Guess What Happened To The Guy With The Microsoft Tattoo | Hacker News Reader

Guess What Happened To The Guy With The Microsoft Tattoo

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13 pointsekrangel7 comments

I feel bad for the guy but I do think there's a lesson here...or at least a sad reality. We aren't in a world where you can be fiercely loyal to a company anymore.

Surely you should still do your job and do it as well as you can. But in today's market you really need to squash that inclination to become attached to one company

Even if you have to replace that inclination with loyalty to something else. I find dedication to the industry and to making the world better through the use of technology acts as a good replacement for me. But even if it's just dedication to your own self interest it's an improvement over company loyalty.

> We aren't in a world where you can be fiercely loyal to a company anymore.

I understand where you are going, but surely you mean something else, such as: We aren't in a world where loyalty to a company is rewarded in kind, or perhaps We aren't in a world where loyalty to a company is an optimum career strategy.

Given those two interpretations, it sounds irrational to be loyal to a company. Coupled with a bias towards an employee's best interest, I think saying "can't" is reasonable.

I might personally expand on what is meant by "company" and perhaps more importantly, an employee's position in it. It certainly makes less sense to be fiercely loyal the more expendable you are. A larger company can make more people look expendable (imo).

> Coupled with a bias towards an employee's best interest, I think saying "can't" is reasonable.

I was pointing out your bias, and now I will point out that even your expression "an employee's best interest" is likewise biased. Not that I feel differently, of course, however there are people who are fiercely loyal to companies for a variety of reasons that you or I may not embrace.

The OP, for example, wants to go back to work at Microsoft. Why is this wrong? He obviously identifies strongly with the company and obtains some emotional satisfaction from his association with them.

Let's compare and contrast to relationships. Many people fall into relatinships I would consider asymmetrical: One person is more fiercely loyal than the other. Many people feel this is a bad thing, and indeed some peopel are hurt in these affairs, especially if they secretly wish the other person to reciprocate in kind.

Yet there are people who are perfectly happy to be in these relationships where they are the expendable party. The movie "Adaptation" featured an example of this where one of the two Nicholas Cage characters describes having a High School crush on a girl that despised him. His "twin brother" felt differently, of course.

Please don't misunderstand, I fully agree with you that being an "expendable asset" is not financially advantageous, however I can't ignore the fact that may people out there seem to derive some satisfaction from such employment and I'm not sure they are ignorant of the potential consequences.

I conclude that there are people who are being perfectly realistic and rational about such employment choices, even if they are not the choices I would embrace.

I kind of wonder what the situation might look like if graphed. I think there is more than one maximum: in today's world, there is a lot of flexibility, which is good. However, in yesterday's world, that loyalty had value for both employer and employee. Costs, too, which is why I wonder exactly how much we lost and gained in the transition. I suppose it depends on the employers and employees in question, but you could, still, hypothetically look at the aggregate effects.

The Blue Monster is, to me, symbolic not so much of MSFT but of the "change the world or go home" attitude the creator was trying to bring back to the company.

Personally, I agree absolutely with that attitude, and I salute the guy for keeping the tattoo :)

That other guy didn't do too badly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Petzold

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