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Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

In the west the employee / employer social contract died sometime in the 80s. It's rare, especially in tech, to have employees with decades of tenure. You see Microsoft trying to buyout older employees recently.

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Pre-Carly Fiorina Hewlett-Packard was a great example of an old-school Silicon Valley company, long before the era of “move fast and break things” and of Zuck, Elon, and Altman. I used to work for a Japanese company until I left a few years ago to teach, and when I read about the HP Way, it reminds me in many ways of life at my former employer:

https://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/publications/me...

While in college, my advisor / professor I worked for took me to HP Labs off Page Mill. I recall entering and seeing a sea of cubicles. That said, I enjoyed hearing the stories of those that worked there.

Bluntly, cubicles are NICE compared to the massive distracting (but stylish) open plan stuff. From above they look sort of dystopian, but no one in your peripheral vision, reduced noise...

Not as nice as an office with a door, but really not bad. Especially the taller ones.

Here in Europe (I guess you are US based), we still have quite a lot of long tenures. This from my experience in France, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark. The bigger the company, the longer the average tenure.

But it is also true that I do not work in tech, I work and am exposed mostly to industrial companies. I have very little experience with "tech" companies.

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