Back in the day, Merrill Lynch had a rep for hiring really green people on the cheap, doing a very good job training them up, and then not paying them according to their new value in the market. When you would leave, managers would often lay the guilt trip about "What you owe us..." (to which the proper response is the line from Goodfellas -"F* you. Pay me.")

There was a sitewide IT town hall in NY when I was there and some senior MD brought this problem up. "We're investing a lot of money in training people and then having difficulty retaining them." From the crowd of around 1000 a voice cried out "Stop training them!"

Why is the response to stop training them rather than train them and then pay them their worth?

That's not the correct response. I'm pretty sure the person was being facetious.

Is that really what you want though? Ever wonder why all our schools are becoming job training centers?

I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual.

To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ?

I think as job market turns from oversupply to undersupply the culture changes simply out of nececity.

No worker would ever get hired if he or she were open with that they would leave the company the very instance a better offer came around. Companies, on the other hand, have no trouble hiring even when they admit that they'd fire you the very instance someone who can do the job for less pay comes around.

Loyalty in the work place is a one-way street. It goes from the worker to the company but not the other way around.

That depends on demand/supply. Tech companies in cities with high demand for engineers have no problem hiring people who will leave as soon as something better shows up.

That is subtly different from what I wrote. :) I wrote that no one who were open about it would be unable to find a job. If you told your interviewer that your only objective is to maximize salary they would (rightly) treat you as a sociopath. A company whose only objective is to minimize salaries (and therefore maximize profits) is also a "sociopath" but that is somehow acceptable.

Yeah, that's true, I guess you'd normally wouldn't say that. Although I've worked a guy once that said something similar and got hired anyway. He still works in the same place after a couple years and still has the same attitude. I think that most people make it up to be a lot less socially acceptable than it actually is.

Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate.

It absolutely is cultural.

Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care).

I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.

Does your toddler have control over their bowels? This stuff develops, but it's not always cultural.

Ask yourself why you feel these emotions, because the culture you're in had to have made you learn them. The companies you have worked for sure as hell do not care about you once you leave.

Source: personal experience

All correct, but cultural things like these can't exactly be dispelled with logic.

Culture comes from people. Taking the reins of culture and leading it to new places is entirely natural