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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#251

Post by kermatt »

swatcoder wrote: post #177
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…

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…

The term loyalty is dangerous for an employee.

Having seen companies of all sizes lay people off for the exact same reason - Returns did not match expectations - my personal perspective is to treat all employers the same.

No company with a balance sheet is loyal to employees. Keeping that idea in mind, and thus on an equal perspective, is healthy for both sides. "It's just business" is good advice and not just in movies.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#252

Post by hshshshshsh »

This is one of the things that make me suspect we live in a simulation or something.

Companies are legal entities. They don't even have an existence but a lot of people live just to work for random legal entity and cherish the accomplishments. They care more about the legal entity than their own life.

And the stuff in LinkedIn. Either there is mass Psychosis going or a lot of people are philosophical zombies.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#253

Post by harles »

kemayo wrote: post #172
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…

You can think of mutual-loyalty as an extended transaction, if you prefer. If, in exchange for you not planning on leaving the company, the company actively does its best to treat you well and preserve your job long-term, that can be a good trade-off. The mutuality is important. You absolutely shouldn't think of yourself as "loyal" to a company that won't stick up for you. (And many companies won't, to be clear. If a…

It’s definitely not a transaction. Every time I’ve seen push come to shove, companies prioritize the folks they see as critical to their company’s success with loyalty not even being a small factor. And if it’s a moderate to large sized company, many of the decisions will be made by a consulting firm with 0 context (or care) for loyalty.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#254

Post by CharlieDigital »

jsemrau wrote: post #91
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'm part of the GenX crowd here. I can't imagine a day when I am not building or solving something.

That's different from working (as the exchange of your time for money).

I love building stuff, I love creating things. If I can exchange those things that I want to create for money, that's a bonus, but I create because I enjoy that process not because I intend to exchange that time for money.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#255

Post by simpaticoder »

ashoeafoot wrote: post #204
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…

Yes, all of these things do not deserve loyalty. There are values i hold dear, if a philosophy or state holds on to the same values, i support them. If they turn away from them, no reason to be loyal.

Strictly speaking, a philosophy can't turn away from values. A person can, but philosophy itself is, to a first order approximation, an immutable bundle of values.

Of course this naive view quickly falls apart when interpretation comes into play, as it always must. In the extreme, one may assert that "philosophy" is encoded in the behavior of it's adherents, and these behaviors may have little or nothing to do with the "canonical" representation of the philosophy as immutable text. Or more precisely the behavior and words can be profoundly decoupled. Many examples of this decoupling occurs to your thought (and mine). So when you say that a philosophy can "turn away" from values, in this sense that is true.

I prefer to think of philosophies as a kind of Platonic ideal, which are then subject to all the foibles of the humans who associate themselves to them. There are some subtle problems with this view, which I'd rather not confront.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#256

Post by scarface_74 »

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’m happily married, have plenty of friends and family and I don’t see myself not working until someone won’t hire me. I’m 50.

My wife and started traveling a lot after Covid lifted and I started working remotely. We did the “digital nomad” thing for a year across the US until the year before last and even since then we are on a plane to do something for fun around a dozen times a year. Going forward, we have 6-8 “vacations” planned per year for the next few years and sometimes we stay in another city for a month at a time.

This was before I had unlimited PTO and plan on averaging 30 days a year. Work isn’t a limiting factor.

It’s a lot easier to spend $20K-$30K+ a year (plus playing the credit card points game) when you have income coming in. Also everything you mentioned is a lot easier to do when you are young and healthy than when you are 65.

I couldn’t possibly see having our travel schedule later in life. True we aren’t “young”. But we are both gym rats

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#257

Post by gorbachev »

swatcoder wrote: post #177
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…

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…

There is a special form of small company that's even worse. It's the kind where "we're a family". Those are worse than anything a big company bureaucracy / bean-counting could ever be.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#258

Post by p3rls »

zelon88 wrote: post #176
p3rls wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a retarded modern take on things, not everyone derives meaning from checking off a bucket list they read about on some internet listicle. For some of us, creating and contributing is the goal.

The irony of this statement is; most of the people who have adopted the views you're criticizing used to believe what you believe. I am one of those individuals. I used to think that my worth could be measured by the amount of work that I produced. That there was some big tally board and everytime I did something valuable I would get a "tick" and that the "ticks" would eventually be tallied up and there would be some…

Jesus christ, used to believe what I believe? bro there's literally a pop self-help recommendation at the bottom of your reply. I guess we should be grateful it's not a ted talk or betterhelp.com review.

No one is measuring your soul by jira task completions.

What I'm saying is such a 'live, laugh, love' philosophy (but with more profanity) is equivalent to jira task completions and your soul is measured entirely differently.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#259

Post by trefoiled »

There's an exception to this I've seen since a relative started working in the game industry. There are executives in that industry who have a retinue of loyal followers. The studios the executive works for may change regularly, but his followers come with him each time. These workers will spend their entire career serving one man, and in exchange he always has a job lined up for them and seems to trust them the same way they trust him. It's very different from my experience in the rest of the tech industry, but I'm sure it happens to a limited extent there too.
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