Loyalty at work no longer pays – and it's employers who are to blame | Hacker News Reader

Loyalty at work no longer pays – and it's employers who are to blame

businessinsider.com

80 pointsrntn82 comments

This has been true for a very long time. It's not a modern phenomenon.

There was probably a "golden age" in the middle of the last century when it was a good idea to be a company man. But before that, and after that once the MBA mentality took over, workers have been treated like disposable units.

It only makes sense for a worker to strategize to maximize their own career and income, instead of placing their loyalties in a company that not only doesn't care about them, but actively propagandizes in an attempt to make its workers feel like "family."

actively propagandizes in an attempt to make its workers feel like "family."

In my experience, post-COVID they’ve given up even maintaining that illusion.

Companies saying "we're a big family here" are deeply amusing to me as someone who had a turbulent home life as a child and who only talks to his relatives once a year on Christmas.

I think the people saying this don't think about people who have a still-acrimonious relationship with their family. If you're telling me that you're a big family then I am not interested.

I was laid off with zero severance and no recommendation etc from a company that was big on "we are a family".

Never heard from one single person there after the layoff. I was like yup this is how my family is too.

Ever since I have always felt joining a company is like getting adopted into another dysfunctional family.

The difference between a company and my family is that the company I work for always pays me to keep me coming back whereas my family it's more hit or miss.

We ought to stop blaming the "MBA mentality". I dislike them as much as any IC, but they aren't the issue. The issue is how wealth is distributed. Just after WW2, in my country, if a salaried woodworker in a chop added 1000$ of value on average each month after all other costs were paid (sales, stock, distribution), he took home 600, gave 100 to the government and 300 to his shop owner/shareholders. Nowadays, his added value is 2000€ each month, he takes home roughly 860, give the government 120, and the shop owner/shareholders take the rest, more than half of his added value.

This is hn. Everything bad about modern capitalism is apparently the fault of mba people.

(No I didn’t do a mba)

I worked for several small projects and startups. All of them became shitter for employees when MBA people took over.

>All of them became shitter for employees

You don't hire MBAs to improve employee experience

who is behind the shift to owner and shareholder?

It’s a natural progression where technology has improved production increases. However since the workers of the world have a very limited share of the ownership of the means of production, they don’t get anything from this increase in production output.

Ok, but who is behind enshittification, planned obsolescence, corporate consolidation, private equity raiding, brand value extraction, etc...

You don’t understand, it can’t be MBA types because it’s just the natural progression of the world to become worse and worse. Obvious right? Now sit down and consume.

That comes from buying companies, not owning companies. I think the stock market is the biggest problem, or for the housing situation companies buying a large number of houses is the biggest problem, or for medicine buying up patents to rack up prices is the problem, or for software buying up games/programs and filling them with spyware is the problem etc.

Builders typically aren't that evil, but builders sell to exploiters who are evil and exploit it as much as possible. You see this everywhere, that extra level of indirection where you aren't fine with exploiting people but you are fine selling your work to those who do exploit people. Exploiters are a tiny minority of people, but that is enough since they can buy up all the assets to exploit and thus become very wealthy.

Edit; And yes, those exploiters often have MBA degrees. Not everyone with such degrees of course, but the overlap seems pretty large.

It's profit. Revenue minus expenses. Companies that optimize profit better than other companies are more successful. Emergent behaviour like evolution. Companies that don't optimize will not grow as much or even decline or disappear. It's self-selecting.

Planned obsolescence, private equity raiding, brand value extraction: these are steps to increase revenue.

Enshittification, corporate consolidation: these are steps to decrease expenses.

I'm old enough that my father worked for one of those "golden age" companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wometco_Enterprises

It was a conglomerate, starting with theaters then adding TV and other entertainment, plus soft drink bottling and more.

The individual companies were well funded, they had plenty of staff, and there cross-company staff discounts. My dad worked for the TV station WTVJ and we got discounts to go to the movie theaters owned by Wometco.

There was a yearly Christmas party for staff and family, and the Wometco would be flown in by helicopter, dressed as Santa.

After his death it got bought by KKR in a LBO, split up, and sold for parts. Staff was greatly reduced and overworked. The Christmas party was no more.

My dad worked for Borden and Kraft, which were similar. They were also bought and split up by KKR.

The other point specifically for devs is how interviewing is such a different skill to normal work. The people with the best careers are almost always interviewing. If you constantly using that muscle you get really good. The guy I know who stayed in the same role for 15 years and got laid off is screwed because he's a great developer but doesn't know any of that stuff.

Yea, but who wants to be always interviewing? That sounds terrible.

At some point your life is going to have different priorities.

Always can mean every 2 or so months.

To be honest, the dynamics change completely when you are not in-need of work. What is a matter of ensuring one's livelihood quickly transforms to a friendly conversation with potential colleagues. The stress of finding a job is replaced by novelty and curiosity, by opportunity for something new.

"Proactive Serendipity" [1] is a great way to live by in my opinion. In essence, you should put yourself in the position to get lucky. Not interviewing or at least not being open to interviewing is an easy way to close doors that you may not know existed.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsFk8SKYSDg

One hack I've seen is to be the interviewer, not the interviewee

How is that a hack? I guess if you're moving between roles with similar/identical skill sets, great. But I've always had to spend time preparing. Being selective as an applicant doesn't mean you don't have to prepare.

I’ve used “preparation” as an excuse to go research and expand my knowledge.

I’m not and will never cram down algorithms for an interview. So far that strategy has worked for me /shrug.

I've interviewed many people, probably well over 100. One of the side effects is that I am very comfortable being interviewed and I'm usually completely relaxed because I know where the other person is coming from and what they're looking for.

It also helps that I haven't interviewed for a position where my programming skill was in question in a very long time.

Of course I understand prime number trees...

Look, I'm the interviewer, quit turning the tables!

Love the joke, but what is a prime number tree?

"what is a prime number tree?"

"send in the next applicant!"

Applicant? I don't recall applying for anything.

How did I get here?

Always interview, be overemployed as a C player at the jobs you get, retire early.

We had a guy do that. He got fired from all his jobs and effectively blacklisted in the area.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40363135#40363405

Was this like in the outskirts of Saskatchewan? :) I can't think of a way to meaningfully blacklist engineers in the age of remote work.

I said the area, but no, in CO. He was employed by a couple space-related companies, which is still a small field. In one job he was also hired via a national hiring agency, so he screwed himself out of any jobs through them again. The genius was not smart enough to get remote jobs. He may have had more success with remote jobs, but in the layoffs over the last couple years I doubt he would have survived, he was definitely not contributing enough to keep around.

It's easy to get a bad rep in niche industries in a small area because we tend to know each other. I had a guy who was our worst hire ever list me as a reference. Unfortunately, the hiring manager at the next job he tried to get was a friend and former co-worker of mine.

What does C player mean here?

Scraping by. Doing barely enough to not get fired.

Eh. I really don’t think it takes that much to get into the swing of interviews. Developers sometimes suffer with them because our jobs make it easy to be introverted and avoid personal contact. As long as you’re regularly using your social “muscle” at work (which is always always a good career move no matter what) applying that same energy to an interview isn’t such a huge lift.

The problem is that it is a competition. If socializing is difficult for you, you can still get better at it with plenty of practice, but you are up against other applicants who had the same amount of practice as you and got more out of that practice (because they are naturally better at it).

Telling everyone across the board to just practice more does not actually solve the problem. The problem is solved only by having more job openings relative to applicants OR by teaching interviewers how to do their jobs better (i.e., how to identify skills that the role calls for, rather than inadvertently using social skill as a proxy for those other skills).

Role skills mean that the interviewer checks a box. Social skills mean that the interviewer thinks he'll like working with you.

Which one do you think has more impact?

What percentage of interviewers actually work alongside the employees they hire?

Arguably many of the people with the best careers worked at one company—-their own.

Also you learn more stuff by working at different companies. Every place does things differently. Good to cross pollinate.

“People with the best careers are almost always interviewing” might just be the craziest sentence ever written on this website…

Does talking with the voices in my head count as interviewing?

Isn’t there a very real cap of say 200-225k for senior level regardless of where you go tho?

After that would be faang which itself is the endgame except (in some cases) jumping between faangs could get you more

At FAANG and adjacent that’s closer to the bottom of the career ladder. A Sr. at FAANG is pulling in closer to 350-400 TC. Staff, PE, and above will go significantly higher.

Well yeah that’s what I said… my main point was that unless you job hop into a faang, you’re quickly at the ceiling

And once you’re in a faang, there’s no higher to go

Morally it's the employers to blame, but the world is not built on morality, but on power dynamics.

For loyalty to be worth something, the relationship has to be at least somewhat equitable. Each party has to have the power to hurt the other significantly. If this is not the case, then the vulnerable party's loyalty is not worth much of the invulnerable party. I don't need the loyalty of the hamster I keep in the cage, what are they going to do, leave me for another owner? But I do need the loyalty of my free roaming cat, as if I'm treating them wrong, they are going to leave me one day, and so I'm short of a dear companion. I think that workers are vulnerable past and present, and so, I don't think that their loyalty is "no longer" paying - I think it was never paying. Or I should rather say "rewarded" instead of "paying".

Second thing that lowers the value of loyalty is that people don't change easily. Some easier than others, but change in general is deeply stressful, when talking about change in personal things like work, or home. So, often, and at least in part, a person staying in a job or at a specific rank is not loyalty, but resistance to change. And as such, it's not that it's not paying for the employee, it's actually lowering the employee's value, and so, their compensation too.

I feel like all the tech companies I’ve worked at have been extremely loyal at least on the more Sr end of the ladder so I guess I don’t understand other people’s experiences at all.

When I worked at an Amazon subsidiary, I never pulled more than 40-hr weeks, took plenty of time off, had slow weeks or even months where I was struggling with a personal thing. My managers and teams were always super supportive. The pay was excellent. The stock was excellent. They were reasonable about refreshers and raises. I was there for ~5 years but what do you expect? I’ve worked for so many tech companies and the tenure is usually a couple years until it gets boring. The idea you would be loyal to a company for a 50 year career sounds like a nightmare. Like being a human cog in a machine.

> Like being a human cog in a machine.

Don't you feel like that anyway? At least to me it's pretty clear that's my function, even more at larger orgs. Doesn't take years at the same company to feel that, it's just the reality of it.

Loyalty thrives in an environment of mutual respect and benefit.

Facts. The biggest career mistake I made was staying at one place for too long. It was comfortable and solid. I got complacent. I didn't think I could do better. I was wrong.

I've changed jobs twice since then, and both have been big upgrades. If your employer isn't significantly rewarding loyalty, I highly recommend at least looking to see what's out there. You aren't forced to go, but be open to new opportunities. An upgrade is likely to come.

If any of my employers had pensions or other such loyalty programs, I wouldn't have had reason to constantly seek greener pastures.

I find it interesting that this article talks about pensions, but then suggests other ideas besides pensions as ways to get loyal employees. I agree that things like sabbaticals are a good idea. I would love to have that as an option. But I would love a pension program as strong as the ones my grandparents had even more. They aren't illegal or anything now that 401ks exist. Companies are still allowed to make them. Just almost none of them do.

Was having this conversation recently with a benefits expert I know. Traditional benefit plans that were basically worthless unless you stayed in the same place for a minimum of a decade are mostly worthless today. But there are apparently a lot of newer-style defined benefit plans that are more flexible.

My employer has increasing vacation over the years, start with 3 weeks but you’re up to 5 when you’ve been there a decade. IMO that’s a very undervalued proposition that makes me want to stick around longer than I might otherwise. There’s a dollar value that would trump it of course but it’s pretty high.

In Europe though 15 days would be illegal. You'd start day one with 5 weeks. Minimum. Plus bank holidays.

As a European I am very aware of that. But like I said about dollar amounts, the extra you can earn in the US made the move worth it for me personally.

I suspect many/most of the people in the highly paid areas of the tech sector in the US would not actually jump for 2-3 weeks of unpaid leave per year (without other consequences--which I realize is an issue if you're a small minority that takes the offer).

Personally, I always have taken my max time off and even taken unpaid leave for shutdown when that was an option but I realize that's probably not the majority.

bro, i am 21 and a fresh graduate and i get 24 days of PTO at my job , 5 weeks really isn’t that crazy.

Bro, I promise you that at some point you're going to have to make a choice between various factors like salary, PTO etc.

Happy for you that you get 24 days in your first job after college graduation but I promise you there is a lot for you to learn yet.

I am asking because I never tried this. Isn't it better to earn more and take unpaid leaves than having 2 more weeks of paid leaves? 2 weeks of extra unpaid leave = 1/2 a month's pay, meaning you could afford to do it if you earn 4% more yearly.

I am the same here. Complacency can indeed lead to stagnation. Realizing the importance of seeking growth and new opportunities is a valuable lesson. I'm in a process of learning.

I'm actually on my 9th employer and its surprising the difference - they pay people well, very few contractors, no outsourcing, constructive feedback, encouragement for internal mobility. Every other place was the opposite.

Good employers exist. It’s crazy the number of people who get burned a couple of times and declare the industry is sheet and they have to do their own thing or their life is doomed

Judging by the above it's 1 out of 9 - not a great rate.

There are in between as well IME. I.e. places that do a lot of dumb things on the business side but you still get to learn stuff and the overall environment isn't that stressful.

I’ll never be loyal to a company. That’s something that’s earned, not given. When I see companies layoff 5% of their workforce every year “just because it pumps the stock”, that’s an immediate signal that this company is not worth it in the long term.

They won’t bother with long term goals and sustainability, so why should I?

Managing labor is basically an NP-hard problem: Hiring / Interpersonal Skills / Effective management of people / Effective reward and retention programs / Career Development.

The 5% layoff is a tacit admission that they can't fix their management issues.

Here's a relevant chart: https://i.imgur.com/NJUJtmJ.png

Edit: apologies, it didn't export everything. Green is job stayer and orange is job switcher.

Source: https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.aspx

I wonder how much the loyalty of the "good old days" was due to a smaller local labor market for skilled jobs.

Let's say that you are a doctor and you live in a town of 20,000 people with one hospital. You are stuck being "loyal" to that hospital unless you move. Now let's say that you live in a metropolis of 2 million people and multiple hospitals. That gives you the option to move between jobs if they become available.

My impression is that cities and towns used to be smaller in the past and commuter culture wasn't as popular as it is now.

I'm ok looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, but context is also needed to understand the decisions that people made back then.

> Let's say that you are a doctor and you live in a town of 20,000 people with one hospital. You are stuck being "loyal" to that hospital unless you move.

It’s tangential to the main point of your hypothetical, but: in many states that small town doctor’s salary is a multiple of what it would be in an urban or suburban area, and he’s chosen to live there because he’s making a ton of money.

Even of he's only paid the same, the cost of living is lower in the small town than in the big city. Even doctors get priced out of expensive areas.

That’s not what I’m talking about. In my state, experienced specialists make millions working at hospitals in rural areas. Think between three and five times what they’d make doing the same work in a city.

Perhaps a bit of a digression…

By the same hand on the employer side. If the doctor employee is good then you want to keep them if they are the only good doctor in town. Even if they're not great if they are consistent you want to reward them because the replacement would have to be convincing someone out of town to move. But if you live in a large city with tens or hundreds of possible doctors you know your doctors will likely be poached but there are also more where they came from so why bother rewarding loyalty when you don't need to be loyal to your employees?

The sad reality is the more successful a company the less power you have as an employee.

Agree, it is hard to have an impact or be heard by senior management in a big company.

It hasn’t paid in decades - it’s well established that the most effective way to increase comp is to change employer not hope for recognition.

Employers refuse to provide even basic inflation matching compensation increases, and report what increases they do provide without including the impact of inflation.

This is like the “we’re a family” or “you should be committed to the company” BS, when they’re also “hi we’re firing you so that our stock price will go up for our bonuses” and similar.

It needs a fine balance though, a high number of short stints under 2 years is a big red flag.

A good summary of modern work.

No real recommendations or research, and so fairly limited.

> I know that what seems to most drive young people today is the freedom to pursue their passions. They care less about money and are financially driven as a means to an end, pursuing things like side hustles, immersive travel to unusual places, music festivals, costly fitness classes, and mental health investments like therapy and life coaches.

Fuck you pay me.

Seriously. A good place in the United States will give you four weeks of PTO. Couple that with a decent holiday schedule and unlimited sick days (limiting sick days is a red flag, imho) and the only other thing you need is a big check.

Full disclosure: I’m 51 but never expected anything from my employers beyond a pleasant work environment, time off, medical insurance, and a significant regular contribution to my account.

I read it a bit, but it seems the article is little more than a single person's anecdotal observations.

I tuned out after reading about 40% ... there is no conclusive evidence presented, just one person's observations over their career ... then you get things like:

> The older I get, the more I understand what's been broken

well ... yeah, that's how it works

Here is the evidence:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employee...

Make half the money if you are a two year or more employee.

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