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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#291

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…

That's interesting. I wonder what other industries are like that, where a single person keeps bringing his (mutually) trusted cadre of employees with them?

I've heard in the past that the skill of a surgeon is actually more a reflection of the surgeon's team than the actual surgeon. So "great surgeons" are actually people who have "great teams". Sounds similar to me.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#292
post #90

> “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 would like to have some meaningful part-time work when I retire. Sure, I garden, landscape, play with my tractor, spend more time playing guitar than any other hobby and go to the gym 3 times a week, but I would still want some sort of additional "purpose" to keep me engaged with society (I'm not exactly an introvert but left purely to my own devices I tend to entertain myself pretty solitarily).

I help out at the local library part time. You meet a variety of people (some you know already) and can help them in some way. You're also exposed to a wide range of humanity from assisting kid's activities (fun!) to tolerating confused transients (less fun.)

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Strictly speaking you are right. But words change meanings and philosophies get hijacked, deformed and loaded with barely affiliated concepts or movements.

So the idea as it was might be a value, but what the word means may decay into something frankenstein wouldn't recognise as his handy work .

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#294
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dif…

> 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.

Have you read the book? It sounds like you could use some of it's teachings. Or maybe you'd be amused by them. Either way, this reads like a Reddit comment. Please try harder.

> No one is measuring your soul by jira task completions.

Your words, not mine.

> What I'm saying is such a 'live, laugh, love' philosophy

Really? Here's what you said.

> 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.

Can you point out the "live, laugh, love" for me?

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#295

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.

In the context of this discussion, the result has to be of value to someone else, that's all. Then you can haggle over how valuable it is. When it is for yourself, the currency is time and energy; you ponder how much to invest on one task versus another.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#296

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.

It isn't like we're born with a guide book on how to live life. Drinking the kool-aid is very tempting when you don't have a good reason not to drink it. If you never have the self-awareness to ponder your place within the org and how it functions, and just accept the good vibes corpoganda, what other outcome could there be? "They showed up to be exploited and are getting exactly that," thinks their sociopath exec.

I suspect that a lot of the virtue signaling on LinkedIn is only sales puffery for their personal brand. If they can show just how exploitable they are, then maybe riches, recognition, and power will magically materialize for them. And they think this because they were fed tall tales all their working lives.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#297
post #212

I find it interesting how starkly bimodal attitudes toward employer loyalty are. There is a middle ground between getting a company logo tattoo on one hand and on the other being a clock puncher, who fulfills the minimum job requirements and begrudges any request to put in extra effort. It's possible, even admirable, to be diligent and take pride in one's work for reasons other than drinking the company kool-aid. It'…

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That depends. A lot of them are. A lot of them have owners that actually treat you like family. Differentiating between the two based on signals during hiring is almost impossible, though.

But I don't want to be treated like family. In particular, I am not ready to have the same level of obligations towards my employers, even if these were reciprocated faithfully. I have my own family to which I'm always going to have a stronger loyalty than to any employer.

A company as a group of close friends? Be my guest. A company that pretends that we have bonds of blood, or are married? Not for me (unless we're actually family, as in family business).

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20s in tech is basically show up, do your work, and get paid a pittance of the value it generates.

That's just "employment", or at least "not realising how many other people contribute to that value".

Sure. But the pay gap can be huge compared to your 30s, regardless of your ability level.
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