Loyalists vs. Mercenaries

The extremely cynical advice in the article is simply to hire people who don't have many opportunities to run away and to convince them they have a leader, a mission, and other reasons for irrational self-sacrifice.

The suggestion to "invest in values and culture" is particularly transparent: it implies that by default an entrepreneur has neither, and that values and culture can (and should) be fabricated for manipulation purposes.

The observation that a "loyalist" has to be either quite crazy from the outset or too gullible and weak-willed to be smart never occurs to this sort of manager, presumably because they don't have to actually work with them every day.

Interesting read, but I don't like the fact that I am a mercenary if I go elsewhere. There are plenty of reasons for moving to another company, money could be one aspect.

In fact, most of the advantage seems to be for the employer vs the employee - if anything, the bosses are mercenary. There seems to be very few companies that really are loyal to their workers.

But there was one startup who posted on here a while ago that had to shut down, and they seemed super proactive about trying to find their team new positions. Even going to the extent of speaking to other founders trying to place team members.

I need to find that post again, because those are the type of leaders I want to succeed on their next venture

You could also pay more. Instead of trying to create culture and develop leadership to get employees who "walk away from compensation packages 2-3x what they currently make", pay them more. Then you can create culture and develop leadership simply because its valuable to your company.

The premise of this article is disturbing: what can founders do (that won't cost VCs money) to manipulate employees. Is having a mission valuable because of the salary and retention benefits?

I agree with his assessment of the bay area at least. The demand is so high that it's a real problem if you try to take your time to figure out who the hell you're hiring. They'll have 2 offers before yours, even if they're not a spectacular candidate. I'm not really interested in interviewing candidates for our SF office anymore for this reason, it's simply a waste of time.

I don't think it's a good idea to be a "loyalist", though. Your company will never be loyal back, believe it.

First, this is a false dichotomy.

Second, "loyal" and "obedient" are different words.

Third, if your team thinks something is a bad idea, and your investor tells you to do it anyway, maybe you need a more "loyal" (i.e., obedient) team, as this investor is arguing. Or maybe you need an investor who has more respect for your team's opinion.

After all, sometimes the team is much better-informed. Sometimes "a difficult decision" is just a nice way to say "a bad idea." Sometimes you might tell an investor that you think their incredibly stupid idea is great, and you wish you could do it, but you can't, because you'd lose your team, and we all agree my team is valuable, right?

I mean, yes, there's also the great loyalty Steve Jobs inspired, and for once "inspired" is the right word there. But even Steve Jobs had to listen when people told him he was wrong, at least once in a blue moon. He came back from a trip to Japan convinced that he was going to set up uniforms for every Apple employee, including engineers and executives, and that everybody was going to love it.

Edit: and yes, mission-driven companies are a good idea.

I personally would prefer to work with/for mercenaries. Anytime a company is not providing me with a compelling value proposition, I'll look for another job.

Employee loyalty is simply a tool for employers to leverage to make their companies more successful, with very little benefit to the employees. Every time I've switched a job I've gotten a significant pay raise.

I was a loyalist when I was young and stupid. Companies betrayed me too much and I became a mercenary.

So if I understand correctly:

There are loyalist teams and there are mercenaries. Loyalists have a special feature of being behind their leader whatever happens, because he has a mission.

If the employees are not in that category, they are, by default, mercenaries.

So you need to get people who are not mercenaries and go look for them in locations that are not as active as the Silicon Valley (where they have, de facto, more options). Look for them in the rural edge of the wafer.

Did I understand correctly the gist of it?

There are different words to describe this:

- Cognitive dissonance: It is the employees who are mercenaries. The leader has nothing to blame himself for. He's a leader with a cause and a mission. It's their fault. (The world isn't in short supply of sanguinary people and dictators. They are leaders. They have a mission and values. I guess people who left them are mercenaries too, by the post's logic. Since it doesn't say anything about what the "leader" is doing, what the "mission" is, and is the mission in the field the same as the one on paper).

- Manicheism: Either loyalists or mercenaries. Because hackers think in terms of combo boxes and two options are enough. Binary is nice.

Firstly, mercenaries don't just choose their company by the money they make but also by equity + location + culture + colleagues ...

Secondly, everyone becomes a mercenary at the right price (again, price = $$ + location + culture + colleagues + ...) If someone really claims he has no "price", I will have my doubts as to whether he speaks the truth or is smart enough.

Loyalty is a two-way street. As an employee, I'm loyal to people, not companies. If those folks I'm loyal to in a company are loyal to me, we are all good. If I don't feel loyalty from anyone in the company towards me, I'm likely to turn mercenary and look out for what is best for me irrespective of the company.

Mercenary and loyal are behaviors, and it is more useful to think about them as mutable based on context [as to some extent Wilson does] rather than persistent properties of individuals as the title implies. Mercenary and loyal behavior are two edged. Mercenary hiring provides speed and simple financial semantics. Loyalty includes betrayal semantics and are encumbered with emotional baggage and ambiguity. Close relationships have their place, but one is playing make-believe if they believe that the can hire for close relationships. These things take time and a demonstration of trustworthiness on the part of the person with the larger share of the asymmetric employee-employer power distribution. Loyalty born from the necessity of a dearth of better opportunities is simply wily mercenary behavior.

Loyalist or Mercenary investors?

TL;DR: Mercenaries are bad, loyalists are desirable, so here are a few tricks on how to turn mercenaries into loyalists.

I expected something else when I read the article's title. I expected some advice on how to identify the loyalists and the mercenaries and how to fit them best into your work-system in order to get the most of it considering their nature.

some professionals ignore money 99.5% of the time and just do whatever is best for their profession. for example (although I don't know him well enough to say for sure) Paul Vixie strikes me as working mainly for the "health" of the internet. I find it admirable for someone earning a solid professional income to care mostly about the internet, the judicial system, his or her patients or the nation's roads and bridges. It's important however to notice the differences between that sort of professional commitment and commitment or loyalty to a small organization that society can easily do without.

yep and the issue of real estate + housing costs in SF pretty much ensure that you have to be mercenary or you don't live there ..