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On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#431

Post by musicale »

senderista wrote: post #197
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…

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I would have the guts to betray my country." --EM Forster, "What I Believe"

"I must admit that when my friend first told me of his plan I was sorely tempted drop off an anonymous tip recommending that the Archduke postpone his trip to Sarajevo..."

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#432

Post by bagacrap »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #424
pklausler wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Haha no it's never their best offer. Their profit is literally your unpaid wages. That delta is how this system works.

You could also look at it from the perspective that they pay you fairly, and then profit from the leverage of the apparatus they place around you. IOW you have more impact working for them than you would have on your own. (Obviously that is true, or you would just go work on your own.)

It's not that your perspective is wrong per se, it's just a glass half empty way of experiencing life.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#433

Post by riehwvfbk »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #231
riehwvfbk wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Your examples are bizarre (sports teams are a matter of petty entertainment, not proper objects of loyalty). Philosophy isn't an object of loyalty either. However, you should acquaint yourself with the principle of subsidiarity. Loyalty, duty, and love radiate outward from those who are owed the most diminishing to those who are owed the least (spouses, then children, then parents, etc., all the way through extended…

Hey, you can do a real-world test to see if I'm right or you are right. Go to a football match (soccer for Americans), find a group of hooligans and tell them their team sucks. If you are right and it's just petty entertainment - you'll be just fine.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#434

Post by clayhacks »

eikenberry wrote: post #335

Given the general sentiment in the comments here, why aren't co-ops more popular? Or any model with a shared ownership. If you eliminate the employer/employee, hierarchical relationship then the 'transactional' model goes away and you can have loyalty that matters for all parties. But there are almost no such places. I've always thought it was more a regulatory issue, but would be curious what others think.

Yeah I think there’s a bit of regulatory and or legal hurdles, but I think the other part is co-ops aren’t as incentivised to grow so big. There are some smaller co-ops in tech they just usually do stuff more local scale. Less likely to hear about them and be spread widely

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#435

Post by closewith »

Propelloni wrote: post #102
mytailorisrich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> do not enjoy any termination protection beyond very short notice periods (between 1 and 7 month) in Germany. Not sure if that's a typo because several months of notice sounds long to me!

You get 7 months notice after 20 years of employment. I think that puts it into perspective ;)

I think you're lacking perspective. In most of the US, after twenty years service, you can be fired on the spot.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#436

Post by robertlagrant »

int_19h wrote: post #336
robertlagrant wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It applies to those other people as well, though. When you get down to it, all profit any company makes is quite literally the value generated by its employees that was extracted from them.

All profit made by an employee is value invested by a business' owners and creditors extracted from it.

So what? You just seem to have found a perjorative way to describe work. If I pay someone to fix my tap the comfort I have now my taps work comes from me "extracting" value from the plumber?

And it's worse than that. Profit isn't just employee work. If I buy a robot to replace an employee, I might have more profit. And it's not just that work. It's also contracts with other suppliers, and risks, and debt to pay back, and decisions made, and agreements and relationships, and automation.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#437

Post by keiferski »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #379
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 re…

Thanks for the book suggestion.

I would push back on the notion that this is purely a geographical phenomenon though, because in the very recent past, it was totally normal for Americans to work for the same company for decades. You could say that recent developments are just an inevitable consequence of underlying social attitudes, but I’m not so sure it’s that simple.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#438

Post by tyleo »

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 appreciate this take and like to view myself this way. My employer isn’t special… but I chose them because I like their product team and I want to use my skills to make it better. As long as that’s working I’m going to do the best I can for them, but I’m happy to leave if the scales shift too far.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#439

Post by lo_zamoyski »

int_19h wrote: post #332
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here is that Forster is relativising the good. I am not betraying my country by refusing to follow laws or decrees that require that I engage in intrinsically evil deeds. I am not loyal to my friend if I do evil things he asks me to do. Our loyalty is to the objective good of our country and our friend. Otherwise, there is no such thing as loyalty.

There are situations when you genuinely must betray your country to protect your friend, or vice versa. For example, if your country is a multiethnic empire that is unsustainable as a single entity without compulsion and forced assimilation, and your friend happens to be an ethnic minority in it.

Please reread what I wrote.

What does it mean to betray someone? If a friend intends to murder someone and asks you to keep that secret, would telling the police be a betrayal? Would keeping it secret be an expression of loyalty?

Loyalty and betrayal cannot be understood in purely subjective terms. It must always be grounded in the objective good.

In your example, you haven't provided enough information to judge how exactly you would are betraying your country. However, if your country is doing evil things and you defend a friend from those evil things, then you aren't betraying your country. The government in question is betraying your country.

Re: On loyalty to your employer (2018)

#440

Post by mancerayder »

pklausler wrote: post #395
kemiller wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Your company's better offer will go to a new hire, who, barring certain visa types, will always make more than us, the loyal employees.
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