Companies destroyed employee loyalty - by letting people go while paying bonuses to executives, by giving 3% raises while offering way higher salaries to new hires, by saying "we are a family here" only when they need employees to make sacrifices.

From the perspective of an engineering manager, attrition sucks. Whenever a season engineer leaves my team, I dread the next couple of weeks, because there's a chance others will follow. The hiring and onboarding is draining and often slows down the whole team for months. But whenever someone tells me they're leaving, I tell them I understand it. They need to think about their own career.

Employers destroyed the loyalty and they need to fix it.

I agree. I don't think that there's any incentive to do that, though.

Why give someone a 10% raise because the market has spoken when you might be able to retain them with a 5% raise? Even if you hire new employees at a premium, some contingent of older employees will stick around just because switching jobs is a hassle. This sort of thing drives down quarterly costs which ultimately makes you look good to shareholders who can't see the internal destruction.

Employees used to get pensions, have reasonable work hours, a reliable schedule and could afford to have a parent stay home in their 3-4 bedroom house on an acre.

When all that goes away and I have to work harder for less than my parents got then what is the point of being loyal to psychopathic companies with excruciatingly well documented histories of treating employees like interchangeable chattel? Loyalty ain’t gonna give these monsters any pause when they put the squeeze on me and the other numbers on their screen while they fantasize about how to blow their ill gotten gains.

Pensions are not relevant anymore. I see no reason to pay a defined benefit pension fund’s employees and expenses when I can simply buy VOO or a target date fund at one of many brokerages for basically free. And I get to avoid the risk of a corrupt employee of the employer messing with it, or to risk the employer not being around 50 years later.

The other parts of the post have so many factors that contribute that it is not related to employer employee social contracts. Birth rates, relative developed-ness of other countries, supply and demand of labor, automation, political winds, societal changes, etc.

Stated as fact without evidence. Many people are still paying into pensions and many more would like too. Think blue collar and gig workers who scrape by on a small fraction of what many outspoken people here take home.

>I see no reason to pay a defined benefit pension fund’s employees and expenses when I can simply buy VOO or a target date fund at one of many brokerages for basically free.

Because you’re highly compensated and have the buying power of X median income households. Median income households need to retire too. What’s your solution for them if not pensions.

>And I get to avoid the risk of a corrupt employee of the employer messing with it, or to risk the employer not being around 50 years later.

Pensions are supposed to legally outlast employers. Judicial failure to enforce that is evidence of a corrupt and politicized judicial branch that is actively waging class war against those with lower economic status.

>The other parts of the post have so many factors that contribute that it is not related to employer employee social contracts. Birth rates, relative developed-ness of other countries, supply and demand of labor, automation, political winds, societal changes, etc.

All of these factors you mentioned have been politicized and exploited to manufacture consent in the American public to vote against their own interests as bought and paid for politicians, judges, journalists, prosecutors, and lawyers sell out their own economic cohort to, for the sake of brevity, make the rich, richer.

I’m happy to flesh out how each factor you named has been weaponized if you’re genuinely curious.

The government redistributing wealth, i.e. Social Security. A federal defined benefit pension plan, if you will. And if it were up to me, I would take it even further and make it universal basic income.

> Pensions are supposed to legally outlast employers. Judicial failure to enforce that is evidence of a corrupt and politicized judicial branch that is actively waging class war against those with lower economic status.

Decades and decades of evidence indicate that the system does not work. But more importantly, automation and technology have obviated employer sponsored defined benefit pensions.

There is no value add from having employers in the middle of the wealth transfer chain. It is just extra paperwork and overhead and chances for corruption.

The pension funds invest in the same place as everyone else, the stock and real estate market. And then the government comes and bails out asset owners time and time again, so that the pension recipients get bailed out. But then why not hand the pension recipients the cash directly?

That said, defined benefit pensions were always designed around the idea that you'd be staying in the same place for maybe decades. Federal government pensions are perhaps the most obvious example but it applied to many companies as well. And that just doesn't represent typical behavior--especially among professional workers--these days.

These are very different with respect to longevity risk. There are many people who can’t save enough individually for the longest lifespan. (Or the 80th percentile) But could save enough for the cohort.

Pensions are far superior in this scenario. That’s part of the reason why 401ks make sense for highly compensated, but not the majority.

There is no reason to have a ton of employers get involved in the wealth transfer system. It adds so much unnecessary complexity, bureaucracy, agency risk, not to mention the longevity risk of a single employer surviving for 50 more years. And on top of that, the only thing the employer’s pension fund is doing is investing it in the same market that the beneficiaries can invest in themselves without having to pay overhead.

There are various protections in place. I'll be collecting a pension from a long gone employer.

I'm not really going to argue for defined benefit pensions. There's a certain paternalistic attitude to them that your employer is at least partly responsible for looking after your retirement savings. And you're on the hook for being a loyal long-term employee to get that benefit.

Still, it will be nice to collect a decent payout from a benefit I probably didn't ever really think about at the time. I even know people who completely forgot that they even had a pension.

https://www.pbgc.gov/american-rescue-plan-act-of-2021

The real bailout is the backstop the federal government provides on asset prices at the expense of purchasing power of the currency.

I understand that you are not arguing for DB pensions. I am just trying to make it clear that US society has moved past DB pensions because we now have an explicit promise of bailouts at the expense of the dollar, and if we are going to do that, then cut out all the actuary and investment fund fees, and just drop it in social security or target date funds.

I would take a defined benefit pension from the federal government (or any other entity that can print money), but any other payout promised decades in the future is just as, if not more, risky as investing in an index fund, because you give up control of the money.

I used the money to fund one of my companies, and tossed the rest into an index fund.

I made back the money I used to fund the company in a couple of years; just from the portion in the index fund (it's been crazy).

Earlier this year, my ex-employees told me that the company is shutting down their pension plan. I don't think that they are siphoning off the money, Jimmy Hoffa-style, but I think that I'm glad I took the cashout.

A non COLA adjusted defined benefit just means you will continuously lose purchasing power, and even the COLA adjustments are subject to understatement due to political influences. Even Social Security is not immune, because at the end of the day, a smaller proportion of labor suppliers to labor buyers means less supply of labor per buyer, which means it has to get rationed somehow (for whatever amount does not get offset by automation/immigration).

But I feel that the for-profit aspect applies both ways: if the company is going to work to maximize profits, why shouldn't I do the same? If another company is offering me a substantially higher salary than I would get with a normal raise, then why shouldn't I at least consider it? The company wouldn't hesitate to fire me off if they felt I was underperforming.

The only argument I can see for loyalty (and only kind of) is if you work for a non-profit, or something run on a finite research grant or something. At that point, you could argue that loyalty isn't naive as the work itself is more the goal than the profit motive.

Of course, companies know this and use it as one of the many tools to suppress wages.

But I agree, I think this is kind of weaponized by corporations to avoid employee churn.

"I was a manager for over 25 years. I feel that I was a good one. My employees seemed to agree. I kept many of them on board for decades, and these were folks that could walk out the door, and get huge pay raises (my company paid "competitive" salaries)."

It sounds like they did great by the company shareholders who captured the value from below market salaries.

Kindness, respect and trust should be table stakes but it's not going to pay for my kid's college fund, keep up with 7% inflation, or help me build my rainy day fund for a pandemic driven recession.

In our industry, we get paid a lot, for our ages (I never made as much as even entry-level folks, these days, but I had plenty of money, and still do).

It's not my fault that so many people decide to live beyond their means. Many folks would be crazy grateful for the money we waste on frivolities.

I'm not a threat to anyone here. I live my life, the way I live it. I write the software I write, and I chronicle it here. There are alternative points of view, and alternative ways of living.

I'm almost deliriously happy, in my life now. I never understood how incredibly valuable it is, to be in a position, where my work is not getting turned into raw sewage, by clueless corporations.

There are other measures of success, in life, besides money.

If the author's premise is correct, there should be a lot of money to be made in retaining talent. Some of that should filter down to more than 3% raises.

So if you believe in humans as rational economic actors, there is "$20 bills lying on the street" if you build a tech company that hires, increases comp, and retains, rather than the current model of hire, churn, poach.

I realize that double-digit raises at the same company is a big culture shift, but I've seen it done. If everyone benefits, why wouldn't it happen?

People aren't rational actors in the sense of "they aim for the objectively best action given a goal" - we generally aim to minimise risk, prefer things that are simple, and prefer doing what everybody else is doing. Homo economicus isn't even used in modern economics let alone being anywhere near to reality.

It depends how supply and demand curves are moving. What might be true today may not have been true 10 years or 20 or 30 years ago. Labor costs have a big impact on profit, a measurement that all company owners and executives care very much about.

For the past few decades, it may have been true that the cost of attrition was less than the benefits of holding down pay for most others.

I am sure some businesses got it wrong, and some businesses got it right. And it probably even varies within businesses based on specific roles.

For example, it very well may be rational for a grocery store to let cashiers go if the cost of acquiring and training a new one is low enough that it lets the store compete with other grocery stores since they are operating on razor thin margins. On the other hand, people with specialized tasks in the store such as a butcher or baker or manager might have a better case for keeping them from leaving.

Most companies aren't as good at using their retained talent to make money.

Of course, hiring practices are sufficiently random in many cases that it's not really a matter of those firms skimming all the cream (and salary is only one factor that many go by anyway). But it is harder for other companies to salary match the likes of Google and Facebook.

1) They're not.

2) Even if they were, it may be the case they are short-term biased, meaning they're willing to forgo $20 tomorrow for $10 today.

> The entire industry has now shaped itself into a transient, mercenary, loyalty-free community.

This is sadly inevitable and it's a classic example of a race to the bottom and EXACTLY the thing you said: "you go first". As a contractor myself, I was effectively forced into being a contractor and not a loyal employee by the virtue of being screwed over many times. I learned to always shop around for the next gig while the current one is still going -- not because I love that, I hate it with all my soul, but because I have to protect myself and my family.

I was loyal throughout most of my 20-year career. I ignored my family, I ignored my own health even, I saved companies on the brink and only ever felt a pat on the back on the company's Christmas party, and a single 500 EUR bonus (if even that). And something similar happened several times, not just one.

One day you get seriously sick and you need a safety net which you of course don't have. It changes your perspective DRAMATICALLY.

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WORK FOR YOURSELF regardless of where you are or what is written in your contract. You are your own top priority. Invest in contacts. Talk to people and don't assume that a conversation is useless. Just enjoy talking with people. You'll both have fun and will have the nebulous possibility of somebody calling you 5 years down the line.

I don't leech off of companies. They leech off of me. I am giving them only as much as they give me in terms of money and work-life balance and stress(-free) environment. I don't go an inch over that anymore.

You're right!

Competition between management teams for investment ensures that, absent some other force constraining competition, it isn't sustainable for most management teams to break out of this race to the bottom. The exceptions - firms that have a quasi-monopolistic market position - prove the rule.

"Letting employees unionize, etc."

Employees don't need permission from their employer to unionize in the United States or any other high income country. It is entirely the decision of the workers; if a majority want to form a union, the employer is obligated to bargain with them.

Historically, this is how the race to the bottom has been halted.

That sounds pretty ominous. What policy would you suggest? Why would you be confident the government would be at all competent?

If people stay on in the company they under pay people and save money. If people are constantly job hopping there's no longer any long term obligations towards employees and you have a constant pool of replacements thereby saving even more money.

Then its not democracy any more. Its slavery. If People want to leave let them leave.

If you live/work in a building with several floors, and a stairwell, go down the stairwell, until you get to the ground floor.

If the building has a basement, there will be a door to the basement, and it will be facing the stairwell, and will open inward (towards the stairwell). The ground floor (at least), will have a "panic bar," to unlatch it (this is a horizontal bar, at waist level, on average-sized people, that can be pushed, to unlatch the door, and push it open). The door will also open outward (away from the stairwell).

This is because of government regulations. Developers would not choose to do this, if given a choice. It's not cheap. I believe that some older buildings may be "grandfathered in," where they might not have to do it.

The same goes for lighted exit signs.

If they didn't have this, a lot of people would die in fires and emergencies. Before these types of regulations, there were constant stories about dozens of people dying in workplace fires. It still happens, in some places.

This is usually done by "carrot" measures, like tax breaks, and "stick" measures, like minimum wages. It can also be safe workplaces.

But like I said, that's not going anywhere (in the US, at least).

In the US, we have many government agencies, like OSHA, and the NLRB, and others, like the SEC, etc., not to mention the AGs and other law-enforcement people.

Business owners love to hate on them, but they are a big reason that we don't have poorhouses any more.

I have found that there is absolutely no bottom to the depths that people will sink, if they can make money. This seems to be true of folks that graduated from Yale, or from Jail.

The idea that any industry will "self-regulate," is a laughable and naive myth.

I'm confused why you don't think this same reasoning doesn't apply to politicians and bureaucrats who would be doing the regulating.

Really, this is going nowhere. You seem to think I said something I didn't, and I can't change your mind.

Have a nice day.

For companies, certainly some do value retention and this is obvious from things that can be observed (eg the turnover rate) and incentive structures (ie being willing to pay to avoid attrition).

So I think it isn’t true that no companies value attrition. Even Amazon which usually have a reputation as a bad place to work as an engineer seem to do things to reduce attrition (an alternative way of looking at their ‘weight vesting schedule towards later years’ is that they are trying to encourage people to stay for longer, rather than that they are trying to save money on a high turnover rate).

It feels to me that a lot of it is cultural. For example, lots of people in senior positions may believe that a certain level of attrition (or ‘unregretted attrition’) is good because it is like an easy way of firing people. But regretted attrition can be a lot worse than not having so much I regretted attrition. I say it’s cultural because opinions in management could change—certainly other countries can be different—just like other aspects of company management have changed over time too.

I think another aspect is that if your company is growing very quickly, like many of today’s big tech companies did, then most people will be recent hires and it is perhaps hard to have a culture that values or takes advantage of people with a lot of internal experience.

This is my dad's favorite past-time, to talk about the good old days of the USSR when he had free education, free guaranteed housing, free health care and a guaranteed job. Combined with those other people who made USSR fall apart or are all about money or whatever.

Nevermind all the other thousand broken things in that system, let's narrow it down to a few elements that align with your pre-conceived idea and cherry-pick, to create the good old days and conversely, kids nowadays.

I’m not pining for “the good old days,” at all, and it’s … interesting … that this was what you read.

I’m enthusiastic about tech, the future, learning new stuff, and making the world a better place.

I feel that it is a shame that the concept of Personal Integrity (or corporate Integrity) is considered an anachronism.

> The entire industry has now shaped itself into a transient, mercenary, loyalty-free community.

You're not pining for a time prior to when the industry shaped itself into a transient, mercenary, loyalty-free community?

Or you mean to say it was a different kind of mess before, that has now shaped itself into another mess, but mess nonetheless?

If so, my apologies.

Lots of people want to "go back," but that can never happen. It does not mean that "the old ways" are bad, or that they could not be applied to today or the future, but there is a very good chance they would not be applicable to today's world, without modification.

I don't like "Old bad; New Shiny." Something is advantageous to the current situation, or it is not. Its provenance should have nothing to do with it.

As an engineer, who has been developing (and shipping) software for my entire life, I can tell you that some (not all, just some) things that I learned "in the good old days" are quite applicable to today's world, and I always find it amusing, when someone goes "Wow! That is so cool!" when I have shown them some old pattern that was created before they were born.

In the company that I worked at for a long time, a bunch of ultra-conservative folks had a war with future-facing folks, and won (that's one reason I was let go). I totally understand where they come from, but I also think that it was a disaster, and may kill a 100-year-old company.

But no one asked me. They just handed me my pink slip.

Best thing that ever happened to me.

Funny "In Soviet Russia..." story. A friend of mine, who is married to a Russian, and lived in Perm for many years, said that the soviets always built two of everything, because one inevitably failed, and was used for parts, for the second. I have no idea how true it was. He is prone to flights of hyperbole.