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Comment by josefdlange | Hacker News Reader

Excellent.

If you want your employees to stay, and to contribute their ideas to you instead of running off to your competitors or starting their own companies, it's so so so much better to just treat your employees better than the bind them legally.

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I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center.

Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an employer/employee relationship should be.

Just to argue the counterpoint, I prefer my employer to be up-front about the legal side. Our relationship is adversarial - mutually beneficial, yes, but also adversarial. Except for possibly in the case of a tiny company where I'm personal friends with the management, they're not going to be loyal to me in any sort of pinch. It'd be great if we could trust each other, but that's not how business works, and if I'm not assertive about my rights, or if I take them at their word that they're not going to assert theirs, then I'm the sucker.

Loyalty is not an anathema to a non trivial company, but it needs to be a core value practised across the board not just in part of the firm. It's just like altruism has been shown to be a benefit in natural selection (somewhat counter-intuitively), being a loyal employer has all sorts of benefits to the company. The problem is that it doesn't work with the aim to be a unicorn - you can't grow massively, you can't risk the company on a play. Those "plodding" companies a step removed from the white heat of capitalism, the ones whose owners are "quite rich enough, thankyou" and don't sell, the ones whose employees do spent decades working there.

A lot of management techniques come out of the manufacturing industry that was the backbone of the US economy until 1980ish. For manufacturing, it does sometimes make sense to treat employees as a cost center, rather than an asset.

Even for manufacturing, however, this was a significant simplification (but likely a good trade-off in the days before visicalc).

And then along came Japan with Kaizen and demonstrated that assembly line employees can be used to add value.

Japan is probably a very interesting case study in employer / employee loyalty. I'm sure patio11 could have plenty to add.

> I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant and therefore negative cost center

But they are pretty much the biggest cost center for any employer? I'm not saying employees should not be valued and treated well, but salaries add up to a lot of money.

and without them, a company adds up to a whole lot of nothing

Yes, employees are expensive, but they're also the companies biggest assets. It's worth treating them well. Without them, you're nothing.

If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate their own loyalty towards their employees first.

Edit: maybe calling employees assets is wrong, because you don't own or control them. The relationships with your employees (and those with your customers) are your biggest assets. Ruin those relationships, and you squander your biggest sources of expertise and revenue.

> It's worth treating them well.

Again, I agree.

> Without them, you're nothing.

Plenty of lifestyle business owners would beg to differ.

> If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate their own loyalty towards their employees first.

How? What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for your employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your business back? I would recommend neither.

You seem to have a very limited view of employer-employee relationships. Work is a big part of our life, but not all of it. We don't live to work, but work to live. Just acknowledging that would go a long way. Give employees the room they need to get their lives in order if they need it. Don't work them til they drop, but give them a healthy amount of vacation time, and only ask them to work overtime in extreme cases. Make sure they're happy. Invest in their training. Don't screw them over. Don't treat them as expendable resources. And when someone is holding your business back, maybe figure out why that is, before you blindly fire him.

What exactly prompted you to give me that advice?

I'm planning to treat my employees very well, if I ever have some.

Did you miss that I responded to you? You asked, I answered the question. That prompted me.

It's great that you intend to treat your employees well. I hope every company does that.

Nope, I just didn't see how you reached the conclusion that I needed to be told to treat my employees well.

I still don't :p

But nevermind.

You asked: "What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for your employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your business back? I would recommend neither."

I consider those very short-sighted interpretations of loyalty, so I gave some better examples. If you don't want them, then don't ask for them.

I'm completely baffled by your reaction to receiving an answer to your question.

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