Myth: Millennials have no sense of company loyalty | Hacker News Reader

Myth: Millennials have no sense of company loyalty

blog.modis.com

10 pointsBillyMaize23 comments

One factor is that the advent of the 401k in the US broke the contract a while ago. Retirement isn't bound to any one company anymore. This is the first generation to enter the workforce with bosses that never experienced what its like to have a pension. All of their seniors are free agents too, and this does have effects. Loyalty to the worthy manager, yes, but definitely not to the company as some sort of a long-term benefactor.

Myth: The world needs more articles in which Millenials are explained

Reality: Millenials have been lied to by virtually every authority figure for every single moment of their entire goddamn lives, and are slightly harder to bullshit than yesterday's suckers and rubes

The concept of loyalty being a one-way thing is fundamentally flawed. If you're "loyal" to someone or something that isn't loyal back, it's not loyalty, it's stupidity. Loyalty requires reciprocation.

The reality here is that companies aren't loyal to their employees. If a company isn't loyal to you, you can't be loyal to it. It's that simple.

Exactly. Anyone who has ever witnessed 10% of their fellow employees laid off without notice should realize that they should be looking out for themselves, not for their employer.

Loyalty to me seems like the prisoner's dilemma. Sure, you both are better off to each other if you're both loyal (ie I don't look for other jobs, and you employ me for a long, long period of time), but you're better off just NOT being loyal because the other party might not be as well.

Sometimes the prisoner's dilemma can come to a happy conclusion by making it not the prisoner's dilemma---e.g. constraining the other's choices. http://cheaptalk.org/2012/04/20/consider-the-equilibrium-17/

And yet, tit-for-tat is still the winningest strategy.

Why shouldn't they be? They had a hard time finding a job in the first place, and read nothing but stories of how companies are laying people off, starting at the bottom.

I'm on the border of GenX and Millennial (depending on where you look), and I would definitely say I feel no corporate loyalty. I worked for a large Fortune 50 retailer during the era of their first layoff, and I felt the blade whiz by me, knowing full well I could easily have been let go. Likewise, being a tech worker, I was in a cost-center and not a income earning group, meaning I was always subject to cost cutting and belt tightening. I felt like a number (even my network logon was a random string and not my name - admittedly for security, I get that), and why would a number feel loyalty to a megacorp?

All I saw was a bunch of arrows that made no sense. If you're going to put big attractive attention grabbing images in your article they should probably explain the point 'cause they're pulling all my attention from the text and making me spend bring capitol on deciphering them instead of just reading.

Treating Millennials with respect and professional kindness will endear them to stay by your side and be less likely to jump ship at the drop of a dime.

How is this specific to any generation? Is the implication that there is a case where it is okay not to treat people with professional kindness and respect? I don't know who coined the phrase "people quit managers, not companies" but it has been around for quite some time.

My brother-in-law quit his last place due to unethical (and a few illegal) practices and general bad work environment. He has had to keep it from his parents since his father is a big 'no matter what, you stay with your company FOR LIFE'. He can't understand that there are companies that will not last a lifetime, not provide retirement or even non functioning work environment.

True, Millennials are perhaps less enamored with big corporate structure and traditional career trajectories ... The reality is that Millennials aren’t married to the corporations they work for

So how is it "busted"? You just admitted it was all true.

Just because I'm not married to someone doesn't mean that I'm not loyal to them.

I will defend the company I work for from naysayers, work my ass off to make them more successful, promote their achievements without pause, but that doesn't mean I'll stay with them forever.

If a substantially better offer comes around that's more in line with my personal interests and values, of course I'll consider leaving my current company. Does that make me disloyal?

No. But getting bored of a company after a few years and quitting just to do something you think is exciting makes you unreliable.

What if the company, after some time trying to work a project out, decides that it is more profitable to shut the project down - does that also make the company unreliable? Where I want to get is that interests evolve and things change. If in two-three years you want to check something out, that does not make you unreliable, but just normal part of the daily business life.

Oh I didn't mean to come across as so negative. I just meant, if you're going to switch jobs every few years, you shouldn't expect the benefits of loyalty like getting more vacation time or vesting your matching 401(k) contributions etc. Or maybe even getting good training, if the company has so little incentive to invest in you.

Your comments all assume the companies involved in this relationship are all rational and good actors, and illustrate the double-standard companies have. They expect complete loyalty and "reliability" (your definition), but don't offer employment contracts to reflect this; in fact it's almost universal that employment "contracts" have an "at-will" clause. To me, that is a statement by the employer that they aren't interested in a long term relationship, and I shouldn't expect one.

Not to mention that in companies of any size, the reality is that "the company" is actually a lot of smaller companies run by a middle-manager who himself has his own (frequently corporate-political) motives for doing things, and is fickle.

To act rationally on that premise isn't unreliable; it's self-preservation.

You're making the same point I am: the article headline is wrong.

I think the article headline is spot on. The article itself goes on to elaborate and say, in different words, that "loyalty" has to be earned (by the company), and that a person leaving after X years (where X is less than some arbitrary amount that qualifies a person as "loyal") does not indicate "disloyalty". Your comment adds an additional subjective term, "reliability".

I wouldn't worry as much about an arbitrary "unreliable" designation as I would about my career stagnating because I haven't learned anything new in a year. A few years is all the growth potential most jobs offer. Once you've solved all the problems, do everyone a favor and hand your tasks off to someone more junior and seek out greener pastures.

If you fulfill a contract, both verbal and written, that's called fulfilling contract obligation with good faith. Loyalty means something quite different.

Now, don't get me wrong, I think the death of company loyalty is a good thing. And I can only hope all other tribal loyalties that were once pivotal for tribesmen to survive go away too, as that's increasingly creating division among ourselves than uniting us against "them".

Perhaps because he goes on to talk about a different loyalty - to people who in turn show loyalty to them. Then mentions loyalty to bosses.

Since not all companies are big companies, and the frequently the bosses are the corporation, there is plenty of company loyalty right there. Just not blindly to every instance of company?

Or are you also making the point that small companies aren't real companies?

I'm just saying that big companies can't count on their benefits to be tempting the way they used to. Stability counts for a lot! If they're perceived as less stable, a big part of their bargaining position is compromised.

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