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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#391

Post by Exoristos »

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…

I've worked at large companies (a Fortune 50 for ten years), and small (current employer is six people), and in my experience the small businesses treated employees the worst. At a large organization, there is a sense of orderliness and process that sometimes works in the employee's favor; your "loyalty" is on the record and categorizes you in a specific way. In a "family"-size company, it's often the case that only family members, family friends, or family co-religionists are of value to the owners; this truth then emerges at the worst time for you.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#392

Post by jp57 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #373
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…

True, though I'm still surprised, on a site run by a startup incubator, at the number of seriously jaded clock-punchers who chime into these threads with their cynicism and proud declarations of how they go through their careers phoning it in.

I have to wonder if those people interact with the "Who's Hiring?" and "Who Wants to be Hired?" threads and if they get any interest from employers.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#393

Post by hintymad »

> When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t look back at my life and wish I had worked harder.

An inconvenient truth is that not everyone can find a meaningful career in their own eyes. Case in point, to me tech industry is such a wonderful industry. We are paid exceptionally well. We get to be creative every day. We largely control our own output. We blend product design with engineering design and implementation. We get to geek out on college maths and statistics. We build things that get used by many people, if not millions of them. The list can go on and on. Yet, I'm sure everyone on HN knows at least a group of tech people who are miserable doing their jobs.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#394

Post by tasuki »

> Do you pay reasonable salaries?

So overrated.

I work for what I feel is a very non-competitive salary (order of magnitude less than I used to earn), in a programming language I hate, and couldn't be happier: it's a small company with a(n actual) mission, interesting problems, nice people, chill environment. I couldn't ask for more. Well, it could be not-Python. But, can't have it all - it'd be too perfect!

You can do your job hopping and earn your high salaries and spend them on things you don't actually care about...

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#395

Post by pklausler »

kemiller wrote: post #223
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'…

I was leaving a company recently and the fresh grads, with whom I had a good relationship, asked if I had any advice. I said, “Always remember that the company is not your friend. I don’t mean your boss or your coworkers, they might well be or become your friend. I mean the company itself. If all is well, it may be an excellent ally, but the company can and sometimes will turn on you in an instant if its goals change…

My version of this: "The company gives you their best and final job offer every two weeks on your paycheck, and if you get a better offer, it's okay to take it, no hard feelings."

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#396

Post by ludicrousdispla »

usrusr wrote: post #348
mohaine wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small companies really magnify the extreems. Good ones are really great but bad ones are extra bad. Sadly, they are also nimble enough to switch between them, at least in one direction.

Not only the extremes, also the speed: good employers can turn into bad employers (has the opposite ever happened? I'd love to learn of an example!), but big companies at least have some inertia while it happens. There's probably even some "Sun" still left, all those years after the Oracle takeover. Compare this to what happened at Komoot.

Anecdotally, a bad employer turns into a good employer only after a death.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#397

Post by xp84 »

espinchi wrote: post #279
jjmarr wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents told me to be loyal to people , not companies . People get me a job when I look for one.

Good advice. The company gets your loyalty as a side-effect

Exactly- and if they screw the people I'm loyal to, FAFO.

One of the most satisfying things that's ever happened to me in my career is when, after I turned in my notice to my last job, less than a week later my boss gave his.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#398

Post by markus_zhang »

geodel wrote: post #283
gamerdonkey wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And most people I know and see do drop work for family and friends ever so often as much their situation permits. Your experiences today may well be the result of this idea becoming more and more pervasive over the past 30 or so years, and the resulting reduction in employee loyalty to their employers.

To be honest this loyalty thing seems to me was promoted by corporate management hucksters and now no loyalty phenomenon is getting promoted by alternate lifestyle peddlers. Most people I have seen at work and outside in all these years just work enough that bleak alternatives don't become reality.

Yeah, the usual corporate management stock basically stays in a place for a few years, do something (probably better if they just do nothing), then jump to another one.

There are two sorts, one eventually jumps to politics, and one stays in more modern software companies and eventually jumps to VC.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#399

Post by dasil003 »

bsnnkv wrote: post #173
dasil003 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does loyalty have to do with the quality of your work? I’m all for boundaries by the way, not overworking etc, but my “best” work tends to come out unpredictably when the conditions are right. The people and project matter, but the fact that employment is transactional doesn’t really factor in for me.

> What does loyalty have to do with the quality of your work? For me? Everything Maybe this won't be the case anymore when I get assigned to the severed floor, but until then... > but my “best” work tends to come out unpredictably when the conditions are right I get this, but the moment this "feeling" comes up during my 9-5 I nip it in the bud

> I get this, but the moment this "feeling" comes up during my 9-5 I nip it in the bud

I hear this sentiment a lot, and after 25 years in the software industry I have a visceral understanding of why it is the appropriate response in certain environments/situations. On the other hand, I've been in situations where going above and beyond has been well rewarded (both monetarily and in terms of work satisfaction).

To me this has to be contextual to a specific job/team/project or you risk cutting off your nose to spite your face. Doing the bare minimum is a necessary defense mechanism in a toxic environment—and no judgement on anyone doing what they have to do to survive—but the flip side of this attitude is it disqualifies you from the best, most satisfying teams to work on.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#400

Post by nick__m »

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…

I am loyal to my employer because I have almost absolute job security, work for my almamater and agree with our mission :

  1- research
  2- teaching
  3- service to the community
But if I had a corporate job I would be loyal as much as a mercenary can be!
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