On loyalty to your employer (2018)

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 they don't experience loyalty or attachment. But they do benefit from yours, and so they'll milk it until you give up

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

It's not so much that there's "no place for loyalty in employer-employee relationships", it's just that the place for loyalty is different depending on what's inhabiting the employer role opposite you -- and the high-profile large employers of the modern age are incapable of reciprocating. But if loyalty comes naturally to you, and feels good to you when reciprocated, you have the option to look elsewhere instead of seething in resentment and disappointment.

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 soulless existence to have no loyalty to your place of work, in the same way it would be a pretty soulless existence to never form loyalty with the people in your life, even if it isn’t absolute loyalty.

You can think of mutual-loyalty as an extended transaction, if you prefer. If, in exchange for you not planning on leaving the company, the company actively does its best to treat you well and preserve your job long-term, that can be a good trade-off.

The mutuality is important. You absolutely shouldn't think of yourself as "loyal" to a company that won't stick up for you. (And many companies won't, to be clear. If asked to choose between cutting executive salaries by 2% and firing you, most companies won't think too hard about that. You shouldn't be loyal to those ones.)

If your loyalty is to your team / admin people, it could be quite profitable.

Plenty of examples of people (me included) that when their superior changes projects or leaves the company etc, they know and trust you and they want to move you with them.

I for example managed to switch from a dull team that drove me to almost the verge of quitting to a very exciting skunkworks team that I had a blast working in for almost 2 years, let alone doubling my compensation.

That happened because I was loyal to my SEM, in the sense of giving extra time if he was on the line, giving honest feedback and generally trying to make them “succeed”, the moment a risky and important project was on the table at the org he was like - “let’s organize a crack team” and invited me on board … and it was such a cool experience.

“The company” itself doesn’t “feel” anything towards the people working for it, it’s the people behind it that are influenced by such things.

The best orgs would have those personal loyalties also align with the orgs mission, but they are still personal - given from humans to humans.

Of course there is a fine line in “being a good resource” and “sucking up”, but good managers usually know the difference.

This isn't universally true (and I'm saying this as someone who's been laid off three times in my career). When searching for a job, it's important to perform due diligence to ascertain whether the company is on solid footing, their strategy makes sense, and your role will be valued. But once you're there, who your boss is, including how well they mentor you and what their political clout is within the business, can absolutely make "loyalty" worthwhile because the ROI can be career acceleration (in terms of compensation, job title and also breadth/depth of experience/exposure) that goes far beyond just the direct pay when you consider the overall value.

Not even specific to the tech industry (not that you were saying it was).

My ex- was working towards becoming a veterinarian. During a gap in schooling, she looked at some jobs as a tech or assistant.

She found a good fit, and got to the point of having an offer. But she was having a crisis of conscience. The ad, and interviewers, had talked about how they wanted people who would be invested and committed in the practice. Not in and out in a few months. But she knew that in 9-10 months she would be doing more schooling. Could she take the job in good conscience, knowing that?

Absolutely she could. I said this to her:

Okay, so they're asking for someone who'll be there for years, is committed to them.

Say you start work, and in three months there's a recession, or just a downturn in their business. Is their response more likely to be:

1) "Business is hard, times are tough, but you are committed to us and we are committed to you, so no layoffs, no firings, no pay decreases. Let's get through this together."

or will it be

2) "Business is hard, times are tough, so today will be your last day at XYZ Vet Hospital, thank you for your service."

I similarly got this lesson early in my career. One of my first jobs. I was young and excited to be at a startup. Learning a ton. I poured hours into that job. Then, one day we were pulled onto a call, told they couldn't afford us any more, and fired on the spot. We were immediately locked out of everything and that was that.

It was shocking at the time. To young me, it was a big "....oh" kind of realization about what kind of relationship you can/should have with any kind of business.

Now, I'm here cause you pay me. I don't keep stuff at my desk or decorate 'my' space. I show up, do the job, and leave. Once I close this laptop, work is dead to me until the next day.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't occasionally work more than 40hr/week, but most of the time my work/life balance is fantastic by choice.

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.

I think that loyalty counts when the decision-makers are more localized. People who show up and demonstrate that they care will generally get the bonuses from their direct managers or higher up managers who recognize the effort (because it happened to cross their path somehow). But these monetary decisions are more and more just calculations on a spreadsheet - here's your 3% annual pay increase and we can allocate 10% of the workforce gets a larger raise to ensure 80% retention. When the layoffs come it has nothing to do loyalty and often has little to do with competence in the role. Hopefully the guy with the spreadsheet is considering whether they can continue to run the business with certain individuals or not, but I don't think it ever gets that granular. This is the MBA era of business.

Agreed, unless you see real, tangible reasons to do so.

While I was talking to my partner (at the time) about her taking a part-time job while waiting on school, I worked for an employer that absolutely earned my loyalty:

She had enrolled in school for her pre-vet med course. But due to a mix up with financial aid or loans or similar, she woke up one morning to find that at about 6am the university had sent her an email saying that they'd not received tuition from her, and that they would soon be dropping her from her course. By the time she'd woke up they'd already done so. She panicked. I knew we'd done most of the work so I told her to jump in the shower and we'd go to the college and try to get it taken care of.

I told my boss (co-founder and CTO, though not so much a startup - small, but established a decade or more and profitable) I'd be out of touch for a few hours trying to deal with an issue. He and I talked a lot, and he could tell something was up so he asked what was up and I explained. His response earned a lot of loyalty from me (though we managed to get it taken care of without this):

"Let me know how everything goes. If there's nothing else that can be done, give me a call and we can put her tuition (remember, this isn't even his employee, but an employee's fiancee) on my corporate Amex, and we'll work with Chuck (company accountant) to figure out how we can handle it all on the back end."

I realize you can be cynical too, and look at this akin to the FAANGs offering laundry, daycare, etc., with the ultimate goal being "the less time you spend doing these things, the more you spend making us money", and there are of course aspects of that, but this was also very human and going above and beyond (like I could never in any world imagine a situation where your boss says "We can pay your partner's tuition and then we'll figure out payroll deductions or something to get it reconciled").

Agree 100% but for my own mental health I like to pretend loyalty does exist day to day but give myself a wake up call if that credit account as you call it is getting too big

Loyalty to a company is broken because companies are typically too big.

Loyalty to people still has significant returns, _especially_ when you are specific with what you want and take control of how your interactions should work.

When I started my own business, a few-times-former employer became a client. The way they interacted with me changed dramatically overnight -- the CxOs treated me as a peer versus an employee. Was very strange to experience and a very welcome change.

This isn't always true. I've been in engineering leadership a long time, and I've absolutely gone out of my way to cover for, or help out, engineers that I know put in the extra work, and I've seen other leaders do it too.

It's not unlimited, but it exists.

At least to me, loyalty _is_ the benefit. I can't conscience working for someone I hate or someone who I don't feel like I want to help succeed. I've definitely quit jobs before just because the senior leader in my reporting chain was replaced with some smarmy windbag I didn't believe in.

That's not to say it's _much_ of a benefit, but if the only thing a job gives me is a market-rational amount of dollars and health benefits in exchange for life-hours, the invisible hand ensures I can find that virtually anywhere.

There's more to loyalty than imagining it as a credits account.

The baseline is absence of disloyalty, which does not mean "stay aboard despite lower pay or benefits" but simply not cheating the organization you are (or were) part of. An employer who has to distrust every move of their employees will inevitably be a terrible employer to work at. No matter how hard they try not to be.

Not going below that baseline won't magically protect you from bad employers, but going below will inevitably turn any employer you work at into a bad employer, at least if enough of your peers aren't above following your example.

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.

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!

The jobs that pay > 2 million a year do require loyalty. Loyalty in commoditized work positions is a completely different thing, and as noted a mistake. But once there is alot of money on the line, trust is actually as important as anything else.

Its better to think of your reputation than some kind of loyalty score you can cash in. Some people in the org care about your rep and some don't and that's all there is.

Be loyal to people (your boss, your peers), but don't be loyal to tne entity that is your company. It has one job, and that is to make money. If it could do it without you, it would

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. Your boss’s job, even if they are your friend, is ultimately to serve the company.

Go out there, work hard, have fun, but put your needs first in the bigger picture.”

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.

This is basically how I approach it with my employees.

I'm very clear with anyone who works for me that our interests won't always align. I'm also clear with them that I'm not going to screw them over and that I won't take any offense if they negotiate with me or ask for things. I lay out what my lines are: I will not knowingly lie to them, and I will usually provide complete information except when I have a good reason to. I ask the same of them. Beyond that, we're adults who can negotiate like adults.

There's nothing wrong with a transactional relationship, and it doesn't mean you can't be human. Things only get unfair when the relationship is only expected to be transactional in one direction, where employees are supposed to have undying loyalty to a company that will lay them off as soon as it becomes convenient to do so.

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.

By default I give loyalty and dedication to my employer until and unless my trust and respect are broken. I'm one of those engineers that will happily give 115% for extended periods, but only if I feel I'm being treated fairly and with the respect my abilities and position deserve.

Once that social contract is broken, I'm just a clock puncher until I find a new job. If my employer doesn't appreciate the amount and quality of my work, I'll just find someone who will.

I don't think my standards here are particularly high, but I've never worked anywhere that didn't wind up treating me like trash after a year or two. I guess they just take me for granted after a while and assume I'll never quit. I dunno, I can't make sense of it.

> I find it interesting how starkly bimodal attitudes toward employer loyalty are.

It's because employers create a narrative which makes people think they are valued beyond the transactional. People develop relationships with employers and have trust in them. In my experience it is very easy to fall into this narrative unless you have experience otherwise.

A “bonus” is not worth me consistently putting in more than 40 hours a week. That means I’m sacrificing time with my wife, family and friends, my vacation, my time at the gym, my time learning Spanish since we have decided to establish residency in Costa Rica and live their part time before and after I retire, etc.

I am going to give my employer 100% of my knowledge and close to that amount of energy for 40 hours a week. I love the company I work at now. It’s the best employer I have had (10 in 29 years). But I still treat it very transactional. They can ask me to go the extra mile occasionally. But only because they pay me well and stand by their word of “unlimited vacation as long as you meet expectations”.

The other the compsnies I really enjoyed were startups. But they always go to shit one way or the other - get acquired, get big and go public or go out of business.

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.

"Loyalty" is also worth something to self - to the loyal employee. It is a signal on CV that given the right environment, you commit to projects and people value your input. That's not to say, stay at all cost, but that when you leave, you pay a price too, and sometimes it's not worth it.

In my line of work, it can easily take 6-12 months until people are really productive, I'm reluctant to hire someone who will be a time sink for all this time then leave 3 months later.

I think the middle ground is healthy.

I'm in my early 30's, I have a job that I get to "create" in (I make video games).

> I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. Had this person already seen the world and its many sights and wonders? Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead? Had they already swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, etc.

Lots of these things are best done when you're younger, healthy, and able to do these things. I would _much_ rather live in a nice house in a nice area with exciting things to do from my mid 20's onwards and enjoy those things for years and years and years, rather than live in a smaller/cheaper/farther out place so that I can retire 10 years earlier and start living. I'd rather have 1-2 of those things to look forward to every year than say "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing all those things".

My dad counted down the days until he could retire, talked about how he would finally get to do X Y and Z. About 2 years before that, health conditions caught up and now he's not fit to do so many of those things that he was so excited and happy to do. If the tradeoff for me is working until I'm a little older while getting to enjoy the journey, rather than minmaxing the time that i can work and retire, then I'll choose to enjoy the ride.

Not everyone finds 'the work' to be an interrupt either, to be fair. Sometimes the work is the fulfilling part of life, its not having more traditional societal roles. Not to say family and friends aren't important, they absolutely are, but the way I think of it is this way:

When I started working on my own independent venture, I was worried about time. I'm not in a position to quit my job, and I don't think its going to be a VC thing. So I was struggling to find time, so I timed everything I did in a day.

When I did that, I found time I used to idle (IE, not simply relaxing or taking needed down time) with TV watching to be a few hours a day. Didn't even realize it was something I did, it was simply baked into the nightly routine.

Once I replaced that time with working time, I was able to get alot farther along. I suspect if my idea ever takes off, I can examine things more closely and find and shift more time like this.

This is all to say, that you can still enjoy working, prioritize work, but not leave family and friends completely in the lurch at the same time.

All that said: IMO, if you're putting in the hours, do it for yourself, unless you're either moving up to an executive role (or equivalent) at a company where you can cash out big, you're unfortunately a cog in the machine. The best course of action if you really love your work, is to find a sustainable way to work for yourself.

> I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. (...)

The saddest thing I ever witnessed in a FANG was a participant of one of those workplace empowerment events. Even though her interview was focused on her bending over backwards to praise their employer's health insurance, the devil was in the details.

The interviewee was praising her employer for providing a nice health insurance, but she mentioned as side-notes that throughout her career she felt so much pressure to perform that she postponed having children until a point where her fertility doctor warned her that she might risk not be able to have children. When she finally felt her job was secured, she decided to not focus on her career anymore and finally went ahead with having children. Except that she was already in her 40s. She had to undergo a couple of years worth of fertility treatments until she finally managed to get pregnant, which was supposedly the focus of her intervention because her employer was so awesome for allowing her to seek medical treatments.

Everyone decides what's best for themselves, but being robbed of having children because you want to bend over backwards for your employer sounds like an awful tradeoff.

The loss of work for its centering, routine, mental challenges, socialization across the generations, and sense of accomplishment is harmful to mental and even physical health.

Sure, a construction worker can't be climbing the rafters at 80 years old, but this idea that we just transition to leisure and getting together with friends at a certain point is both fairly novel and of dubious value.

Speaking as a person who can’t see themselves stop working, I think an important factor is how one derives meaning from their life. For some it might be living amazing experiences, and for others it can be in helping others (which could qualify as work). The healthiest seems to be a combination of the two, with a different ratio depending on the person.

Here in the Netherlands it’s common to see retired people do volunteering work, as it can bring great pleasure and satisfaction to help people. There’s of course also the communal aspect of it.

It’s also common to see business owners for example in family businesses to keep working at the company after the official retirement age.

So I’d argue work does not have to be a chore and can be a source of meaning and purpose. But if it is just a means to an end, it makes sense to not want to work your entire life and good labor and retirement laws should protect people from having to work their entire life.

My grandfather was a doctor and lived a modest life. But he worked all his life. In his 70s he was still volunteering at a local hospice. In fact on his 78th birthday, he went to work in the morning, then attended his birthday party, then had a stroke and died a few weeks later. He never

> swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, etc.

But I think he enjoyed his life just as it was.

The travel things you describe to me are work (in a good way) getting away from it all can give you the clarity to know what big moves to make. I recently went to Tokyo and didn't touch work at all. The only way!

For those who can't afford that like the sister comment you can explore your own city (or suburbia or countryside). Everywhere is exotic to someone. In all 3 cases a bicycle does a good job!

I hate that quote, it is so trite and stupid.

What poor person wouldn't want to have provided more for their family. What scientist would say I discovered enough. What engineer would say I built enough.

When you are alone who or what do you think about? People have different goals, dreams and desires. Claiming yours are the only ones worthy of pursuing seems rather arrogant.

I always think this is very biased. Basically there are two things to consider:

1. People at deathbed usually don't think very clearly, and it suggests the deathbed experience overrules everything before

2. Many people just have work. They don't have a calling, and neither do they have a career. It does sound reasonable to drop work for something else, as long as money is fine.

I retired last year. Decided I’ve got enough money to last me the rest of my life if I live reasonably, and that’s good enough for me. I have a 40 hour a week job doing development, but it’s a passion project that I’m doing purely for enjoyment (and I’m working completely for equity). I felt my life instantly get easier the moment I quit my old job. It’s conceivable that this job will make me a pile of money, but I know it isn’t likely. I see my kids a lot more, I take time off when I need it, and I still feel like I’m doing something useful. I have decided that this is truly the way to live.

First, you can do all those things while you work. They are called vacations, and in most of the World, you get 5 weeks/year minimum. With the rise of remote work, and nomadic lifestyles, you might even be able to do this while working in different ways.

A few people have said they can empathise with the notion of never retiring - which I think is a different thing - and I can kind of understand that too.

Work doesn't need to be 40+ hours/week of grind, and it doesn't need to be something you don't enjoy. Making money from those side projects - that can be your work. The reason why so many people want to be influencers, is because their work becomes something fun, where they learn, and where they create. I can imagine doing that for a long time.

So while I can't imagine working in a corp environment doing 40+ hours/week when I'm 70, can I imagine having my own side business? Maybe a few non-exec directorships? Perhaps help with a fractional/part-time gig one or two days a week? Sure.

Can I imagine just being on holiday for the rest of my life, where I'm constantly "exploring", or "experiencing" and never "applying" or "creating"? Not so much.

The old saying goes that if you earn money doing what you love, you never work a day in your life - and that might be where there's a disconnect, you're interpreting work as something not enjoyable, whereas for many of us, there's really deep pleasure in some aspects of it. All we want to do is dial that bit up, dial the other stuff down, and still do all those other things you mentioned too, perhaps as part of the "work".

I’m happily married, have plenty of friends and family and I don’t see myself not working until someone won’t hire me. I’m 50.

My wife and started traveling a lot after Covid lifted and I started working remotely. We did the “digital nomad” thing for a year across the US until the year before last and even since then we are on a plane to do something for fun around a dozen times a year. Going forward, we have 6-8 “vacations” planned per year for the next few years and sometimes we stay in another city for a month at a time.

This was before I had unlimited PTO and plan on averaging 30 days a year. Work isn’t a limiting factor.

It’s a lot easier to spend $20K-$30K+ a year (plus playing the credit card points game) when you have income coming in. Also everything you mentioned is a lot easier to do when you are young and healthy than when you are 65.

I couldn’t possibly see having our travel schedule later in life. True we aren’t “young”. But we are both gym rats

I'm part of the GenX crowd here. I can't imagine a day when I am not building or solving something.

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).

Not everyone has the money to swim with whales or explore jungles. And even among the few that do, many would rather spend thier money on uplifting other people than self-indulgent ecotourism. Many would rather work until they die in full knowledge that doing so might help free thier children from work altogether. And a fair number still see productive work as a greater good than sloth or vanity.

I probably say something similar to this. I plan to create for the rest of my life. I'm also trying to build a business out of this because I hope that someday it will give me even more freedom and maybe even extend that to my kids and grandkids, if I were successful enough. It also means that I can set my own priorities. I'll likely retire when I'm 65 (too late but I don't think I'll be prepared enough to do it earlier) and continue to "work" on my own stuff, maybe until I die.

But, yes, I've seen some of the world and I want to see more of it. I have a couple groups of friends that hang out more than once a month and I've traveled with them multiple times this year. I have family that I see pretty often. There's really not enough time for all the stuff I do but I'm still driven to create.

> “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.”

On the other hand; when they interview people and ask them to "give advice to your younger self", I can't count how many times the guy / girl said: "work harder in school".

Ultimately it's all about balance, money absolutely does buy happiness; and so does doing an interesting job. Reach a point where you have enough money that it does not occupy a significant portion of your mind; and work hard enough to reach a position where you don't look at the clock the moment you arrive at your workplace.

Been there and done many of the things you described, have a family today and I still love being a founder and working very long weeks. I know not everyone is like this though.

The only unmet desire I have left to work towards is to serve others and improve everyone else's life. And building a big successful business is the best way to maximize that desire. The clearest derivatives of my work efforts are the great jobs and work created for everyone at the company and the improvement on our customers lives.

> I completely get the drive to create; I have various side projects I make for fun and to learn.

Some of my side projects would be straight up finically impossible if I didn't have willing buyers for the product. I agree that creation is my ultimate motivation, but so long as I continue to enjoy and wish to pursue this those specific modes of creation, I have to accept that it will also be work. Perhaps that is where those other perspectives are also coming from?

A lifetime is a long time. Viewpoints, opinions, standpoints, circumstances and plans rarely last a lifetime.

I don't think it's that crazy in certain careers; I've seen a similar sentiment in academics.

Back in grad school, we had several professors emeriti who were teaching a class or two, or collaborating with a lab, because they just enjoyed it.

I think you might be creating a backstory for this person without any knowledge to ground it on. That's inevitable, we all do it, but be careful about drawing conclusions based on unevidenced assumptions.

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.

I do think some individuals much prefer work over family or friends since 'work' relations are professional, formal and regulated while personal relationships lack those and are chaotic and random.

Lost my grandpa a couple years ago and he said almost exactly “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” on his deathbed.

Honestly - leave the whale, jungles, and over-touristed Tokyo-ites alone.

Travel lightly, get a feel for different environments and cultures, then take that perspective to your hometown.

Travel is frosting. The cake can be building a meaningful life that involves community, maybe family, and possibly meaningful work.

This is such a retarded modern take on things, not everyone derives meaning from checking off a bucket list they read about on some internet listicle. For some of us, creating and contributing is the goal.

Maybe the person just doesn’t care about swimming with whales or having friends? Does everybody really think the dense Amazon jungle is neat?

You’re projecting what you think makes life worth living onto someone else.

Can you really not imagine that for another person working is what they love as much as you seem to love climbing snowy mountains?

> Life is too short

I agree with this. It’s too short to think about how someone else is spending theirs.

Traveling all over the world is very bad for the environment and climate...

When I'm on my deathbed, I'll probably wish I'd worked harder - on trying to stop Israel (= where I live) 's genocide in Gaza. That's what I feel most guilty about.

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.

100% agree, loyalty goes both ways and we rarely see loyal employers (massive layoffs including hi-profile employee who dedicated their life to the company)

Red flag if bosses use that word, it's either an attempt to manipulate or they have a weird entitled view of what you owe them.

I don't like the word "loyalty" when talking about anything. It's not a virtue in any circumstance. Spouses, friends and family are just as likely to abuse it. A bullshit concept celebrated by those who crave power. It's Religion Light.

I agree with your first paragraph, but I don’t really like the exploitation framing for tech jobs. Sure there is exploitation but there is also a lot of rest and vest going on. When you look at who’s delivering value in software it’s very unevenly distributed and only loosely correlated with raw work hours. A big part is collaboration and team dynamics. The ground dynamics are much more relevant than HR narratives when it comes to how a job feels and whether high expectations are motivating or seem exploitative.

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.

I don't think offering perks is necessarily supposed to engender loyalty. It's still a transactional relationship ("ok, google might pay less than the startup but I do get free lunches at google...").

In most companies I have more often seen not even a shred of expectation of loyalty. It's pretty normal to see critical employees quit at an inconvenient time on a critical project and the only person who expresses any bad feelings is the employee in question feeling a bit guilty.

Eh, I'm okay with doing more than required, as long as the employer also does so on their part.

That's interesting. I wonder what other industries are like that, where a single person keeps bringing his (mutually) trusted cadre of employees with them?

I've heard in the past that the skill of a surgeon is actually more a reflection of the surgeon's team than the actual surgeon. So "great surgeons" are actually people who have "great teams". Sounds similar to me.

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.

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.

That happens in the tech industry too.

This is true in mid-sized startups. I actually witnessed it three times during my _short_ period of experience (7 years of different startup contracts) with different startups.

Firstly, it does not have to be immediate or deliberate. The cycle happens approximately through period of 6-months. The followers per-se does not have to actually _follow_ or loyal to the main person. The said main person is generally the CTO or an engineering manager.

Essentially, one way or another, the company needs to hire a CTO to fill their technical gaps and propel their growth. The company looks for an experienced and preferably startup experience in a certain field. There are already very limited number of folks satisfying these conditions. In which, mostly will already be working somewhere.

From the available ones, company hires 1 person, the CTO. CTO identifies several gaps in tech stack and hires couple of _senior_ folks, with of course, recommendations/references. (now called staff engineers mostly, as the seniority sort of lowered at the 5-6 years mark).

After couple of months later, the senior folks hire couple of mid-level folks because there are too much work to do. Since the senior engineers were busy both with design _and_ the implementation, they need to focus more on the design and make big-picture decisions, cannot be bothered with bug-fixes anymore. Therefore, they need some mid-level engineers to cleanup things and keep the lights on...

After 6 to 9 months period, the newly hired folks become 7 or greater in the numbers. As now they are the majority in the organization's technical hierarchy, they can easily push-out _older_ members which are not part of their circle and let more folks from their circle in.

As you guessed, this is a pyramid scheme in employment, as the lower level folks look up to people who hired them (created a position/opening).

Even if the actual scheme is not intended initially, usually this is what happens. It doesn't even have to be a grand plan to take-over, the unconscious biases and past relationships always prevail, causing the same cycle to repeat.

Also another perspective is the people whose boss (CTO) has just left. These folks also leave over time not just they blindly follow their CTO or loyal to them, but because the _new_ CTO changes how things work, maybe a new tech stack people are not familiar with. In turn, it stagnates peoples' carreers, causes confusion and even takes them one step back. (i.e. An engineer on a promotion path now has to re-prove their skills to a new manager/CTO)

I think for all the cases, I did not find this approach useful in the business sense. Because in all cases, it took the startup at least a year to adapt into a new CTO and the tech stack. As the new CTO always assures X is better than Y, all the problems are there because Y is older, and X is the new paradigm. Just to be replaced by Z when the next CTO arrives after several years...

So the moral of the story is, people don't need to be loyal, the incentives make them so.

For context, the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the above is true.

That said, he's a recruiter and there's nothing of value to be found in the blog post.

> You have pretty much a minute or two (if that) to bye a sentence to a couple chats, and it's over. Done.

When remote in this situation, I've shut off wifi and hard powered down right after meeting before they try and remote wipe.

I enjoyed making them squirm while I take a few weeks to mail back equipment, while receiving increasingly urgent emails.

Pointless I know, but was fun.

Exactly the right attitude. If you're dealing with an employer that thinks everything should be transactional and that it's no issue if they nickle and dime you on small things, it gets tiring (ask me how I know). When your employer acts in ways that value their employees, it's ok to put a value on that, even if you recognize they're not your spouse and they may lay you off or act in other un-loyal ways in the future.

it seems silly to be that companies will budget for new hires more than they budget for retention incentives. I'm sure they have measured which one pays off better but it feels backwards

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.

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)

> 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

It seems similar to slavery. The employees work to produce a surplus and through a system of physical and ideological violence only the employer gets a claim on the surplus.

Even pointing out the facts of this material relationship is considered a thoughtcrime.

Now go back to work “partner”

That's complete nonsense. An employer is nothing like a partner. And as for those who are not loyal to friends, they will quickly find themselves without any.

As long as the employer is not solving world hunger or finding a cure for disease, the relationship is strictly transactional, and will remain as such.

How much are jobs then attained in purely transactional ways?

Perhaps I am too invested in people, but relationships matter my industry (insurance). I think you develop them in part by not being purely transactional, and they later help if you need to love, explore, or change.

Am I wrong about that dynamic?

It isn't like we're born with a guide book on how to live life. Drinking the kool-aid is very tempting when you don't have a good reason not to drink it. If you never have the self-awareness to ponder your place within the org and how it functions, and just accept the good vibes corpoganda, what other outcome could there be? "They showed up to be exploited and are getting exactly that," thinks their sociopath exec.

I suspect that a lot of the virtue signaling on LinkedIn is only sales puffery for their personal brand. If they can show just how exploitable they are, then maybe riches, recognition, and power will magically materialize for them. And they think this because they were fed tall tales all their working lives.

What about the loyal loom operators?

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

coops have great difficulty raising money, and this is a VC forum.

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> what happens when WidgetCorp lays you off?

While you're at widgetcorp, make your name known in the industry as the expert of widgets. Essentially, it's a sort of public portfilio. Surely, there are widgetcorp competitors out there, which if they get wind of your immenent layoff, might take a bet at hiring you. Not to mention you might be able to poach the other members of widgetcorp as an entire team.

Glassdoor isn't gospel but it is a useful data point.

>How do you realistically tell from outside if a company does treat their people well, or has a difficult culture?

The challenge there is that everyone has different interpretations of 'a difficult culture'. What's important (albeit difficult) is establishing an understanding of the type of environment you thrive in and the types of environments you struggle in. With that understanding, it's important to spend time during an interview process asking open-ended questions that might reveal the aspects you love/hate.

There is also a bias on Glassdoor. I would imagine, much like product reviews, people are more likely to go out of their way to leave a negative review than a positive review of an employer.

> We lost long-term planning. When companies and employees both view their relationship as inherently limited to just a few years before one or the other tires of them and trades in for a new model, we lose the ability to envision a real, tangible future for the organization.

Yeah, and there is an actual historical moment and culprit to pin this on:

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1101505691/short-term-profits...

My Dad would agree with you. He enjoys his work, he likes the people, and he'll be the first to admit that he's been happy enough with the convenience of it all to prevent him from wondering if the grass might be greener elsewhere.

Yes, there's a difference. Slot machines are regulated.

>Why would anyone be "loyal" to a company? What does that even mean?

Find a company that pays you in cash and stock. They exist.

> I am loyal to doing competent work. If our goals align, then we will get on.

100% agreed here, but I've also noticed I've had a fair few managers who didn't know what to do with someone like this. Sure, promotions are nice and what not, but if I'm not producing interesting work (or managing a team of people producing interesting work), it's pretty difficult to care about said job, and I'll move on quickly.

There's a level where institutions are separate from the people that make them move. If your boss can get replaced without destroying your department, then that institutional layer exists.

I hadn't considered the idea that my motivation for writing this might be interpreted as a ploy to generate more business. :)

Most of my perspective comes from working for and with startups. There's nothing wrong with a bit of mutual trust and loyalty. I'm simply warning that too much of either can be detrimental.

> So repeating this trope about employees being transactions might be great for them, but it does not contribute to a more friendly society.

And repeating the trope that employees should be loyal to employers only benefit corporations and those that profit from them, to the detriment of labour.

And why is there such an antiwork sentiment?

Housing prices as a ratio of income is higher than it was in the good old days of employee loyalty; pensions have mostly disappeared; most people don't get greater than inflation raises unless they leave. In the US, new hires get paid more than previous employees, due to the bargaining power the former have. We can give work from home, and out of nowhere it's RTO again, because contracts and employee hand books favor employers.

It's not sad at all, it's normal and healthy. Why does it make you sad?

Why must employees put in 100% effort? Where does that expectation come from? I’d be surprised if most companies put in 100% effort to support each employee.

Isn’t it all about expectations in the end? The company expects you to meet some set of goals. Conversely, you expect the company to give you benefits and payment.

There's a difference between trying your damndest during working hours, and hustle nonsense. In my experience, employers see time spent on site as a measure of success more than how productive you are during your regular workday.

So I read that to mean, don't kill yourself working unpaid overtime. You can still do a great job, working established working hours. I agree with that 100%. While I'm at work, I'm at work. But the moment that the day is over, work does not exist and will not exist.

A company is a machine, it cannot give loyalty back. Ever.

Loyalty in people disappeared decades ago (I would say earlier, but I wasn't there). You are mistaking strength by numbers for loyalty. What you describe is nothing like it.

That's not what loyalty means. It means that the employer will pay you fairly and treat you decently. It doesn't mean they will pay you top dollar. What you described is a purely contractual relationship, and such job hopping comes with its own strong risks.