Corporate loyalty is the dumbest trick employers ever pulled. I hope Gen Z don't fall for that shit.
On loyalty to your employer (2018)
311–320 of 466 posts
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#312> Do not buy into the bullshit hype of “hustle” to appease your employer.
Oh gosh that's the first time I've seen anyone put that concept into words. I wish we had a word in English to mean this.
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.)
A (plant) nursery, a library, elections are all stuff that I've considered.
Thanks for reinforcing the library thing (I live in a somewhat rural area so maybe different issues there).
I've also thought about machine operating in landscaping (I know how to run a tractor and a skid steer so I think I would pick up an excavator pretty quickly) but I worry they won't want a part-timer.
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
Employer? No. But I've seen some very smart coworkers value and reward deep, specialized knowledge that is built through working in the same area (of not just tech but also business application) for many years.
That's experience, which has nothing to do with loyalty.
It's camaraderie. Some of the best professional relationships I've had were in terribly run organizations with like-minded peers. I don't know why, but strong bonds form in those situations (and taken to the extreme in the military).
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#315I 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…
This difference is because smaller organizations are less of an entity in their own right, and more of an actual group of people doing things together (even if legally the company might still be a separate entity).
As organizations grow, they become more than a mere sum of its parts. It seems to be an emergent phenomenon driven by complexity - as humans interact, this very interaction creates something resembling an entity in its own right past a certain scale, with its own agenda (distinct from individual agendas of its constituent humans) and drive for self-preservation as a whole - the egregore that you mentioned. My pet theory is that this starts to happen when you scale beyond the Dunbar number, but the effect is only obvious at scales where most members of the organization are faceless strangers to each other.
Either way, this emergent entity is decidedly amoral.
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#316Earlier 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…
>But in smaller groups and smaller communities, where you're actually working with people, loyalty and even affection can really make a difference in how satisfying your worklife is, how much security you can feel in your opportunities, etc I've been in IT for over 20 years, mostly working in small to mid-sized companies. Small companies will let you go as soon as they feel a pinch. every company is the same, no matt…
> You're expected to give two weeks' notice, but they can let you go without any notice.
Luckily, this is not the case where I live. Both sides have the same amount of notice
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#317Earlier 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…
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.
The difference is that in a small company, it's the owner who is abusing you (or not). It's all down to the qualities of the person itself.
In a large company, it happens regardless of the qualities of the people involve, because it's baked into the processes. Good-natured people can mitigate it to some extent, but they cannot prevent it.
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#318Others 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)
Switch flip after I was unceremoniously laid off from a Series C (now D) company (along with 25% of my fellow comrade workers) that I went many extra miles, many times, to stop from going under between Seed - Series C.
I'm still what people refer to as a "10xer" (though I don't like this term) when it comes to my own projects[1], but at this point if an employer wants this kind of quality from me, they'd need to x10 whatever initial salary offer they present me with.
Besides my own software projects, I now put the extra brain power into music, dance, videography, editing etc., and life is good.
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#319Earlier 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.
You cannot take a week off who will cover your responsibilities?! Lol, that kind of small company.
Often comes with 'unlimited PTO' advertised during the interview/offer process :)
Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)
#320I 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 feel this is a pretty cynical view. We can all be adults and understand it is a business relationship.
The "reward for loyalty" varies greatly per company, but I would like to see it defined. I have worked on 12 companies since I started my career, some of them would probably rank very high for your definition and others very low.