Loyal to the Company | Hacker News Reader

Loyal to the Company

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219 pointsmooreds103 comments

My Dad worked for Swift & Co. for 45 years. Nonetheless, when I quit my first job, he said to me, approvingly, "They're not loyal to you, so why should you be loyal to them?"

There are companies loyal to their employees. They tend to be small and family-owned, though, and when the family retires or loses control, the new owners tend to be markedly less loyal.

My late father worked for Morton Salt for close to forty years. Then Morton got a new 38 year old CEO and he wanted to shake up the company. He figured out that the employees over 55 years old tended to be the highest paid and if he got rid of all of them it would goose profits and he'd be a hero to Wall Street so he did it.

For a quarter or two it worked and then the company descended into a death spiral and he was fired. My Dad got another good job and did OK. Poor Morton Salt never recovered, they've been sold a half dozen times and aren't even the largest salt company in America anymore.

the "MBA Playbook". You would think those MBA courses that instruct on how to do this would also include the downside.

Maybe they do and people make the moral choice not to care as they plan on being long gone before the failures?

Maybe they teach that bit too?

Sorry for more questions and answers as I have NOT done an MBA myself.

There is definitely a problem with MBAs who come in to companies and obsess about one or two statistics or numbers and reorder the business to maximize/minimize some metric but it destroys the business in the process. Another example is the Sears CEO Eddie Lampert.

It's a shame because Morton Salt sounds like it was irreparably harmed which is a huge cost for a lot of people (jobs and profits lost) but the CEO at worst just loses their job after a couple years if they hadn't moved on already.

You can't take a top performer with decades of success in a company and replace him with a 22 year old, even an exceptional one, and not have problems.

There's a reason that company's layoffs usually affect those with the least time there, because its the least harmful strategy. Surprised that fact isn't part of the MBA curriculum.

MBA types tend to move on before the consequences of their actions become clear. I don't think they care.

I am considering doing MBA just to get to know this.

I don’t care about getting management position. Soot someone with MBA replies in the thread I might save some money.

There is a post about a 38 year old becoming CEO in 2012 https://www.mortonsalt.com/article/morton-salt-announces-new...

But he claims to have remained CEO until 2019 https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-herrmann-cfa/

This happened in the late seventies. Nowadays you'd have a hard (though not impossible) time doing it because of federal laws against ageism. However the tech industry seems to get away with it in hiring.

What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though?

Maybe I'm just overly cold and "literal", but an employment agreement is just that: an agreement to exchange value for value. In general, I loathe the idea of an agreement that I can't renegotiate. Do I owe my employer something? Yes, to the extent that it is agreed upon contractually. Does my employer owe me something? Same deal.

I just don't understand what "loyalty" in this context is supposed to look like. If my services are a net disvalue to the company they should continue on as though that's not the case? If I'm unhappy at company or receive a better offer elsewhere, I should continue on despite it not being in my best interest?

If that's what loyalty is supposed to mean then I don't want it either as employee or employer. Let's just get an agreement in writing and then take it one day at a time.

Loyalty in general can be thought of as a line of credit for employers and employees to informally "borrow" from each other to smooth things over. Explicitly enumerating all of a given job's duties in an employment agreement is functionally impossible, and a key part of what people mean by an employee's "loyalty" to a company is that willingness to go slightly outside of their expected duties. Meanwhile, a company's "loyalty" is willingness to tolerate downturns in returns on a given employee and protect employees' jobs even when doing so might cost them in the short term. A company's "loyalty" might take the form not punishing an employee for being unproductive for some time after a family tragedy or keeping employees on the payroll during an economic downturn even if that might cost them.

If you want to completely get rid of that, even the slightest imperfection in designing the bounds of a given employee's duties is going to result in whatever processes that person relies for grinding to a halt and everyone being trapped in a constant run-around of "That's not my job".

That said, given that companies have been increasingly unwilling to extend even the most basic loyalty to its employees, the right move for workers is to become more transactional. Normally, the accrued "credit" gained through loyalty might dissuade you from switching jobs even if you get a nominally better offer, but if that's no longer a factor, workers have no reason to hesitate about just looking at the bottom line on their employment agreement. This might be damaging to the broader economy since job hopping has considerable productivity costs, but on the individual level, it's the clear right choice.

That's a beautiful explanation of loyalty in this context. I've always struggled to define it. Thank you!

> What does it mean to be "loyal to" a company or employee, though?

I think there are different flavors of this but they generally fall into one of two categories:

1. Short-term vs. Long-term

  * Employee: I'm not getting a raise this year but I trust that they'll make it up to me.  This project sucks but they'll put me on a better one next time.
  * Employer: We don't need to keep this person on the payroll right now but we will in the future.

2. Past Behavior Predicts Future Behavior

  * Employee: The company cut me some slack when I was going through X, or kept me on even when the economy tanked, so I'll forgo a slightly higher salary at a place that might not happen, in case that situation happens again.
  * Employer: This person stuck it out when times were tough and didn't quit when we cut hours last quarter, so we're going to keep them around.

I'm not saying these are always this clean, or always the right decision, but I think they answer the "what does it mean" question in terms most people could identify with. You're probably going also going to see this more in companies that have a higher learning curve or where there is more personal attachment involved (e.g. small town/community where you're going to see them every day). If you're a Shiny Widgetmaker at the only company that makes Shiny Widgets, loyalty is probably worth it. If you work for a megacorp and were hired and fired by spreadsheet formulas, loyalty probably makes less rational sense for either side.

I agree. And it does not even have to be personal.

For example I know companies that have done a lot to help an employee with a critically ill spouse. I would feel some loyalty even if the company helped a colleague.

And there are some jobs where employees risk getting unpopular with customers, colleagues, the public, etc. They should take note of whether the company tend to support its employees or throw them under the bus, even if they did nothing wrong.

> If my services are a net disvalue to the company they should continue on as though that's not the case?

Loyalty is not about accepting a lower value relationship for the sake of not wanting to change, it is trying to optimize the value of relationships over a longer period of time. That means, among other things, ongoing investment from both parties to improve the mutual value of the relationship.

This applies to all forms of relationships, not just employment.

Yes, it's part of social capital. It is intangible, and hard to measure, but it definitely exists. Humans are not machines, and they will respond differently depending on how others treat them, even if those circumstances are not contractual.

I worked at the same company for six years. After that I job hopped. Now, 5 years lsrer, I still have 2-3 good friends I see regularly from the first company. I don't know a single person from any of the other companies.

When I worked for a regional water company, we were setup as a non-profit with a very old-school feel. Everything from dress codes and PTO to IBM mainframes.

“We’re like a family” was the motto and that was true, in the same way you have that dirt bag uncle and drama queen aunt that you invite to all the functions because they’re blood, we had the “he’s three years from retirement so we can’t get rid of them” relationships with tenured staff nearing their pension. We had a Network Analyst pulling around 90k a year that failed to train up over the years and fell behind to the point of uselessness. The entire job for this person was to “maintain our antivirus” which entailed installing and updating Macaffee, manually, on a few hundred machines. Maybe manning the help desk at lunch if they had to go out for calls here and there. No more, no less.

That, to me, is loyalty. It’s an awfully kind of loyalty in some sense but a beautiful kind at the same time.

Reads like a clear waste of taxpayer dollars, not beautiful to me in the slightest.

People take civil service jobs just because they'll get that kind of treatment: they're impossible to fire, and they'll get a pension just because they stayed around.

You could say that's inefficient and it is, but given what pathetically little the civil service can offer you, "job security" really needs to be part of it.

That does not need to be a part of it. Governments can choose to pay market rate for labor and not waste money in the long term.

.. and yet, almost none do. Maybe they see it differently from you?

They have the ability to punt today’s labor costs to future taxpayers via unaccounted debts in the form of underfunded defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare.

So what they see is promise low taxes today, get votes today, let tomorrow’s taxpayers deal with debt problems. I cannot blame them, the voters give the leaders the wrong incentives.

Now you've got it.

Singapore does, which is why the government is so efficient and effective at almost everything it does.

Singapore has a land area equal to Lake Taupo in NZ.

What does that have to do with the competence of the civil service?

I agree. The only reason it’s “inhumane” to lay people off is because of our horrible safety net and ridiculous cost of education. If we could solve those issues, then we wouldn’t need any loyalty from companies. Imagine if we had that in place and instead of the job destruction by ChatGPT being a tragedy, it was an opportunity to update our economy, with hundreds of thousands of people trained in new industries. Not drowning in debt, but ready to work at innovative new places or start new companies themselves.

> I agree. The only reason it’s “inhumane” to lay people off is because of our horrible safety net and ridiculous cost of education.

It goes way beyond that point. Your tenure in a company requires you to specialize and develop your skills to meet the needs of your employer. When you are fired then the employability of those skills might be none or even detrimental to finding jobs anywhere else. The longest you work for an employer, the more potential you risk losing.

Also, you will leave an employer at a different stage in your life. Your ability to allocate your time and energy to onboard onto the requirements of another company can be severely limited due to factors like your family responsibilities or even your health and energy levels. Working for a company always requires you to waste potential that could be used.

Lastly, you will make life decisions around your work. For example, you might buy a home based on factors such as where your workplace is, your job requirements, and your salary range. If you're forced to switch jobs you might be forced to sell your home at a point in time that is detrimental to your interests.

For a company, an employee is expendable. For an employee, being fired can and often has a profound detrimental impact in their life, physically, mentally, emotionally, economically, and socially as well.

A job is not a mere business deal. A job is a social contract. An employer demands employees to make life changes around them, and employees are expected to comply. It's profoundly unfair and one-sided to make believe that an employee's social responsibilities only go as far as their paycheck.

I agree with you that it’s extremely unbalanced. However, i would say that a decent enough safety net would make most of that irrelevant. The problem is that our livelihood depend on the empathy of employers, when in reality empathy doesn’t enter into the equation.

In fact asking for employers to use empathy only makes the problem worse. Because then the ones who actually have it use it, then they are surpassed by those without it. So the world is even more slanted toward those without empathy. It also prolongs the problem by letting people ignore the problem because it’s not that bad yet.

Companies run on machine language. Legalistic policies and KPI’s are a form of machine language. There’s no empathy in that. It’s no easier to make a company act responsibly and ethically toward people than it is to make a computer do so.

If we were working for computers, we wouldn’t expect them to give us quality of life out of the kindness of their hearts, we’d define the inputs and outputs, policies etc, and create a context that manages their lack of empathy and prevents it from destroying everything

>our horrible safety net

This is intentional- an employee who feels secure is an expensive employee.

Mitch Mconnell debating $200/wk Covid relief funding: "my god, they won't work!"

Not to mention the fed raising rates any time pay starts to go up. Because of the “natural rate of unemployment” that is artificially enforced

Value requires context.

Loyalty means that while the company may be losing money for some transitional period of time, they are going to invest some time & treasure in their employees or transition them to a new role.

Usually when companies are cold to their folks, it’s a one sided arrangement. You’re expected to stay 30 minutes late routinely because you’re a “team player”, but you’ll be penalized immediately for starting 6 minutes late.

In general, there’s a broad line between being an asshole and a pushover. If you’re an asshole, you shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t like you. If you’re a pushover, you shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t respect you.

With tech companies, they deliberately setup a cushy work environment to attract staff. When stock market conditions started impacting the executive compensation, the terms changed in a bizarre way. Some layoffs are almost completely random, and people generally resent being sacrificed to the volcano gods.

Personally I think it means to act in the best interest of the other party, even when it’s not mandated. Treating others like you would want to be treated.

So for an employee: not charging bogus overtime, not being a stickler, helping those around you, helping the business succeed. Not bailing at the first sign of trouble.

For an employer: paying for overtime, being flexible with rules, proving assistance outside of work, helping the individual succeed. Not firing at the first sign of trouble.

Sadly the current bunch of CEOs appear to be simply numbers guys, rather than effective managers, and seem to think that the pinnacle of management is being the Hard (Wo)man who can slash the workforce at the drop of a hat, rather than being a thoughtful leader who understands the value of their workforce and how to direct them.

While I understand this is rare (and becoming rarer), part of my employment agreement includes incentives for staying with the company long-term. These incentives include a pension, increasing amounts of vacation time, training, and other smaller perks. These longer-term incentives demonstrate the company's commitment to a long-term employment agreement.

In exchange, I have more reason to stay and provide continuity, preserve domain knowledge, etc.

It's ok to have a cold or literal view of an employment agreement. In my opinion that's valid, and looking at your agreement through that lens gives you a lot of information about the intended term or duration of the agreement. Sadly, it's increasingly common for that duration to be "until the next re-org or downturn".

There's almost always some measure of what people call loyalty. For example, people work late sometimes, and companies accept that there are going to be slow days where employees aren't working full out. You could call this inertia, and of course it's self interested: new hiring or a getting a new job takes effort so it's mutual beneficial to ride out bumpy spots. Over an extended period of time, that's essentially what loyalty is.

This.

The cold market-oriented view other HN'ers are espousing is certainly valid, but there are many, many small employers whose owners have a personal relationship with the employees.

It IS naïve to expect that from a very large company, though, where the managers' span on one job is a couple years, at most.

My grandfather owned rice plantations as a young man... up until the bank which held the mortgages on the properties decided that it wanted to sell the land to a refinery. He then went to work for Shell for the next 25 years. My godfather worked for Shell for 30 years. So did my father. And when my dad ended his career there, they were about to start dismantling the global data warehousing implementation team, so he offered up his own job to receive severance. He received 2 years of pay, all 16 weeks of accrued vacation time, and of course got to keep his pension and his 401K.

I think that one of the reasons that the area is so patriarchal and right-wing is because that's the career experience of a lot of people over there. They work forever at one place, maybe survive a few layoffs, and are generally well taken care of. This deludes people into believing that it's how it is for everyone: that you can simply roll out of bed after high school and get a life-long career which will afford you a middle class lifestyle.

It's called "survivorship bias", and it's not just for people who "roll out of bed and get a life-long career." It applies equally well to pretty much everyone, including ultra-successful company founders. "Hey, if I can do it, anyone can do it, and the ones who don't are obviously just not willing to work hard enough or take enough risks."

It's not called "survivorship bias." That's a term for looking at, e.g. mutual funds' 5-year records, where the only ones you see are the ones who've been around for 5 years, and not the ones that failed.

Company "loyalty" is sometimes a valid concept, but the probability goes down the bigger the company gets.

Umm...I'm sorry, but it very much is a form of survivorship bias. "Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not."

"I worked hard, my employer treated me well, and I retired early. It's not that hard!" Does not take into the account the workers that worked hard and in return were abused by their employers.

As described, it is literally survivorship bias:

> They work forever at one place, maybe survive a few layoffs [emphasis added]

> it is literally survivorship bias

I think you need to look the term up if you want to use it correctly. It's about statistical sampling, not about generalizing from one or two examples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

it does not merely refer to people who've survived at something.

>Whether it be movie stars, athletes, musicians, or CEOs of multibillion-dollar corporations who dropped out of school, popular media often tells the story of the determined individual who pursues their dreams and beats the odds. There is much less focus on the many people that may be similarly skilled and determined but fail to ever find success because of factors beyond their control or other (seemingly) random events.[16] This creates a false public perception that anyone can achieve great things if they have the ability and make the effort. The overwhelming majority of failures are not visible to the public eye, and only those who survive the selective pressures of their competitive environment are seen regularly.

From your link.

The fact remains that "survivorship bias" is a term from statistics, and OP is expanding it inappropriately.

However, if you insist on having the last word, go ahead.

Language is malleable and dynamic. Words and phrases originating in one place are often conscripted to do extra duty someplace else. There is nothing inappropriate about that. It is a Thing That Happens.

However, in this case the thing I described really is survivorship bias in the original sense of the word. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

"Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on entities that passed a selection process while overlooking those that did not. This can lead to incorrect conclusions because of incomplete data."

In this case, the selection process is not getting laid off.

That was my first word on the subject.

Just thought I'd pull the quote from your link that says the opposite of what you're saying. It may have originally come from statistics, altbough I don't think that's the case. The Wikipedia article certainly doesn't say so.

>My Dad worked for Swift & Co. for 45 years.

on that note judging by some of the HN comments in general (not this topic) ) overall, it looks like a fair number of HN commenters do not have their dads in their lives.

Smaller, family-owned companies can be loyal to a fault.

Long-time employees can be hard to get rid of. One good deed, closing one big deal, sticking with the company during tough times, being buddies with the right people...

A lot of owners can be sympathetic to certain people as well. Keeping employees that miss work for any excuse, moochers that get raises for no reason, bad performers, it can be tough for other employers that won't realize that there isn't anything they can do themselves about this, and to just focus on their own work.

On the other hand, I've seen people go through family crisis, health issues, etc and still receive a paycheck for months at a time when missing lots of work.

That's a loyal company.

To the extent that markets are efficient, they’ll be replaced by companies who are willing to dump employees when it’s not profitable to keep them. That’s the system we’ve chosen for ourselves so far.

To the extent that some companies are loyal represents a market failure. TBH, I’ll take a safety net and free education to re-train in a new industry any day of the week over a boss doing me favors and making me feel like i owe favors too. Our economy is beyond bartering and favor systems. Keep personal relationships for personal time and work relationships at work time. I’ll be friends with my peers, i don’t need to be friends with the boss.

Any contractual relationship has a transactional side. And an employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical in a way that will always impact things, and make it impossible for a 100% human relationship to form. Any attempt is like a Frankenstein version of a real friendship. If you want to be friends, it requires equal footing, that means equity and partnerships.

HN, sticking up for Corporate Man even on a Dilbert comic.

I wonder if you've ever had the pleasure of working for a small company full of the owner's incompetent friends and family. Loyalty is nice within reason, but it can be pathological.

I wonder what possessed you to think that I was sticking up for small companies. Or any kind of company.

I didn't think that, quite the contrary. Since you seem to have trouble with comprehension, let me break this comment thread down for you:

- GP says that loyalty isn't always always a good thing because it causes small companies to keep incompetent or lazy employees.

- You make an ideological remark about how GP is "sticking up for Corporate Man" by saying that.

- I respond that yes, in fact, small companies often do employ useless people out of misplaced loyalty, perhaps you just haven't personally experienced it.

- You somehow misinterpret my comment as accusing YOU of sticking up for companies. I did not. Don't worry, I fully understand that your entire philosophy boils down to "companies bad".

- You are here.

Does that clear things up, or are you still lost?

It seems that you, asshole, have misunderstood me then. Sticking up for companies was the part where they propagated the myth that companies sometimes have loyalty to their employees. They do not.

You then took that as a premise that I somehow would also belive in (of course I don’t).

Then you made your little ideological remark. And we were all better off for it.

You really came back after four days just to try to spin this in a way that makes it look like you were in the right?

> You then took that as a premise that I somehow would also belive in (of course I don’t).

Lol no, I didn't. You're either still misunderstanding, or being deliberately obtuse. My point is that some companies DO have loyalty, and a subset of those are loyal to all the wrong employees. I'm fully aware that you disagree with both of those things. If I thought you agreed with them, why would I have commented in the first place?

I didn't realize Dilbert stopped wearing a tie; according to Wikipedia the dress code changed in October 2014: https://dilbert.com/strip/2014-10-13

Employee loyalty is usually the priority that comes last, _just one more big push and then we can breath_ except the breath never happens and now management expects the next project to finish quicker with less people.

That breath has been "two weeks away" for about five years now.

I totally forgot about two weeks to flatten the curve.

edit: In my area, ER's are no longer over capacity. Is this true where you are? I'm curious if we can determine a date for this milestone, because it'd be good to know statistically speaking for if an event on this level ever happens again.

Older I get, more I realize that this game is brutal as shit. Is what it is though. Kill or be killed.

Your 'political capital' = company loyalty in difficult times and this is why you should invest and cultivate in this intangible asset over time. Successful project completion is necessary for growing your political capital (PC) but not sufficient. Unfortunately, PC requires a complex mix of social engagement, tribal acceptance, and cross-organizational support that unfortunately comes down to memorable likeability.

"I refuse to suck up or become a schmoozer," I hear you say. That certainly is a common choice and it comes with certain daily freedoms and potentially some long-term negatives. These social constructs are true for all groups of humans and have been for thousands of years. It's not unique to the business environment. This is also why today's HN discussion examples of betrayal to the social norms reflect our sense of moral offense. Arbitrarily firing people feels wrong because it IS wrong.

Growing your political capital by expanding your social engagement and service network doesn't guarantee safety in a crisis, but it certainly increases the odds of remaining in the herd of survivors.

I think the online zeitgeist (in my bubble at least) has been away from blind loyalty and towards self-care.

Work? Eh, the bubble-mates I have vary from "transactional business arrangement" to "kill the bosses and feast on their corpses" so the Overton window is pretty far from the "thirty years of devotion capped off with a pension" mindset.

Religion? Americans in general are losing their religion, and the people I'm with are on the forefront of that trend.^1 Hard to feel anything positive towards the GOP's Junior Auxiliary.

Family? People I'm around are all about cutting toxic family members out of their lives. "You have to stick with your family no matter what!" sounds like Evil Space Alien Talk.

1 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/atheism-fa... https://archive.is/DObne

My boss actually gave me similar advice when I took another job.

He also welcomed me back to my old role when that job didnt suit me.

Reminds me of the saying: 'Instead of being fired by my employer, I fired my employer and they are no longer allowed to work with me, so I left'.

But please don't mistake this with a general "no company is loyal to its employees". Maybe rare, but not non-existent.

No company is loyal to its employees. People are capable of loyalty, but companies are simply not capable of loyalty.

One of my neighbors a few years back worked at a lumber mill for 30+ years, including some serious downturns in demand for lumber when the owner of the company took little or no pay to make sure he could keep on his employees. The owner of the company? Super loyal.

The owner died, and his daughter, who inherited the company, didn't want to run it, so she sold it to a local investor who took one look at the books and laid off almost all the staff including my neighbor, replacing them with minimum-wage-ish workers. I don't think the daughter intended this to happen, she just didn't have the business knowledge to prevent it.

Luckily my ex-neighbor had less than a year left on his mortgage when this happened, and was able to pay off his house before unemployment ran out, but he wasn't able to find work (probably in part due to ageism). Last I heard (just before the pandemic) his attempt at starting a knife-sharpening business out of his home had failed and he was trying to sell the business, with still a few more years before he could collect social security (and give up full social security benefits by doing so).

> No company is loyal to its employees. People are capable of loyalty, but companies are simply not capable of loyalty.

The smaller the company, the less distinction there is between "the company" and "the people who own it". So it's possible to have something like loyalty/trust with the company if you have loyalty/trust with the people in charge

But there's always a difference, and it can always change in the time it takes to sell, or IPO, or take new investment

> The smaller the company, the less distinction there is between "the company" and "the people who own it". So it's possible to have something like loyalty/trust with the company if you have loyalty/trust with the people in charge

I understand what you're getting at, and this is why I support small businesses both with my money and politically, and when I can, by working for them. If someone has to look you in the eye when they screw you over, they're less likely to screw you over. And on the flipside, this is why I generally despise large corporations. More often than not, "scale" is achieved by creating enough distance between those in charge and those not in charge, and then mercilessly exploiting those not in charge.

But ultimately, the distinction between business and business owner will always be there at any size company, and loyalty, if it exists, will always be a trait of the business owner, not the business.

Yep

I would even add a further layer for public companies (vs large private companies): we might think of "those in charge" as management, and large companies certainly put more distance between them and folks on the ground, but public companies also have a big distance between investors and management. Most investors on the open market won't even be involved with the company directly - it'll just be a line in a portfolio, their only signal being buy/sell - and yet ultimately they are the ones "in charge"

Which is why we often get behavior that's not just disloyal or callous, but wildly irrational too

Agreed, the vast majority of shareholders have little or no visibility into a company. And management and shareholder incentives aren't aligned in timescale: while shareholders be in it for the long term, management can be in it for the short term, collecting bonuses on their quarterly performance and leaving when their short-termism comes back to bite the company.

Another problem is that shareholders aren't a cohesive group. If the holders of the top 51% of shares vote as a block, they make 100% of the shareholder decisions but reap only 51% of the results. This greatly decreases the cost of doing things like buying a controlling interest in a competitor and running it into the ground, because you can get the holders of 49% of the shares to subsidize your cost. Shareholder behavior in this situation seems irrational if you look only at their behavior within the company, but it's rational in the larger context of their holdings.

Shareholders can also be in it for the short-term in a public market, sometimes more so than management. That's why you get execs trying to juice the stock instead of setting the company up for success

> No company is loyal to its employees. People are capable of loyalty, but companies are simply not capable of loyalty.

This is a good point. I have had bosses I liked and trusted and I trusted them, but not the "company" as such. If you replaced them, it wouldn't be the same. Maybe I'd be able to trust the new person or maybe I wouldn't, but that's what would matter.

That aside, the company culture and rules can influence whether it's more likely to hire good people or bad ones. There are some companies set up to do regular layoffs and compete strongly enough that people are sabotaging each other and that just seems miserable.

I work for a place now that's a quiet, enjoyable workplace where everyone is trying to help each other do better while getting good compensation. Maybe I could make a bit more somewhere else, but I'm not sure it'd be worth giving up what I have now. Most people who work here have really long tenures (10+ years) and that's a good thing.

Make no mistake, all companies are one leveraged buy-out away from full private equity ruthlessness. Even if the current owners are great – people get older, they'll want to retire... and we all die. Eventually the ownership can pass to someone who really wants to turn the screws.

Do you have good examples of companies loyal to employees? I have been pretty loyal to my employees, but I have had to make hard decisions when the health of the company was higher priority than loyalty to an employee.

In fact, my next article on Maps will talk about the Zagat acquisition. Tim and Nina Zagat were getting on in years, and wanted to protect their employees against getting acquired by some ruthless private equity owners.

So they sold to Google. Oh well. Zagat was eventually spun out again. I don't know what happened to those long-time employees.

I don't see anything wrong with that. Similarly, employees have to make hard decisions when the health of their families is a higher priority than loyalty to the company.

Maybe we should stop using the term "loyalty" because it unfairly implies absolutes -- at least in the minds of westerners.

can it be called loyalty when it only appears to exist when it's not an inconvenience to the business or an owner's profit?

This is why I am asking. I did not say that I made decisions against employees when it was an inconvenience to the business or to my profit. I made hard decisions when employees jeopardized the company.

In my experience, it's typically the smaller the company the more loyal they are to good employees. Big companies with plenty of institutional inertia have zero loyalty and would replace their entire workforce with chatgpt of given the opportunity.

I have yet to see a company where the "loyal" employees are paid more than those who leave for a better salary, or are exempt from laid off. I feel like "Company Loyalty" is one of those nonsensical ideas boomers left to the younger generation.

It's a business relationship and should be treated as such by the employees. Employee loyalty is ridiculous because it's clearly only one-way loyalty.

Only if you believe loyalty can only be bought with loyalty.

Companies provide some value for employees that they don't get back from them, and vice versa.

What value besides money? A company paying a employee to be "loyal" is nothing more than a business transaction, and "loyal" really is "please, don't go to another company, we will pay you to stay here". I'm assuming the employee is not also the owner.

I agree. I think what most people seek in a company is the weathering of risk, the establishment of an opportunity, and the reliability of income.

Employers can "demand" loyalty, but as you say, it's basically a request. There's no legal basis for it or anything.

I think it's fine to have a culture of loyalty. It probably means you have a pretty good company. Demanding it doesn't work, and if it's not real loyalty, we don't have to be mad about it being one-sided.

This is such classic HN thought. That doesn't make it any less true though.

A company is a legal fiction, and cannot be loyal. People can be loyal, and often are

Scott Adams almost getting it.

My reaction was, I wonder who writes Dilbert these days, because it doesn't seem like it's Scott Adams.

I feel like his tone has changed over the years. A lot of his earlier work felt more jokey or ridiculous and his newer, recent work just feels like not-very-funny topical one-liners.

Its 100% scott adams. I think he outsources his coloring only.

Almost?

Dilbert is a documentary!

Why is this on the front page? This website is supposed to be for topics that gratify intellectual curiosity, not a second Reddit.

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