You can have loyalty and still understand that there's a social/informal contract in place (and maybe a formal one in some places).
It is common for companies to expect "loyalty" in the form of working extra hours when the company is in a tight spot or settling for meager raises rather than switching companies while at the same time laying people off at the first sign of trouble. In such an environment, an employee offering loyalty to a company when none is offered in return is setting themselves up to be taken advantage of.
Have loyalty for people who deserve it, but never for companies.
>I don't see why "they'd fire you in no time if you stopped providing value" is always thrown around as a negative.
It seems the whole loyalty thing is always sided heavily in favor of the employer. When both sides eschew loyalty and make cold, hard business decisions, my example is what the employee's might look like. Not very appealing I know, but neither is laying off 25% of your workforce because Zillow decided it wanted to be a real estate investor and failed miserably at it; an example of a cold, hard business decision.
just another hole in classical economics and theory of rational choice.
You give 2 weeks because of the people, not the company