Managers exploit loyal workers over less committed colleagues | Hacker News Reader

Managers exploit loyal workers over less committed colleagues

today.duke.edu

176 pointsgeox168 comments

> it doesn’t mean we should just abandon work commitments or dodge uncompensated overtime.

it's not dodging! if you won't pay me for my work, i'm not going to do the work!

Indeed. That the author chose this wording is a signal of how sick and biased the employee/employer relationship is.

but only in certain professions - you try getting a builder/electrician/plumber to do unpaid overtime! why programmers are suckers for this is a bit of a mystery.

Where I live, programmers tend to be book smart and very arrogant about it.

Plenty of people from my college and department genuinely think they are smarter than everyone else.

This blinds them to the kind of street smarts required to understand even basic ideas of how to not get exploited, the utility of unions, power dynamics between employers and employees.

I’ve always said if you want to get a developer to do something, just question their intelligence. This works on way too may otherwise smart people.

It somewhat makes sense, many devs grew up smart and were told they were smart from a young age. You need to be to do the job. It becomes part of their identity and is a glaring blind spot for many.

I’ve worked with way too many devs that were so afraid of being wrong or had to prove they were right and were taken advantage of because of it.

This is hilarious in part because I see it in myself.

Can you give an examply of questioning intelligence?

You’re not the kind of person who can figure that out?

A clever manager would never question but talk about how something looks like a true challenge and just leave it at that.

Any variant of the old "I bet you can't <X>" trick. Basically it's a form of 'negging'[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negging

Not sure how giving people motivation is exploitation. You still have to pay them to own what they built, otherwise you just motivated them to build something for themselves, either way it isn't exploitative.

If you replace the word motivation in this comment with manipulation, you should see why it's exploitative.

If you say that a great teacher manipulates their students to do more overtime work is that exploitation just because we changed the words? Normally people would use the words "motivate" and "homework", but the meaning of the sentence is the same.

I'm getting paid by the hour, not by the task. As such, there is no point in "motivating" me to get more work done from my perspective, other than to manipulate me for your own benefit and replace me as soon as the overdrive's price needs to get paid.

If you could work without caring about pay but still get paid then that would be optimal, no? We are talking about that situation here, someone made people do work for non-monetary rewards but they still get paid, to me that seems like a good thing. I'd rather work because I want to than because I have to, call it manipulating or motivating I don't care, if they can make me forget the drudgery when doing it that is a good thing.

But apparently that makes me stupid, I don't see why that is dumb. Being manipulated to want to work is a good thing if you want the money.

The teacher manipulates the student for the student's benefit. The business owner / manager manipulates the employee for the business' benefit.

See how you needed to use a teaching example to not make it sound bad?

Street smarts means you realize that the best payoff is to get a better job instead of trying to fix your current job. That level of street smarts is why many got into software to begin with.

If you could choose between starting a union or becoming a manager, then becoming a manager will almost always be a better payoff for your own time.

>If you could choose between starting a union or becoming a manager, then becoming a manager will almost always be a better payoff for your own time.

Not everyone is seeking to optimize local maxima while making the world worse.

Not true, such managers work extra hard achieving nothing and making things worse.

> the utility of unions

I admit this was a blindspot for me, and it was mostly a representation problem. simply put, all the examples I had were blue collar jobs, paying a cut of their lesser (but union inflated) salary to a union organization they had issues with.

I saw high profile futility. Union tried to negotiate something expensive, the company collapsed and laid off the entire town. People marching in a circle for 3 months in one city, against a multinational corporation that shouldn't really need to care. The people forming unions making demands that didn't seem ambitious enough.

I felt I was optimizing my salary, based on the current reality. But I've come to a different view, mostly that others in the working class are pitted against each other. Like, other workers are dismissive to highly compensated employees because of the numbers involved. But this is only beneficial to the executives, board and owners. I'm dismayed at how this sounds like a marxist handbook, instead of looking at how other developed nations do it. I've been inspired by codetermination in Germany, where the unions has like half of the board seats by law. Its like that perspective is completely missing in the US, in favor of false dilemmas trying to avoid marxist leanings.

I think more education on this topic is beneficial. People react to what they see.

> I'm dismayed at how this sounds like a marxist handbook, instead of looking at how other developed nations do it. I've been inspired by codetermination in Germany, where the unions has like half of the board seats by law.

Guess who's to thank for that German policy...it begins with an 'M' and ends with 'ists.'

Its nice to see compromise actually work amongst coalition parties competing amongst like 7 other parties with representation.

Even though that is not possible in the US, I think there is room for inspiration from a working system which can reach consensus. If there was more knowledge of that, plenty of people and representatives in the US would say "huh, that's actually a good idea". Worker board representation so to have influence on decisions that affect workers, not just the trendiest companies giving some shares out willy nilly.

I hate to break it to you, but the ruling class agreed to this compromise only after 2 world wars. The conflict to resolve was/is not between political parties, but rather between the working class and the ruling class. In this case, the ruling class upended the labor party during WW1, then were obliterated by the Soviet Union for doing a holocaust (WW2), which laid the conditions for the so-called compromise.

I don’t mind that it occurred that way, what do you think about the outcome?

I guess I mind that it occurred that way because it was preventable and millions of innocent workers died as a result, but nonetheless it's history now.

The policy has been good for workers in Germany, and might be the best example of how universal material demands for (actual) worker power are extremely popular in practice. Not even the most conservative German politician would dare challenge the policy in public.

It is, nonetheless, unsustainable. Without the threat of the Soviet Union, pro-worker legislation is losing its necessity in legitimating the Western ruling class. Once its founding generation is gone in a few decades, the policy will dissolve along with them, short of a newfound radical workers movement throughout the EU.

Because the barrier to entry in programming is zero. Or near enough to it. Code on your free time, learn php on your free time. Suddenly you are WordPress developer.

Learning a trade can require very expensive tools, often time as an apprentice or journeyman, and learning at the very first stage of your career that your labor has value and you need to charge for that.

I can hire a programmer from anywhere in the world and often incredibly cheaply. I can't do that with a tradesman, they actually have to be local, often have more work than they can ever get done, and know that I can't outsource the construction project to someone 1,000 miles away.

> I can hire a programmer from anywhere in the world and often incredibly cheaply

This has been tried many times with quite predictable results and you’re incorrect that you can’t hire tradesmen from far away - happens all the time.

Anytime I have a plumbing job, I can’t get a plumber to drive more than 10 miles to come do it.

Small jobs sure, i had arborist crew come out all the way from Fresno, it's not uncommon to see texans building homes in NorCal, etc

> Because the barrier to entry in programming is zero.

Sure, a 10000 hour moat is not a moat at all.

Barrier to entry. Not to mastery. You can write useful scripts with 100 hours of experience or less for some specific problems.

I’ve done a fair bit of not-specifically-compensated overtime over my career.

In my 20s and early 30s, if I didn’t have anything going on socially or sports on a given evening, I was pretty likely going to write code (for enjoyment). Sometimes that was for me, but often it was for the company.

Doing what I enjoy is why I was a sucker in your estimation.

I mean, yes? You could have built side projects, contributed to open source, freelanced, etc. There are a ton of ways to do what you enjoy without allowing someone to profit off your unpaid labor.

I don't think you're a sucker, and I have any number of things you could work on for me, for free.

yes, i certainly used the university that i worked for facilities when i was starting out, but only for my own projects (arguably bad, i might admit) - i never did or have done any work for my employers that i wasn't compensated for, and i can't imagine why anyone would.

Aren't programmers predominantly salaried positions?

I haven't met many hourly programmers that do a lot of overtime for free.

> Aren't programmers predominantly salaried positions?

an interesting question. i am now retired, but annecdotaly at the last two investment banks i worked for:

equity trading: 5 permanent staff, 6 contractors

back office: 1 permanent staff, 5 contractors

so mostly non-salaried

Hourly contractors or salaried contractors?

Programmers are salaried/equity holding exempt employees so it's not unpaid.

Your salary is still on a contract for a certain number of hours per week.

Any hours past that are unpaid in that regard and effectively reduce your salary.

It's like that in the USA, where I used to live. I live in Germany now, and I am a salaried employee. The law here doesn't generally allow any non-remunerated work beyond 10%-15%, and your daily work hour average over a 6 month period cannot exceed 8 hours. Anything above that, and they have to pay my hourly rate times a multiplier depending on how far over or if they are weekend/nighttime hours. I believe they're also required to pay for "on-call" hours, whether you are actually called in or not, at a lesser rate. All of this is statutory, not specific to my contract. Not surprisingly, I'm no longer on the pager duty rotation.

Your salary is rated on a basis of working a certain number of hours per week on average as that is a standard that most people in society run by - that number is otherwise meaningless.

Similar to how oil changes are rated between a driving distance or a change by date, or how your milk and bread has a sell by date. These numbers are guidelines that generally signal to people some amount of confidence in a product/service, but do not reflect the reality of use or worthiness.

I don't think that's true? I've never seen a Tech contract that specifies the Baseline hours.

Mine said expected 40 hours a week last time I saw it.

But getting RSU comp still means doing extra work may be valuable… if it's actually the right work.

I think that’s only true in the US. All my contracts in the Netherlands and Japan always specify the number of hours.

presumably you have never been a contractor?

I have been but was paid hourly

um, my point?

I've never seen something that said you will be paid for an assumed 40 hour work week. Whenever I contract, there was actual accounting.

on the contrary, most programmers i've worked with have been contractors/consultants, paid by the hour.

Self employed contractors or working for a consulting firm? Cause I'd think the first would have pricing power over their own time.

Latelty we had a discusion about that too. There was a story from a hairdresser women who worked for 20 years and never git a raise in her salary. She worked for almost nothing. But I think person like this hairdresser are gulty too. Because they all work for this low salary, of course the boss would be stupid to pay more. All, every single person, who work overtime for free is kind of guilty.

Blue collar work has to be compensated with overtime. Many electricians/builders/plumbers are independent contractors, so they either get paid for job or by the hour or whatever, they make their own rules. Programming is considered white collar work for some reason, we are generally considered to be salaried employees, unless they are contracting.

It's crazy how many people don't understand this

It depends on the job and company. I've worked with folks w your mindset who'd bail at 5 when their team stayed till 7.

Then 5 years out, their team mates were making an extra 200k a year because they got bonuses and raises in return.

So in their case it was short term uncompensated overtime , long term well compensated.

Yes, but this form of gambling is a terrible thing to encourage implicitly. It's awful for society to ask people who have worked to attain a "normal" education, trying to apply to "normal" companies, to choose between life-harm and potential future compensation. For specialized cases like a silicon valley moonshot startup or whatever, fine. But this scenario, allowed to progress naturally, will work itself into more and more "normal" cases.

This is especially compounded by the two facts that it's not a zero-sum game, and software developers have a higher tendency to fall outside some of the social norms that normally serve as natural controls on this kind of scenario. I.e. if you can do your job for unusually long (because it's not physical labor, and/or you enjoy doing it both as a job and a hobby), and you don't have many other obligations (you don't have kids, or you can afford childcare; or you don't have a wife, or you have a wife who doesn't mind you spending little time together; or you can afford to order prepared food often or don't have a cultural/personal bias against it), what happens is the people with these properties work more hours, causing the market to adapt and pressure the other people in the same field. In other fields, this doesn't happen in enough numbers to cause this problem.

In my experience, I agree: not everyone can put in the same kind of extra effort. And in areas where people are replaceable cogs, this can really hurt some people.

But in knowledge work, if things are hitting the wall and there is pressure to extra-contribute but you are not in a position to put in extra time, you can still respond in a way that visibly shows your commitment.

Express to your management & team your concern about the need for extra commitments and ask-for/suggest ways you can realign your work to prioritize what is most important to the situation.

Nothing makes up for limited additional capacity more than demonstrating that despite your constraints, you are all in to help everyone around you succeed.

Again, this may not work as a low level cog where management isn’t invested in the individuals that work for them. But in other cases, people do appreciate demonstrations of commitment even if you cannot contribute more on some dimensions.

It’s just important to explicitly and visibly show your flexibility and willingness to incorporate others suggestions, on all the dimensions you can adapt.

The few companies I've worked at, by 5 years the company either has sold up and everyone was replaced / let go, maybe a select few get to stay out of dozens - the vast majority lose out and were exploited or the company goes on a hiring spree and there aren't pay raises or bonuses because company growth is valued over employee satisfaction. Feels like you're talking about the exception rather than the rule or perhaps the tech industry 10+ years ago but certainly not today.

> So in their case it was short term uncompensated overtime , long term well compensated.

How does one identify whether one will be long term compensated or not? Would an employer agree to committing to something like this via a contract?

In my experience, switching jobs gets you there faster and without the unpaid overtime.

I have seen loyal people get exploited, frustrated and leave more often.

5 years is short term? do the maths. anyway, few people stay with a company that exploits them for 5 years.

I feel like you mentally inverted every thing in my post and then replied to that.

I feel otherwise, but please expand a bit.

Alright. Two guys working in a great company. One had the attitude of "no uncomped OT" and leaves at 5. The other guy works till 7.

At the end of the year guy 2 gets an extra 40k comp raise vs guy 1. In 5 years that's a 200k difference.

So by avoiding "uncomped OT" guy 1 fucked himself out of a ton of comp.

OBVIOUSLY this depends on the company and there's no guarantees. I've been lucky enough to work on companies that were like this and this every man for himself short term thinking was poison.

YMMV.

> YMMV

it certainly does. i have worked for several investment banks as a contractor, and i can assure you they do not much care how many hours you put in. if you wanted a big bonus (as a contractor, i obviously didn't get one) you had to produce value to the bank. and sitting at your desk until 7pm simply does not do that - actually it costs them money; you probably have no idea what the costs of air conditioning are in the city of london.

also, how much does that 2 hours per day, per year, over 5 years add up to?

The fact that it even occured to you to think that I am talking about sitting pointlessly for 2 hours vs creating value means we are coming at this from different directions.

I guess another way to say it - find a place that rewards you for value, and produce exceptional value.

You went from '200k a year' to '200k over five years'.

I didn't... But to make it crystal clear.

If you get an incremental 40k raise over someone else, every year for 5 years, you end up making 200 more than them PER YEAR after year 5.

We get the math, what is less plausible is 40k raise every year for five years while remaining on the same team doing the same job. Few jobs pay $200,000 at all, very very few pay so well that two people with the same role could be $200k apart. It's not impossible, of course, but that would be an extremely rare situation.

HR generally won't allow pay differences that large for the same role.

Like I said, YMMV.

200k is the starting developer comp at a FAANG. As you rise in level, 200k becomes the comp range within a level (eg take a look at levels.fyi range for a Google L6 SWE). Same in finance.

Agree that these jobs are few in the grand scheme of things but there are hundreds of thousands of people for whom this type of comp is reality.

People can start at the same level out of school and then make MULTIPLES of that comp depending on what they do.

If this doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you. I am just pointing out that bailing because "this hour of overtime is not compensated" can be very nearsighted depending on your situation.

Specifically, I am talking about someone I know who had this attitude in a company that very clearly rewarded value generation. He did "ok" since it was a great company but he literally had the situation I am describing where others were making 200k more than him 5 years later.

That's more like an exception than a general rule, IMO. I've seen a lot of opposite examples and none like you're describing.

dream on

Isn’t the point of the article that this tends not to happen? That managers tend to see loyalty as an opportunity to extract unpaid labor?

Guy 2 sold more of his time and compromised his health and personal life by working 50+ hour weeks. He probably also made more mistakes than guy 1 because he wasn't well rested. Nobody got screwed out of comp but their manager who values bums on seats.

An extra 2 hours of work per day, assuming 260 work days per year, comes out to 520 hours. Over 5 years that adds up to 2600 hours of extra work.

If you get a $200k bonus after putting in those extra hours, you effectively earned $77/hr or $160k/year for your time. That's basically a 0-3 YOE tech job on top of your regular job.

Is it really a good deal, especially considering how much experienced developers make annually and the long-term effects of working 10 hours per day?

The way I see it, companies know that there will always be people who would sacrifice quality of life for money, and adjust compensation for that. This wouldn't be a problem if only a few companies do this. But when every company does this, it results in forcing everyone to just keep working long hours in order to stay afloat.

At a basic level, sure. But if you're going to be so literal, you'd agree that a company should withhold any compensation when you're on vacation, or when you're out sick, or if you take a long lunch, right?

I don't understand how you're getting from a simple objection to the semantics of the word "dodging" as a description of "not working overtime for free", all the way to the implication that it's hypocritical to have that objection and also accept the concept of paid vacations, sick leaves, or lunch breaks.

(edit -- this comment is only directed towards salaried, exempt employees, I thought that was implied)

It's not the word "dodging," it's the rest of the comment: "if you won't pay me for my work, i'm not going to do the work!"

Don't know where you've worked, but the people who strictly abide by this concept are the worst types of coworkers. "it's 5:01, I refuse to respond to an email," "that's out of my scope," "I need 3 signatures before I can process this request" etc. These people belong at the DMV (for non-Americans, that's Division of Motor Vehicles), not at a dynamic company.

I just think that people who live by the attitude above and take everything so literally should be consistent: "I'm not going to do the work (I'm on vacation, I called in sick)..." "ok, cool, but don't expect us to pay you while not doing work." Of course, such a scenario doesn't exist, nobody would work (or should) for a company that didn't offer paid vacation/sick days -- nor am I endorsing one. But real companies do require effective teamwork to succeed, and the types of people who find every excuse to NOT cooperate should be purged before they turn the company into a cliche of bureaucracy and frustrate the hell out of the effective employees.

"I am very smart."

Vacation, sick leave, and the like are regulated by law in most states/countries.

So is work without compensation. It's somewhat frowned on. Despite your absurd false equivalence.

...and the concept of "exempt employee" -- one who is salaried, and does not receive compensation for working overtime -- is also regulated, legal, and well-accepted.

There is a bit of a difference between an employee who accepts a salaried position and the benefits and responsibilities thereof, and asking or demanding an hourly employee work off the clock for free.

A) There's labor rights that give you vacation and PTO, or at the very least contractual obligations B) Hourly workers don't get docked over long lunches?

Be loyal to your wife. People organizations are higher order entities who could not care less about you. Building a relationship of loyalty with them is just not something you should do.

There is a middle ground. On one side you have working massive unpaid overtime and stressing out, and on the other side you have WFH bludgers who spend 90% of their time on YouTube and reddit knowing they will get away with it.

Then there is actually doing the work you are paid for and putting a good effort in but not letting it extend unreasonably beyond hours and not letting it stress you out. It’s actually far more rewarding to do this where you actually care about the work you do and feel some pride in it vs completely disassociating.

> on the other side you have WFH bludgers who spend 90% of their time on YouTube and reddit knowing they will get away with it.

If they’re getting away with it, that’s a problem with the company not distributing their workloads properly. 90% of work hours wasted should be immediately obvious.

Even if it's immediately obvious that someone is slacking, management isn't going to go through the trouble of firing them unless if the company pressures them to, which tends to make the office environment somewhat oppressive.

It _is_ obvious!

People doing nothing when working on site has happened since before personal computers. They weren't on YouTube of course but they were reading the papers and doing crosswords.

My overwork largely stems from virtue signaling that despite being one of the few wfh devs at my company, that I’m not lazing about.

If I ever did that, it'd be J2 or some training. YouTube and Reddit have vampired way to much time from my life already.

Indeed. It's crazy the amount of stories I've seen on Reddit this past decade from people who are warning others about the dangers of treating a company as family etc., after they themselves were discarded at a whim. It's always the same story, and they sometimes profess how unexpected it was, and how important they were (or how many projects they lead) in the company.

I think this advice mainly applies when your country has weak labour legislation.

> Company loyalty is a double-edged sword, according to a new study.

I'm not sure what the second edge is? When is loyalty meaningfully rewarded?

In theory, with promotions.

In practice, they've decided to bring in an external candidate to fill the role at the higher level. But you're the best person to bring them up to speed because you know so much with all the extra projects you've taken on!

These days the expectation around promotions is that you've already been working at the next level for 1-2 years and are due for a correction in title and compensation. Basically, you have to let the company exploit you while crossing your fingers regarding the light at the end of the tunnel, which might just be the ditch light of the layoff train.

Yes, all the projects that you were hoping to be able to work on as a reward are out of reach because you're too valuable to the ones you're on.

> When is loyalty meaningfully rewarded?

At the risk of being overly obvious, a company might do things like increase your compensation (especially backward looking discretionary comp), give you more opportunities suited to your interests, or consider others for layoffs before you.

Of course, none of these things are guarantees, and it's entirely rational to assume they will never happen and go about your professional life accordingly. But that doesn't mean they don't happen at some companies for some people.

In theory maybe promotions and bonuses were being handed out they should tend towards the more loyal workers.

But I would advise against working overtime as a strategy to get rewards, it usually doesn't work in my experience.

I think you can work only a little bit of highly visible overtime and get most of the benefits without all the hours.

If you’re known never to work overtime, the few times you do (without complaining) it’ll highlight your efforts.

I work for a small company, and I do believe loyalty is rewarded here. Raises, bonuses, freedom to move between projects, etc.

I’m sure it’s a different story when you’re working with an army of devs. It’s a numbers game, everyone is easier to replace in that situation.

I think the easy take is that companies never reciprocate loyalty, but I have had people go to bat to keep me at a job during a round of layoffs, because they liked working with me and trusted me. I agree that you shouldn't be a company man, but I think the easy take is too simple to describe how people actually work.

when it's layoff season.

How’d that work at Google? Loyalty is zero guarantee of safety during any sort of reduction in force. You’re just a line in a spreadsheet. Also, you can have the best working relationship with your manager and if they don’t have enough juice, you’re still out.

Tips: Robust emergency fund, keep your network warm, work enough to keep your employer reasonably happy, show up every day like it might be your last.

(technologist for 22 years)

> You’re just a line in a spreadsheet.

Spot on. IT workers need to realise this and start acting accordingly. You are no more important to an exec of a tech company than a barista is to Starbuck’s exec.

Unionise and stop being jerks during technical interviews.

Or even better, use your skills to start your own company.

I’ve never seen a unionized software company make good software. And I’ve seen lots of different types of software.

I don’t think programmers are interchangeable cogs and there’s so much variance and diversity across people, I wouldn’t want to work for a company that paid me the same as everyone else and fired based on seniority.

> I wouldn’t want to work for a company that paid me the same as everyone else and fired based on seniority.

Are you insinuating that pay and layoffs are done based on merit today? Because that’s totally not my experience after a couple of decades in the industry. And I’m leaving myself out of the sample.

Not sure if you ever attended a meeting with just directors and above. If you do you will hear only one word used for engineers: “Resource”.

Also great software, made by the megacorps, has to do as much with the engineers as McDonald’s burger have to do with the person flipping the patties.

It’s just lies we tell to ourselves.

>I’ve never seen a unionized software company make good software.

This is a non-sequitur. Are you misunderstanding how unions work?

It's not that a particular company should unionize, but rather the software developers at every company.

The union's role is to advocate for the interests of software developers in the industry as a whole, not oversee particular software development projects.

Not everyone works for massive tech companies. If you work for a FAANG or MANTA or whatever it is, then sure, you're probably viewed as another cog in the machine.

Yeah, I completely agree. Sorry, I should have made this clarification that I am talking about software mega-corps.

Do you realize you shifted the gold post from having benefit to providing a bulletproof guarantee?

Nothing in life is guaranteed.

Maybe the commentor is refering to net benefit, rather than gross.

Perhaps, this whole topic becomes a lot more nuanced if people want to talk about net benefit, and situational benefit, and honestly a lot more interesting.

E.g.How and when do you decide to pull out the stops and put in a lot of extra work for your company or boss? That's the kind of stuff make or break careers and build lasting reputation.

If your whole department or project is being let go loyalty and personal relationships doesn't matter. If your department or project is one of the ones told to manage out poor performers more aggressively or to cut X% of headcount being someone your manager can count on is going to make you substantially less likely to be one of the people managed out or cut.

Sure, they might bring in consultants like it's Office Space but those consultants ask everyone what they think of their team members and keep score and in that scenario it's still better to be the person everyone likes and/or respects with more than the absolute bare minimum work output.

The layoffs I have seen just were not that thought out. First people to go were the most paid ones, regardless of performance anyway.

Loyalty isn't rewarded per se, but someone who is committed to their work/team/company is going to be lower on the layoffs list than someone who's doing rest and vest while doing the bare minimum.

Prove your assertion. You are attributing logical, rational behavior to orgs and their participants that rarely are those traits. I have personally attempted to defend directs from layoffs, and that quickly turned into me making calls to other orgs so they could land safely elsewhere, facts and value be damned.

I support rational decisioning (“here is the evidence this person delivers value, is committed to the org’s success, and should be factored into retention”), it’s just rare imho. YMMV. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky in my journey. If that is the case, n=1, build your assumptions off of competing data.

> Prove your assertion. You are attributing logical, rational behavior to orgs and their participants that rarely are those traits. I have personally attempted to defend directs from layoffs, and that quickly turned into me making calls to other orgs so they could land safely elsewhere, facts and value be damned.

And what am I supposed to do if my experience was the exact opposite to yours? Do you want me to dig up emails and/or other company documents that show there was "logical, rational behavior" in my organization?

Nah, I’m just saying that our experiences are going to wildly differ and my recommendation is to plan for the worst. Please don’t take my comments as anything other than that, and I absolutely did not intend it as a personal attack.

If you’ve worked at amazing (logical, rational) orgs that value commitment and will take care of folks in return, I am genuinely happy for you. Envious even. It is more rare than you would think. Regardless, workers must protect themselves. If you’d like to discuss further, contact info in my profile.

I have never seen that happen.

I have seen people who were loyal and worked for the same company for 20 years be thrown to the curb like trash, and they were not poor performers.

You are just a number on a spreadsheet, and if you have been there awhile its an expensive number, you are probably older with a larger salary and higher healthcare costs.

Layoffs in large firms are typically handled in complete secrecy by third-party consultants, and 'loyalty' isn't an input they plug into their formulas.

The decisionmakers that, at the end of the day, approve the recommendations of the consultants are usually incredibly removed from any actual work that gets done. I'm talking about people with 300+ reports. They have no fucking idea whether or not you are 'loyal'.

The people who have an idea of that find out that you got laid off at the same time that you do.

Likewise, when an entire department gets gutted (with no internal transfers available), nobody with any influence over that decision is going to care that you were busting your ass for the firm's bottom line every Saturday.

> and 'loyalty' isn't an input they plug into their formulas.

>They have no fucking idea whether or not you are 'loyal'.

My comment literally says

>Loyalty isn't rewarded per se

What metrics do you think the "third-party consultants" are using?

> What metrics do you think the "third-party consultants" are using?

Closing their eyes, and throwing darts at the historical record of your three-point "NI/Meets/Exceeds" score, where you are on the org chart, and whether you're being paid more than your peers.

If there was any method to their madness, you wouldn't be seeing people with strong performance histories getting canned (In divisions that haven't been shut down).

>how’d that work at Google

How do you know it didn't?

Layoff season is not about keeping the loyal employees, it’s about keeping the necessary ones.

Loyalty isn’t really valuable to the company when retention isn’t a concern.

As a CEO who had to do some lay-offs, I would terminate loyal workers who care about the company the last, even if I had to change their focus.

At a certain size when you know all people in the company, a CEO always know which 15 % of people will be let go first and which 15 % will the company keep even if the business is losing money every month.

How do you identify, evaluate, and rank loyalty? Please be specific about your process.

My company is small enough to know everyone personally. For larger companies, honestly, it’s a difficult question.

>My company is small enough to know everyone personally.

OK, so how do you identify, evaluate, and rank loyalty? If there's an objective mechanism for it, you shouldn't need to personally know everyone.

What I'm hearing is that you go by "feel" (aka the sum of all your biases) and make decisions based on that. How is this remotely objective, fair, or scalable?

"I like him/her and don't like this other him/her"..

So you get to stay at a failing company as a reward?

speaking from my own experience, I got to leave on my own terms instead of worrying about making rent for any amount of time.

This is why I think companies that have real follow through in terms of taking care of layed off workers exit compensation and next job assistance are doing the”right” thing for everyone.

We all win when loyalty can be counted on to go both ways.

Companies that can count on extra employee efforts win.

Employees that know their employer is not gaming them, and won’t dump them cold, and will advance their responsibilities and compensation as fast as they can, also win.

When there is a strong reputation both ways, everyone becomes a motivated partner for everyone else.

Generally yes, but this specific example is imbalanced, in my opinion. The trade here is employees going above and beyond in return for employers simply behaving in a way that I would expect any decent person to: "not gaming them", "won't dump them cold", "advance their responsibilities and compensation as fast as they can" (that last one I read as "as fast as responsible company management permits").

Loyalty also makes you earn less compared to their peers. I am exhibit A for that:)

There's a big divide in (tech) management based on how managers see their roles. On one end of the spectrum are folks who feel their only job is to make things happen, pronto. This is what gets you rewards, pats on the back, promotions etc. On the other end of the spectrum are folks who don't care about delivery and think that the only happy team is where everything is allowed. The truth lies somewhere in between. Sometimes the hardest part of my job as a manager is to stop my engineers from overtime/extra work, even if the project is late. I want to build a healthy, sustainable environment, not only because it's the right thing to do, but also because this is how the whole company becomes sustainable eventually. Anything else simply hides the sub-optimal things in the system (e.g. unrealistic planning culture). I wouldn't be doing a good job if I let messed up planning go unseen and hide it by pushing folks to overwork themselves. My job is not to micro-optimize but think about the system.

My knee jerk impression is that the study could be explained by defining loyalty as willingness to accept unpaid work.

It's not "unpaid work" if you're classified as an exempt employee, which is never explicitly addressed in the article. That's why you get a certain salary regardless of sick leave, holidays, etc - you are being paid to apply your professional skill to a task, not conduct menial labor for a certain number of hours. I would never work unpaid overtime when I was working as a retail clerk. That's why they had a time card system which I had to punch in and punch out of. If a customer kept me late by even 15 minutes, I'd be compensated for all of that time. Now later in my career I'm an exempt professional, and I don't mind crunching when it's crunch time. That's part of why my salary is so much higher now: I understand that I have a job to execute at any cost. If a deadline is in danger of being missed I will put in the extra hours necessary to achieve success regardless of being asked to or not. That's why managers award me crucial projects and that's the kind of employee I would lean on when I have a crucial project of my own to manage. That's also the first employee to be put up for promotion and the last one to be expendable during hard times. This isn't the least bit surprising.

Did anyone think otherwise and need to have it explained?

Having been on both sides of the employment equation a few times now I can say confidently that people act on their values and respond to incentives without regard to where they sit on an org chart. This too doesn't require a study to confirm. Perhaps I'm naive and the point of publishing this is to drum up engagement from the aggrieved employed.

Be you an employer or employee the hardest thing to be in business is ethical. Convincing (or paying) people to care is incredibly hard, as is convincing (or paying) people to learn. It gets a lot easier when you find a way to tie either of those things to their values, and honestly most people, rationally, value themselves above all else. Is it any wonder people give up and begin exploiting one another?

This article reads like someone found the Gervais Principle [1] and viewed it as full of low-hanging fruit for a study.

[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

> We value people who are loyal. We think about them in positive terms. They get awarded often. It's not just the negative side

If the managers also award loyal workers in various ways, it would hardly be exploitative. As a manager, if something absolutely needs to get done outside of normal work hours, of course I would lean towards asking the person most likely to say yes. And of course I would also give that person a larger end-of-year salary increase, bonus, or fast-tracked promotion to recognize their efforts and commitment. It seems odd for the study to focus purely on the additional work the loyal workers are doing, and ignore the various ways in which they would be rewarded for it.

Yeah, it’s obvious as a last resort for judging employees. If you know nothing about the work itself, all you can confidently assess is responsiveness and agreeableness. But beware of the incentives this can create.

When managers reward looking busy and sacrificial rituals, you also end up with short-termism. A team can tread water for years, being constantly “rescued” by “heroes” when a fire starts. This may not be the best people to promote. Wanting to be helpful and being helpful are not the same things.

In software and product development, the best performing teams, in my experience, are small. They have a well defined area of responsibility and a strong culture of ownership. It takes time and commitment to build that up, but when it’s in a good state, it runs on its own like a well maintained clockwork. Not only is this much more relaxing and fun to work with, it also performs so much better in the long run, and requires very little hands-on management.

Doesn't seem so obvious to me. The story of the dedicated employee who's often overlooked despite their efforts is as old as humanity.

The prodigal son

> Participants handing out the unpaid work in Stanley’s study were compensated $12 an hour.

Isn't that a kick in the nuts for poor John?

Former manager here, I definitely leaned on the guys/ladies on the team I could count on over "less committed team members". The ones I could count on were eager and willing to step up when needed and I very much appreciated it. In this case, they were salary and worked more hours than some of their counter parts.

I did my best to reward them with promotion opportunities and supporting them as much as I could in their career.

So all they got was appreciation and measly pay increase, guess you were playing favorites which only human.

What about giving them bonuses as well?

They would be awarded higher bonuses at review time. I had limited ability to do much out of cycle.

As a manger myself, I try to be careful about what I ask for this reason. I can easily ask a lot from a team member, but I often don't have the ability to really reward them beyond a set limit. If I'm not in a position to adequately reward them for that extra effort then I'm not going to ask for it.

Our position straddles the fence. We have to support the company and our team members. Ideally we do that by keeping incentives and compensation aligned. But corporations are usually structured to have a predictable limit on the ways we can compensate employees, but rarely any limits on what we can expect from employees. We should be careful there to be fair.

IMO being loyal is like being sweet, which will attract ants of all sort and suck all juices out of you. Sometimes, being bitter (saying NO) is an art.

Related: Stop loss behaviour

Imagine two people bidding for a dollar bill. You start at 1 cent. Someone else bids 2 cent, etc. etc. Now apart from who bids the most wins, the investment is gone when you don't win the bid.

Until 99 cents all is sane, since you believe you can make a "win". At one dollar you still break even. After that, you would bid to reduce loss. How fare will you take that?

This example can be transferred to workplace situations(this is why it is related), relationships ... especially wars. Imagine how much was already destroyed and how many were killed ... no, surrender is not an option.

Humans sometimes justify any bid blindly on the one dollar just for minimizing loss.

Yet, most times it is better to get out early. You - as I - will learn that the hard way, because its incredibly difficult to identify in real life when and how you are involved in a stop loss situation.

But once you identify its stop loss: Get out.

So true! See also: sunk-cost fallacy

If you think about it, the kind of corporate loyalty we are talking about is a lot closer to gambling than generosity. Just like gambling, it's the belief that the corporate one-armed bandit remembers your contributions of time and work, and will surely reward you for that.

So loyalty is treated as a weakness, rather than a strength.

What a shitty world we've built for ourselves.

Loyalty has always been treated as a weakness and a strength. Your loyalty is my strength.

The problem is that loyalty is one of those words that is so emotionally charged that doesn't really mean anything concrete anymore.

If you define loyalty as ignoring short term potential self-interest by leaving/betraying/not-doing-overtime in favor of the long term value you will receive from the relationship, then, even if you may be betrayed in return anyway, it's not really weakness - you just made a mistake.

If you know you're getting a bad deal, and you predict it's not going to get better in the long term, and you stay anyway, you're not "loyal", you're weak.

Most managers don't know shit about management, they're only rewarding people that act like managers, irrespective of the role. There will always be more BS artists than honest, skilled people. A lot of people can afford to be this callous because thanks to the digital realm, in their view, their cap for the maslow's hierarchy pyramid is firmly in their grasp.

This is similar to how practicing cruelty often makes managers more effective. Also similar to how the primary role of an executive is the mismanagement of company funds for personal gains.

Just because a manager can be cruel, it does not make them more effective.

A manager relies on their subordinates to get things done. Breaking trust in this relationship happens often unfortunately and will over time inversely impact the actual getting things done part.

Certain high-profile companies can burn through "expendable" labor. That's because everybody wants to work there for certain reasons.

It is okay to be loyal to anyone or anything as far as that loyalty is rewarded. Yes, any manager would be more willing to put extra burden to loyal workers, but if at the same time they are equally willing to give those workers a raise or promotion — it seems okay in my book. Also, workers willing to do extra work will be last to laid off.

It seems pretty obvious. The ones most willing to do the work end up doing it.

A more effective cure: pay for overtime.

The willing horse gets the whip.

Squeaky wheel get the oil.

It’s the path of least resistance for the manager. The easy route.

Sucks being dependable.

Just remember, in capitalism: if you aren't exploited you aren't valuable.

Your goal as a worker is to right size that exploitation.

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