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Comment by vkatluri | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, commit for how long? I have been in situations before, where I have accepted an offer, started a job and was informed 3 months later that the company mis-calculated the budgets/revenues and have to let go a bunch of people. Guess who gets let go first? The people who started the latest.

Doesn't this go both ways? In this day and age in America, there's no loyalty going in either direction, employer or employee.

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As a freelancer I feel I should try to commit for at least a year - and I will try to work a bit longer of possible. I believe this looks better on my resume as well.

I think it's hard for most jobs, at least in my space (mobile software) to do much effective work when staying only for -let's say- 3 months at some company.

But mismanagement happens. The example you mention of being let go after just 3 months should be the exception, not the rule. I certainly never experienced something like that. Then again I like to work for big clients, feels to me more guaranteed they will still be in business tomorrow and me getting paid.

Not entirely convinced that others' poor ethics are a justification for your own.

What argument can you possibly make for an ethical burden that amounts to one-sided loyalty? The REASON is would be immoral to have no loyalty to an employer is because it makes the employers loyalty one-sided. If the employer abandons their loyalty towards employees, as all modern employers did throughout the 1980s and have now established as standard business practice, then there is no ethical burden on the employee to remain loyal. In fact, it becomes unethical to be loyal, a betrayal of your family and self for an entity that does not respect you. I am sure there are a great many employers who expect that they should be permitted to acquire dirt cheap labor to build their profits with no consequences. Their desires are irrelevant.

"Make game of that which makes as much of thee."

There is no good reason at for any kind of ethic burden.

Some people steal; some might have even stole something from you. Doesn't mean you have to too, and I doubt most people are held back only by law/punishment.

I don't think you can equate me leaving an employer "early", for some definition of early, to theft. As long as the contract is "at will employment", which majority of American job offers are (sorry for my America centric view), then the contract is AT WILL, in both directions. In my mind there is no ethical, moral or legal lapse.

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