

Employers, Employees and Loyalty - 55wred
http://blogs.lessthandot.com/index.php/ITProfessionals/ProfessionalDevelopment/employers-employees-and-loyalty-oh

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a3n
Loyalty and passion are two words that don't belong in a discussion about
employer/employee relations, except in exceedingly rare personal situations.

The Employer/Employee relationship is a business relationship. You may enjoy
good personal relationships with individuals, but the relationship documented
by your paycheck is a purely business relationship.

What you owe your employer, and your employees, is _professionalism_ , the
same as your plumber or pharmacist.

As an employee that means show up most of the time, do the best work you're
capable of, improve yourself, play well with the other children.

As an employer that means don't exploit the asymmetric power relationship, for
example by not making death marches the norm, maintain a safe and pleasant
workplace, pay reasonably well with reasonably good benefits, support
employees' self-improvement efforts, and be an ethical member of the
community.

A business has no "loyalty" to any employee when business doesn't work out and
they need to shed workers. Loyalty in this sense would be when a _family_ goes
above and beyond to house a family member even when it results in economic
damage. I would never expect that from an _employer_.

So an employer should never expect loyalty beyond good work and a two week
notice.

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rayiner
Three words: at will employment. It's a two-way street. If you can dump
someone at the drop of a hat, then they can do the same to you. Nothing
personal. If your company sucks and that means the good people leave and
you're left with only the people who have no other options, well try sucking
less.

Were things different back in the day? Maybe, due to certain structural
differences. There were pensions, which tied employees to the long term
futures of their companies. There was investment in training new recruits.
There was promotion from within. Today, by and large none of those things
exist. Companies, even ones who have the resources and should no better, are
more interested in finding someone already trained (and griping about how they
can't find them) than investing in training new people (and of course they
fail to realize the correlation between the two phenomenon). They prefer to
bring outside people into management/executive functions instead of promoting
from within.

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furyg3
Structural comparison: In the Netherlands, employees are hired for specific
terms. Usually this results in employment contracts for 6-12 months, followed
by yearly renewals. This is a bit one-sided: The employer can only sever the
contract if there is a very good reason, but the employee can leave with 30
days notice. After 3 years employees can be offered a 'permanent' contract...
"we won't fire you unless there is a huge problem and/or we will negotiate a
severance".

This 'loyalty' seems like a burden to employers from my American perspective.
After living here, I've noticed a few things about Dutch employee loyalty.

* Removing the fear of possible instant dismissal seems to orient employees toward long term improvement instead of maintaining status-quo.

* Defined intervals of contract negotiation do the same, they give both parties a goal.

* Employees want that 'permanent' contract, it gives them even more stability. Once obtained, employees are hesitant to give up their luxurious position (true loyalty). My initial fear of a productivity drop doesn't seem to be valid, if I look at the 'perms' around me.

* Children do start to appear around this time, though. Good for loyalty, bad for midnight coding, good for efficiency.

I don't know how this system would play out back in the valley, but I feel
that it beats the anarchy of at-will.

~~~
jabbernotty
> After 3 years employees can be offered a 'permanent' contract...

Actually, after three years you are REQUIRED to either be let go or get a
permanent contract.

My current employer gave me a permanent contract right away (after just a 3
hour chat, is that normal for someone with 1.5 years experience?). Now I don't
have to worry about losing my job after 6 or 12 months, and my employer has
fewer worries about me looking around.

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msandford
Loyalty is not owed, it is earned. If an employer does a sufficiently good job
of employing me on number of different fronts then I am inclined to give said
employer the benefit of the doubt when I perceive that things have become non-
ideal for me in a short, medium or perhaps even longer term.

If however an employer wants a business-only relationship with me that is
fine. It should expect that my loyalty will be guided solely with my best
interests in mind on all time-scales and without regard for how this may
impact the employer/business.

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Caerus
In my experience, the "loyalty" of older generations is largely a myth.

I used to work for a company that had an enormous bimodal age distribution -
maybe 45% over 50, 45% under 30, and the last 10% between 30-50. The age gap
gave an interesting perspective into generational differences because it was
so well defined.

Very few of the "old timers" we spoke candidly with were loyal in any
meaningful sense, and many truly wanted to leave. However, they were stuck
simply because of the pension plan - they couldn't afford to. Very few
"millennials" have any lock-in like that.

~~~
jdotjdot
No lock in because we don't get pensions at all. Not exactly a benefit.

~~~
scarmig
Well, much of those generous pensions have turned out to be given in Monopoly
Money. Recall that, at the time, they were usually negotiated in exchange for
significantly lower wages. Capital then realized "hey, we can finagle our way
out of paying out those pensions," and here we are.

At least now we get those foregone wages in current USD instead of fake
pension money.

~~~
a3n
Airlines do this regularly, in combination with reorganization. It's a
business model.

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falcolas
I find this particularly interesting, considering what I know about my father.
He was loyal to the company he worked for (he gave Ma' Bell 40+ years of
work), in the vein of this author's definition:

"Those of the older generations view themselves as loyal to a company in the
vain hope that such a perspective will be reciprocated by the company. "

The result? He was forced into retirement, and the executives plundered the
retirement fund. They were able to successfully sue the executives for the
act, but they didn't get all that money back.

That's not a form of loyalty I'm willing to give any employer.

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mikestew
The wisest words on loyalty I've heard came from my now 68 year old retired
programmer mother: "my loyalty to the company goes until they cut a check on
Friday, then we start over again on Monday."

Add to that "when you hear 'here at Initech, we're like a family', don't take
the job unless you want to be the family dog."

So much for the loyalty of older generations. They knew how fast a company
will screw you just as much as we do.

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jroseattle
One thing I question is whether loyalty, in a broad sense as it relates to
employer/employee relationships, even matters going forward. I can't speak for
every industry, as loyalty in the military is quite different from loyalty in
food service, for example.

But, does anyone think it's a big deal if the chief architect of Google would
leave to go work at some startup? Would anyone flinch if a cashier at Wal-Mart
left to be a cashier at the local grocery store? Heck, does our skepticism
even change when a politician changes party affiliations?

In the end, I believe it is employers who are on the wrong side of the loyalty
equation going forward. In a mobile workforce where skills are valued, the
ability for employees to find other options for employment has never been
greater. This places companies at a major disadvantage, relative to the past.

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SatvikBeri
Loyalty is a completely overloaded term. Here are some examples of what people
mean:

-A company spending more on a junior employee than the value they initially provide, in exchange for the employee continuing to work at the company after they're profitable

-An employee staying at a job even when they have a better offer elsewhere in exchange for job security

-The recognition that an employee with company-specific knowledge is generally more valuable than an equally competent employee without that company's knowledge, and compensation/training/benefits/promotions to match

-The expectation of extra work/effort during critical moments for the company

-Employees being intrinsically motivated to create value for the company. This is frequently what companies want from their employees, but they often have a hard time articulating it.

Either way, it's helpful for employers and employees to identify exactly what
they mean by loyalty, which aspects of it they want to improve, and what
they're willing to change to get it. For example, I've taken learning &
interesting projects in place of higher short-term compensation, but I
wouldn't accept boring work for the sake of job security.

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michaelochurch
For our parents' generation, employers actually tried to be like an academic
meritocracy. People gripe about "bureaucracy", but when bureaucracy works,
it's actually quite fair and effective.

In 2013, we face a world where management (rarely with competent training in
anything other than not getting the company sued) blatantly plays favorites,
"teams" sometimes turn on their strongest members, investment in junior
peoples' careers is almost nonexistent, and firing is more likely to involve
one of those humiliating, dishonest, and impossible "performance improvement
plans" than a decent severance check. Imagine what high school would be like
if the popular kids graded exams. That's what corporate work is like for most
people.

If someone transfers through 5 colleges in 8 years before finally getting a
degree, it's pretty clear that something unusual happened. That's a red flag.
Colleges make a lot of effort not to be dysfunctional and to make evaluation
fair, so it's a real warning sign if someone passes through 3 or 4 and can't
succeed. Companies don't. They'd rather sacrifice fairness, decency, and
protocol under the belief (perhaps mistaken?) that it makes them more
efficient at delivering on projects. That volatile culture would be fine, if
they weren't so stuck up about "job hoppers" in the hiring process.

We're not disloyal. We're just honest. Instead of sticking around and
sabotaging a company that betrays us (out of fear of a job-hopper stigma, like
what our parents faced) we leave. That's better for us and the companies.

~~~
dclowd9901
> That volatile culture would be fine, if they weren't so stuck up about "job
> hoppers" in the hiring process.

I've hopped more jobs than anyone I know, and I've _never_ had a single word
mentioned about my average time of employment. I don't understand this notion
that companies give a damn how long you've been at places, and I know I'm not
so lucky as to have avoided it in the last 3 or 4 jobs I've applied for (and
gotten).

~~~
pnathan
I am aware of a fairly large employer that looks at any stay < 3 years as
suspect.

~~~
dclowd9901
Most I talk to simply see it as the changing climate of employment, especially
in the tech sector. We're all explorers and we like to move from thing to
thing. It may just be a product of the industry, but I doubt I'm simply an
outlier.

~~~
pnathan
I didn't say I agreed. I just said that that mentality existed. I think long
stays in established areas leads to organizational rot and lore accumulation
as information and expertise is sunk into an individual (this could be
mitigated by migrating around a company every couple years and forcing lore to
be written down and documented).

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zwieback
Some of the loyalty depends on the nature of your work. I think of myself as a
craftsman, delivering engineering solutions to my company based on my own
standards. If I feel I'm no longer in a position to deliver work I'm proud of
I move on.

It's much harder for the scientists and inventors here, their knowledge is so
specialized they might have mixed feelings about their employer, on the one
hand feeling more attachment and loyalty to the company but also getting more
frustrated when things don't work out well.

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Symmetry
As I see it, loyalty means that I look out for the interest of the company
while I work there and making an effort not to smooth the transition if I
leave. And a continued respect for the confidential or embarrassing
information of past employers even in the absence of explicit agreements.

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tingletech
I had to swear a loyalty oath "to uphold and defend" the US and California
constitutions as a condition of employment, IIRC it is on the same form as the
patent policy.

~~~
mjn
I believe that's only for California state employees, and is a relic of
McCarthyism. I guess a private company could copy the language into its own
employment agreement, but I haven't seen that done.

Here's a 1949 song about it:
[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/loyalty-oath-
ditt...](http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/loyalty-oath-ditty.html)

And a timeline/summary:
[http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loya...](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/timelinesummary.html)

~~~
tingletech
The first time I worked for UC Regents I was 17 and needed a work permit; and
the admin who did my paperwork had me actually raise my right hand and swear
out the oath. (there was no bible; and I did so affirm). The other times I've
started work at a UC I've never had to actually verbally swear the oath.

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6d0debc071
> Does this mean that employees should not be loyal to their employers? No.
> Those companies pay the salaries of their employees which should demand a
> certain amount of loyalty.

As I see it, companies try to get the most from you with the least from them,
and your job is to try to get the most from them for the least from you. If
you go beyond the minimum that you have to do, then you're setting yourself up
to be taken advantage of.

If you think working harder's going to get your more money, then you should
totally do it if you want more money, same for job security, same for you just
find it an interesting problem, but morally you don't seem to owe them your
best - they set out to screw you in the first place. That's their job, that's
how people who own companies get rich: By not sharing the wealth equitably.

~~~
firefoxman1
Well said. Those are the two opposing sides of labor in capitalism. As Marx
pointed out, a company does best by commoditizing labor. To make a worker as
replaceable as possible is in the best interest of the company: They can pay
less and hold his replace-ability over his head. "I demand a higher pay or
I'll quit" is met with "Fine, your position will be filled tomorrow morning"
and realizing his replace-ability the employee feels it's better to at least
have a job, thus creating the illusion of employee loyalty.

Now with companies like Google you see what happens when the pendulum swings
toward the workers' favor. Google employees are top-notch. They are _much_
harder to replace, so the company offers amazing things on top of great pay to
keep them. Again, it appears to be loyalty but it's always in their own
interest. Keeping and taking care of these amazing employees is how they
create great things.

It seems that the best option as an employee is to find an industry/position
that requires a unique, hard-to-replace set of skills and dominate that
position.

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CmonNoReg
Loyalty already has a definition: stock options. I am loyal to the spirit of
the company, and that spirit is always about making money. Just give people a
slice of cake, goddamit!

