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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#371

Post by bumby »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #191
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…

That's right, they do not deserve loyalty. All of these things hijack our loyalty to people in the name of some higher-order goal. Sports team and TV show loyalty is there to get us to consume more. Loyalty to a country gets us to be reliable cogs in someone else's grand project. Loyalty to a philosophy gets us to be a cult leader's acolyte. Skip the substitute and go for the real thing: loyalty to people. You can st…

>Sports team and TV show loyalty is there to get us to consume more.

A less cynical take: there seems to be some research that following sports fosters greater social connectivity and well-being. It may just be that we're hardwired to be tribal. From that context, sports seems to be a relatively benign way to tap into that.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#372

Post by kinow »

My father worked for many many years at IBM Brazil with mainframes.

When I got into IT, his first advice for me was (translating from Portuguese): "Companies do not have feelings. So do not harbor feelings for it. The moment they have to fire you, they will".

I followed his other other advices and experimented several companies and industries. No regrets so far (20+ years gone since I started).

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#373

Post by thesuitonym »

jp57 wrote: 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'…

A person that is happy with their job, but not in love with it, will often not engage in these conversations at all. They're too busy living life. They're probably the majority of workers, if you ask them how the feel about their job, they'd probably say they like it, but they have no strong feelings. It's the people who have been ground to nothing that get online and talk about it, and the true believers who get out to defend the status quo.

And really, it only takes a small push for a person who diligently does their work to become an overworked husk of a person. A bad manager, a raise that didn't come when expected, or even a tough project, and the relationship has soured--sometimes forever.

And sometimes, those people move on to a different job, and the attitude moves back to the center. And then they're not as vocal about it.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#374

Post by antimoan »

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 it boils down to differences of point of view. One enjoys travel, one enjoys work, one get satisfaction from creating art, one enjoys being athletic, one wants to do it all. All perspectives are valid and none is better than the other. I think the world would be pretty boring if everyone thought the same way and acted the same way.

IMO what matters in all this is not identifying with the activity or people. Of course work and employers can disappoint you, but so do people who you love. Your partner might leave you, your kids might disappoint you, your friends might become busy and distance themselves from you. What if there is an accident and cannot travel the world anymore? Where does that leave you? All those destinations and experiences, and you cannot experience them.

I think Woody Allen says it best:

"It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There’ll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself."

Except the key is not to distract yourself but instead try to know yourself deep down. And you reach a point where there is no destination, person, job, or activity that holds your happiness hostage, everything is just is and you go with the flow.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#375

Post by mystraline »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #361
ivape wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds disgusting. Thank you for sharing that. Why don't they just advertise "Over-time expected and over-time compensation provided"?

Most likely because they expect overtime but won't compensate overtime So they are hoping to hire someone who will do it for free

I couldn't get an exact good gauge on what their aim was.

They made a point at 'work-life balance', decent but not great PTO. Pay was from 150-300, but glassdoor shows around 175.

It did have on call, but my profession does.

But the conversation was weird - what were they REALLY asking for that they couldn't outright say? Were they trying to ask if I have a family and obligations? Pregnant wife? Willingness to slave away hours above my negotiated pay?

It definitely felt strange. This is a job, not a calling. And they would 'transact' (read: fire) me just as fast if the economics didn't pan out.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#376

Post by Buttons840 »

I've identified 4 distinct attitudes I've had towards work, and I'm constantly fighting not to slip into full psychopathy:

1) I have a meaningful job where I work towards a goal that is personally meaningful. I would do this work even without being paid, although I probably couldn't spend 40-hours a week doing it.

2) I have a job where I work towards making the company money. I may not be personally invested in the business, but I can work with a team of good people towards the mutual goal of making the company profitable.

3) I have a job where I can't identify any logical reasons behind decisions and what I'm being asked to do. The only logic (or lack thereof) seems to be towards making those with the power to fire me happy. Any attempts at finding a higher purpose fail because the company is taking actions contrary to those higher purposes.

4) My job is just a source of money, there is no purpose or logic. This encourages a full-psychopath mercenary approach to work and power--like study "48 Laws of Power" and use them--screw anyone over for a buck.

Obviously #1 is the ideal, and the hard part is I'm always quite close to it, because I love programming, even in my spare time.

I see #2 mentioned on HN fairly often as a supposedly clear-eyed view of work. I would be relatively happy to remain at #2, but corporate infighting and other stupid decisions quickly break it down. It's also hard to maintain #2 because society itself isn't the meritocracy that #2 pretends it is.

I'm usually going back and forth between #3 and #4, both of which are miserable--layers of hell. I'm not a bad person so I have a hard time remaining at #4, but #3 is miserable in-between land.

What level are you?

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#377

Post by imoreno »

First of all, loyalty happens when both sides have moats. I'm not talking here about the case where one side is very loyal and the other is very disloyal - I'd rather call that "suckering". But in the US, government jobs have lots of mutual loyalty. The business can feel confident the employee isn't likely to leave, because for those jobs a huge part of the package is the pension which you only get after staying 20 years. And they heavily reward tenure. Meanwhile the employees also feel confident they won't be dumped (DOGE aside) because these orgs are structured in such a way that it's very hard to fire people due to process and culture. Lo and behold, plenty of loyalty in government jobs. US companies fire much more easily.

In European companies both firing and quitting is much more complicated, so you get employer loyalty in Germany or UK for example, because you actually get long term benefits there and termination is not as simple. The US companies of 50-80s like the author's father's employer were similar as well.

By the way, US companies don't actually demand loyalty. They pay lip service to it, but complaining about that is like complaining that people in clothing catalogs are too attractive. That's just how the field works, nobody takes it seriously and you look silly complaining about it. "Demanding loyalty" doesn't look like this. If an employer offered a $1 million bonus on your 10 year anniversary, that would be demanding loyalty for real. But neither the employee nor employer side has interest in this, not to mention the implied slowing down of the termination process. Plus the can of worms of knowing the company will even be around then.

Everything is fine, zoomers are not some insanely disloyal alien changelings. We're just in a transitional economy.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#378

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

whatever1 wrote: post #217
jp57 wrote: 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'…

Companies don’t appreciate craftsmanship, in fact they openly state they would rather replace craftsmen with llm-based blop generators. So why not spend your time on your own thing? Be it your family/hobby.

This is underdiscussed. The gap between the perception (accurate, largely) between the 2010s and now for "software jobs" (broad term for all related professions) is stark.

We'd hear stories of ballpits and "20% time" (or whatever Google had), and now we've seen rounds of layoffs, thunderdome for even marginal employment, and Big Names publicly saying they intended to replace staff with LLMs.

How could anyone have loyalty in this environment?

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#379

Post by stuxnet79 »

keiferski wrote: post #42

Meta comment: the situation with employee-employer loyalty seems pretty similar to the loyalty situation in other aspects of modern life like dating/marriage partner-partner, politician-constituent, or friend-friend: you're not incentivized to be loyal and in a lot of situations, you're actually incentivized to not be loyal and to continually look for better opportunities. To me, that feels like a failure of the deep…

> To me, that feels like a failure of the deeper social system. I want to be loyal to the people I work for/with, not treat our relationship like a transaction that is socially acceptable to end at any minute.

Great comment. The confounding variable here is culture.

American cultural norms devalue stable relationships in favor of personal fulfillment and self-actualization.

It isn't like this everywhere. There's a reason why business culture is different in Asia. The underlying attitudes there regarding social norms and how people can relate to each other i.e. what's acceptable and not acceptable, are very different. As a result, commerce there is conducted differently as well. Richard Nisbett wrote a book that goes into detail on this topic [1]

I will not make a judgement on which approach is better, or tie it into economic metrics but the bottom line is that attitudes towards work such as this one are highly influenced by the underlying behavioral norms. Without acknowledging this I don't think you can have a productive conversation on the topic.

[1] The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why - Richard Nisbett

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#380

Post by jl6 »

I have never felt loyalty to an employer but have often felt loyalty to a manager, and in turn to my own teams. Mutual loyalty between humans is a natural outcome of mutual trust and respect, which every manager should be striving to cultivate. The highest functioning teams I have worked with have had that bond, and it’s quite independent of whether the overarching corporate org is shitty at the macro level.

I’ve also felt disloyalty to a manager. That’s when it’s time to move on.

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