> Perhaps the armed forces are doing something right, and the tech industry is not.
This shows some ignorance on the history of work relations. The bad old days of industrial guilds and company towns are not renowned for quality of life and independence. Your life was tied to the company, and all you could aspire to do in your life would be to toil in the same low paying job while mixing up your corporate structure with your life's social structure. If god forbid you lost your job, you and your family would lose your whole life.
Tell me how this is doing things right.
For those in the US to understand, see how your access to healthcare is tied to your employer, and the impact this have on your life of you are forced out of your job. Now extrapolate this to every single aspect of your life.
The armed forces have a service commitment of several years (if I read this correctly, US Army is 8 years). People will sometimes change jobs within months.
They have the time to train someone into a role and typically don't have to worry about going to work for a competitor after they get out of AIT or A school.
While there's nothing wrong with those companies paying such, it drastically changes the incentives for the regular employee. Going to work in Big Tech can be like winning the lottery (in the dot com boom, I had about 6 million on paper... that I didn't sell before the crash).
That there is drastically different industries with correspondingly different levels of compensation has incentivized the person who can change jobs to move from a $60k job to a $120k job to a $250k job to do so.
> People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn't worker attitude.
The US-style neoliberal attitude towards decimating the workforce at a drop of a hat for PR purposes does have a chilling effect on any employee's trust.
But don't fool yourself: one of the most important tools anyone has to improve their life and wellbeing is the ability to switch jobs. It can create career opportunities you would otherwise not have, and even unblock career progression by sidestepping your current job's corporate constraints.
> Perhaps the armed forces are doing something right, and the tech industry is not.
This shows some ignorance on the history of work relations. The bad old days of industrial guilds and company towns are not renowned for quality of life and independence. Your life was tied to the company, and all you could aspire to do in your life would be to toil in the same low paying job while mixing up your corporate structure with your life's social structure. If god forbid you lost your job, you and your family would lose your whole life.
Tell me how this is doing things right.
For those in the US to understand, see how your access to healthcare is tied to your employer, and the impact this have on your life of you are forced out of your job. Now extrapolate this to every single aspect of your life.
The armed forces have a service commitment of several years (if I read this correctly, US Army is 8 years). People will sometimes change jobs within months.
They have the time to train someone into a role and typically don't have to worry about going to work for a competitor after they get out of AIT or A school.
People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn't worker attitude.
One of the biggest changes since then is that there are companies that a different scale of revenue per employee ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%28google%2C+meta%29+re... ) and pay accordingly.
While there's nothing wrong with those companies paying such, it drastically changes the incentives for the regular employee. Going to work in Big Tech can be like winning the lottery (in the dot com boom, I had about 6 million on paper... that I didn't sell before the crash).
That there is drastically different industries with correspondingly different levels of compensation has incentivized the person who can change jobs to move from a $60k job to a $120k job to a $250k job to do so.
In the 90s I was making $50k/year ($50k '95 -> $109k '26 https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm ).
The companies where people used to work a decade or two or three are still there and in many cases, largely unchanged.
3 replies →
> People used to spend their entire careers at a single company. Something changed, and it wasn't worker attitude.
The US-style neoliberal attitude towards decimating the workforce at a drop of a hat for PR purposes does have a chilling effect on any employee's trust.
But don't fool yourself: one of the most important tools anyone has to improve their life and wellbeing is the ability to switch jobs. It can create career opportunities you would otherwise not have, and even unblock career progression by sidestepping your current job's corporate constraints.
1 reply →