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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#411

Post by shrikant »

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.

I'm OOTL, what happened at Komoot..? Vaguely interested because I'd considered applying there for a role a year or so back but never went through with it...

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#412

Post by xp84 »

ubermonkey wrote: post #95
Haul4ss wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very rich-world view of work. Most people can't just "unilaterally rescind" their employment if they decide they don't like it anymore. I don't disagree with what you're getting at, just understand that loyalty is a necessity to a lot of folks, and I don't think it is because their values are misplaced.

>Most people can't just "unilaterally rescind" their employment if they decide they don't like it anymore. I suspect what's meant here is that most anyone can take a different job and leave one that no longer serves them, not that most anyone can walk away from a job without another lined up.

I agree, and also, if it becomes not beneficial to me (for instance, large increase in responsibility for no raise), I will move from "do my absolute best mode" to "minimum effort mode" until I can line up something else -- which is just me realigning my effort level to match the standard set by the Company.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#413

Post by xp84 »

trefoiled wrote: post #259

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…

I've seen this in software in various roles. Usually a CTO will be hired, and will draw from his previous lieutenants to build a leadership team and key IC roles such as architect or staff engineer. I think it's a very smart way to quickly build out a trusted team by simply hiring people who have delivered successfully for you in the past. I've worked with a cadre of brilliant former-Zappos people in one job brought over this way, and in another, a CTO was hired away from a Hollywood talent agency and he brought over some stellar people from there to lead some teams.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#414

Post by usrusr »

shrikant wrote: post #411
usrusr wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm OOTL, what happened at Komoot..? Vaguely interested because I'd considered applying there for a role a year or so back but never went through with it...

Founder(s) sold to Bendinggspoons who specialize in the kind of takeover where the buyer stops all development and tries to keep the money inflow from a service running with minimal maintenance crew. Evernote is the most famous example I think.

Apparently 80% are already gone:

https://escapecollective.com/how-komoot-lost-its-way/

(paywalled, but I think it's the definitive aftermath writeup, as opposed to all the older news that stop at speculating about layoffs that had not happened yet)

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#415

Post by jimbokun »

HEmanZ wrote: post #144
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…

All loyalty is a risk. Even loyalty to your spouse is a risk. Just like how all love and human trust is a risk. To feel human you have to take these emotional risks. You shouldn’t bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute and utter loyalty to you. You shouldn’t bet your entire life that your spouse has absolute loyalty to you (we have divorce, pre-nups, and post-nups for a reason). But it strikes me as a pretty sou…

Your soulful loyalty should be all for personal and family relationships like a spouse, zero for any corporation.

Employer employee relationships are completely financial. Almost legally required to be that way on the employer’s side.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#416

Post by Magi604 »

trefoiled wrote: post #259

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…

This happens in sports too. GMs of teams will always make room for players that delivered or were loyal to them in the past, even on lesser contracts.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#417

Post by htrp »

jjmarr wrote: post #267
swatcoder wrote: post #177

Earlier 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…

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

conversely you don't quit bad companies, you quit bad managers

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#418

Post by PicassoCTs »

int_19h wrote: post #317
gorbachev wrote: post #257

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.

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.

Often enough good natured people become the teflon coating for bad processes.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#419

Post by bsnnkv »

dasil003 wrote: post #399
bsnnkv wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> but the flip side of this attitude is it disqualifies you from the best, most satisfying teams to work on

Speaking for myself, I'm just not interested in this anymore - work is just a single (and not even particularly important) part of a much more vast and rich life I have now

There will also never be anything the best and brightest teams will be working on that will be even half as interesting, engaging or satisfying as the projects I work on in my own time

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#420

Post by mancerayder »

pydry wrote: post #235
mancerayder wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I haven't seen much of a bias towards seeking out a predisposition to loyalty in employees except among authoritarian small business owner types who invariably underpay. It's easy. Some red flags: "This is not a 9 to 5 job, you should know that. But that's normal in this industry" "We're looking for people who are passionate about their work" "I won't sugarcoat it, there are good and bad weeks" in terms of workload…

Yours are signals that a company is selecting for people who will consent to being overworked. That's not about loyalty. Loyalty would be "we're looking for candidates who have long job tenures. do not apply if you never stayed at a job longer than 3 years".

That can be a red flag for me, as a hiring manager (not withstanding what you're replying to that I wrote). But I don't see it as loyalty, I see it as, shit, will this person quit after two years, I need long term types. It takes a while to learn the infrastructure and people get ever more skilled and useful. However, if they're new to their careers, you kind of need to skip town every two years because, at least in financial services, they only pay if you quit, that's how they value your worth. Consider: new hires are ALWAYS better paid than people who stay year after year.
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