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Comment by davidw | Hacker News Reader

I think there used to be a different balance between various things. You could expect to find a 'good company', dedicate a lot of your live to it, and be more or less reciprocated. These days, it's "every man for himself". In Europe, they have, in some places, attempted to legislate this relationship, which I don't agree with, but sometimes I feel there may be something we are missing out on in terms of long term, loyal employer/employee relationships. I'm not sure I'd want that myself, having pretty much grown up with the hopping around + brutal layoffs style common in tech, but still... it makes you think.

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I think that's exactly it. It's just taken a couple of generations to adapt to this new reality.

My parents (well, my mom at least, my dad was an entrepreneur) would never quit their jobs. This was something that was unheard of. Xer's would be happy with whatever job came their way. Now, the millenials are fully understanding that their jobs are about as secure as their car parked in the bad part of town.

Honestly, corporations have changed how they treat their employees, and so the employees are adapting.

It's not that Gen-Xers were happy with whatever job came our way, it's that we had rent to pay and food to buy (and had no desire to live with Mom and Dad). Once the economy got better (and our businesses succeeded), we got picky too.

You might have what it takes to walk the walk, but don't jump to conclusions before you've trod the path of a truly awful economy.

I was born in 1975, so I've been around the block... if not many times, a few, at least.

My point was that once upon a time, companies and their employees were likelier to stick together through good times and bad. These days the equation has changed: companies are liable to dump you when quarterly profits aren't good, and you're likely to dump a company at the first whiff of something better. That's better in some ways, but I think we've also given up something that may be harder to quantify. For instance, if you're a happy worker and not worried about the next quarter, you can also invest in the company long term, rather than strictly looking out for your own interests, and vice versa, even if there's a bad quarter. Said companies also had time to invest in things like creating Unix, and lots of other R&D that wasn't immediately registered as profitable.

I don't know that I'd be happy like that, and I think that the cream of the crop in today's world oughtn't look to other people's companies as a place to make their mark; still, I think it's something that bears thinking about. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back at some point in the future.

I think it is similar to today's economic problems. When everyone else is being flaky, now is a good time to establish a reputation for dependability.

I'm gen X. I'm actually in my third "career". Trust me, I didn't do security after leaving the army because I liked it.

You're 100% correct though, I have no problem limiting my tolerance for bad situations these days.

Well, it certainly looks like we'll have the opportunity.

Right... it's a problem with solutions at different equilibriums (I'm not sure of the exact way to phrase that), and I'm not sure that what we are moving towards is necessarily the best for all people/jobs/companies: sure, there's more flexibility and responsiveness, but as an employee, I have figured out at this point that I don't really have any more loyalty to an employer than they are likely to have for me, and perhaps we both lose out because of it in some ways, at least for certain combinations of people/jobs/companies.

I'm not sure that what we are moving towards is necessarily the best for all people/jobs/companies:

That I think is the key. Everyone figures that it'll be great when we're all sitting around in our pj's "working", but will it? We're talking about a change to the fundamental nature of our society. There will be winners and losers, but that's a very different world from the one we know.

You should take a look at the book 'Supercapitalism" by Robert Reich - it may give you a new perspective on how business has evolved over the past 30 years.

One of the major themes is that the focus went from people as citizens and unto people as consumers. Thus the reason for corporations changing their behavior. It's as much the consumer's fault as the corporations'.

That's the thing with a corporation. It can only sell what people want to buy. It's like when people complain about Starbucks taking over the high street, well, Starbucks can't exist where people don't want its products and services, same as any corporation.

I have a pet theory that this is why some people have this visceral hatred of corporations: they're a mirror to the people, and people don't like what they see.

While it is true that a corporation can only sell what people want to buy, a lot of large corporate entities have spend a lot of time and money researching how to influence what people want to buy. To a really ridiculous degree. Furthermore, a lot of large corporate entities have no problem doing things that the vast majority of people would consider immoral (at the very least) to reduce their costs, or increase the likelihood of someone purchasing more of their product(s).

People who hate corporations for being corporations generally aren't really thinking about what they don't like about said corps, and also rarely take the time to consider how the corporations actions would be justifiable (in a human sense, not necessarily just in the profit-motive sense) to the people running them.

I think that what people tend to rail against is corporations like Monsanto. Sure, they can only sell what 'people' want to buy - but they also have no problem with showing utter disregard for human life or the environment, furthermore what they sell is not marketed at individuals - they end up being only able to sell what other corporations want to buy (who in turn don't know or don't care about said disregard for human life or the environment), and have enough money to buy their way out of most legal trouble.

Makes sense to me. I also have a theory that with the world becoming more and more related with media being more and more similar across countries, your neighbors are suddenly all the celebrities and people on TV.

And we know that you value your worth relatively to what your neighbors have. So with your neighbors suddenly being much better off due to them being celebrities, you end up feeling poorer and must play the consumerism game.

I'll try to rewrite this to make more sense later - pretty tired now.

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