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Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise.

There is nothing more destructive than talking to people daily, having a good working relationship with them, and then randomly getting laid off with no warning or explanation. Years of positive interactions go up in smoke overnight, because the company couldn’t bother to treat you like a human with needs, and instead act as if you’re just a mercenary.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about budgetary or performance issues that lead to layoffs. I mean when you’ve done good work for a company for years, then out of the blue, get a meeting request for a Friday afternoon.

It makes for a cold, mercenary world that I want no part of.

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Not all companies operate like this, but many large ones do. Smaller chops can have exactly the kind of culture that you describe, but they're also quite often hard to find as they tend to have some stable business and long employee retention, it's unlikely you will find them at the same time you're looking for a job.

Yeah I am lucky enough to be in a company with a solid culture now.

I definitely think you need to avoid companies with 1) large turnover, 2) investor-driven growth metrics, and 3) a hostile or passive approach to company self-criticism.

Like the guy in the article, I have found that companies which hand-wave away legitimately good ideas or criticism in favor of some vague “strategy” reason tend to be untrustworthy. Well-run companies want to improve themselves, even if they don’t have the resources to make that improvement quickly.

It is also a good way, if one doesn't care about the whole company going to shit. The onboarding cost and experience cost of letting someone with multiple years of experience go can be huge. There might even never be someone able to really replace that person.

> The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise.

I disagree. It’s not depressing, it’s business. Treating people as if they are business professionals is showing them respect. This is why we negotiate salary.

(Separately: your coworkers treating you as a business professional is in no way a lack of respect for your future or your career.)

It’s passive aggressive and unprofessional to think that you are somehow owed something additional and undefined after your paycheck is paid and options assigned.

I enjoy business relationships specifically BECAUSE the obligations of each party are formally documented. Nobody can legitimately be mad when everyone does what the contract says, because everyone read it before signing and everyone voluntarily signed it. There’s even a clause in there that explicitly states that the contract is the full and complete agreement between the parties and supersedes all other agreements, written or verbal.

They’re not joking when they put that in. The cake is a lie.

Nobody has to guess at what is expected of them. It’s written down. Contrast Aunt Judy giving you socks for Christmas: does this mean you owe her a birthday present? At what age does it change? It’s all so fuzzy and context-specific and people are so cagey about giving firm answers about what the rules (and there ARE rules) actually are.

Business has none of that. It’s great.

Yeah, this is a cold attitude and it’s also not somehow inherent to business. It’s a reflection of the decaying social fabric of American business culture. Wanting to work in a place with some civility and decency isn’t passive aggressive.

Having that opinion 50 years ago would get you fired from any company immediately. Because social mores were less eroded then.

When Aunt Judy gives me a gift, I try to get her one too. It’s not a transaction I need to keep in my head, worrying if I owe her something. That sounds like an extremely depressing way to interact with other people.

Pretending that there aren’t unwritten social rules around gift giving and obligation is disingenuous. There ARE rules and there are consequences for not following them. It isn’t about a transaction, it’s about the expectations placed on participants by others in the system.

It’s not depressing at all, it’s how our society works. Most people have no problem intuiting most of these unwritten rules, or are quietly taught by their parents or relatives.

The point wasn’t about transactions, but about whether or not the rules of the system are written down and accessible or not. Both social circumstances have rules.

If you come at it from the idea that businesspeople are cold and unfeeling sharks, and that everything is a transaction, then naturally you would think it’s sad and depressing that someone must apply rules in the workplace and rules in other social settings too. But that’s a vast oversimplification that misses the point: that business professionals carrying out a task directly and efficiently is neither cold nor unfeeling, nor is it some portent of a decaying social fabric. It’s simply professionalism.

Most working people aren’t professionals and have no desire to be, so it comes across as hostile and insensitive, but it’s not.

It’s perfectly possible to be professional and not come off in the way you’re describing as desirable.

In fact, acting in the way you’re describing is itself a negative social rule that will lose someone business opportunities. Because people with value that don’t want to operate in a coldly transactional environment will be turned off by it.

“I don’t owe you anything other than money for the task you’re doing,” is a good way to eliminate a sizable portion of potential high-quality employees.

The further up the economic chain you get, and the more relationship or service oriented the work is, the more important this becomes.

It doesn’t make you seem professional, it just makes you seem like a difficult person to deal with, and thus someone to avoid.

> It’s not depressing, it’s business.

That's exactly what GP said.

If that's your jam, great! It certainly isn't mine either. Indeed, my theory is that the world is going to shit because of doing business like that. Where's the humanity in that? We're not automatons.

The jokes on you if you think the written piece of paper means anything.

I think the joke might be on you if you end up in court arguing over whether that piece of paper means anything.

It is depressing, it's business.

We are human, therefore business contracts are subordinate to the touchy feely stuff. Contracts are made solely as a last resort for when trust and communication fail, as they sometimes do. The idea of business as a machine with deterministic rules is not universal.

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