyal to their employers or vice versa. The important question is whether they are good to one another. If they are, you might also find loyalty among them, but that's not where the focus should be.

Someone who gets obsessed with loyalty too much, I think, is likely to have sinister intentions. They probably want you to be loyal to them but don't plan on being good to you.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#244

Post by grvdrm »

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.

Did a switch flip or was it a gradual turn?

I think about this too: should I just have a job to do the job well enough / adequately so to speak and then focus my brain power elsewhere (kids, house, amateur trades, etc)

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#245

Post by CharlieDigital »

stetrain wrote: post #124
lr4444lr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are options other than working to the exclusion of other fulfillment right up until a specific age cutoff and then having zero work. Honestly saving all of that until retirement is not a great idea when you look at how many people die in their 60s and 70s and that if you have children and raise a family that's going to happen well before retirement as well. You can also find routine, mental challenges, and soci…

That Samsung exec that died suddenly recently at 63 from cardiac arrest[0]?

You wonder: yeah, this guy made a fortune, but did he get to enjoy his life? If he had just stepped back and said, "I'm going to take a break and take it easy" on his 60th, would he still be alive?

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/tech/samsung-co-ceo-han-jong-...

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#246

Post by 542354234235 »

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…

>You shouldn’t bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute and utter loyalty to you.

But your mega corp doesn't have loyalty to you. They have loyalty to their shareholders, and you are a means to that end. The shareholders are the spouse, and you are just the person they paid to make the yearly birthday present. If a little flattery gets them a better price, then they flatter. If their spouse's interests change, you'll never see them again.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#247

Post by nemomarx »

dspillett wrote: post #206
simpaticoder wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> A country is a thing and loyalty to it is called "patriotism". That sort of loyalty is not quite the same: protecting your own to indirectly protect yourself. People often see their “external tribes” as an extension of their self much likely they do family/friends, rather than them being part of it like a company. I am a Spillett. I am a Yorkshireman, I am English, I am UKian, I am European, I work for TL. Notice t…

notice the mirage version of this with some companies - one can be a "googler" or so on, and companies try to encourage this identification

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#249

Post by CharlieDigital »

nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #116
CharlieDigital wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing all those things". I had an uncle pass last year and he was only 30 years older than me. He had already retired and a multi-millionaire in assets. Yet my aunt refused to retire because of a high paying job with little actual work. She kept working. When he passed, the family asked me to put together a montage video and shared their photos with me spanning his…

> Work will always be there! I really wish this were true; I'd take a year off to work on "life", but any sort of career pause, especially in this environment, seems to be a huge risk. Ageism is a concern--hell, even finding a new mediocre job in today's market is very difficult. I think it's "make hay while the sun shines". Seems the future has less opportunity, and there's plenty of time for underemployment later.

    > but any sort of career pause, especially in this environment, seems to be a huge risk.
My experience is on the contrary. My largest gains in income have always come after a break. I'm making 2x what I made in 2020 after taking almost a year off to work on some side projects and startups (a YC submission)[0]. Then in 2023, decided to take another 8 months off to work on other side projects[1]

But I also used those times to make the things I wanted to make; what I learned along the way is that oftentimes the biggest barrier to getting a better offer is actually the lack of free time and patience. If you can create time for yourself and put that time to good use, you will come out of it better for it as long as you apply that time productively.

I've always guided junior engineers I've worked with to save as much as they can because that is what will give them opportunity and freedom. You need to be able to have free time to cram leetcode, for example, or build up a portfolio, or wait out bad offers.

[0] https://www.thinktastic.com/#/

[1] https://turas.app (I had to get this one out of my system and a partner and I tried to see if we could make this one sustainable)

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#250

Post by grvdrm »

ubermonkey wrote: post #94

Spot on. Modern jobs are 100% transactional with very few exceptions. This is a relatively new development, and there ARE some counterexamples available among the large employers local to me, but you can't assume you'll get one. (In Houston, for example, if a long-term employee of an oil major is on the "layoff list" close to a tenure milestone, they'll find a way to keep them -- 20 years is a magic number for retent…

How much are jobs then attained in purely transactional ways?

Perhaps I am too invested in people, but relationships matter my industry (insurance). I think you develop them in part by not being purely transactional, and they later help if you need to love, explore, or change.

Am I wrong about that dynamic?

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