Companies treat us as replaceable widgets. If widget A is broken just throw it away and use widget B. No reason to be loyal in that environment.
In an era of trillon-dollar megacorps and multi-billionaire CEOs, Marx was ahead of his time:
> He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. [...] As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself
It really messed up my friend, he was really close to a comfortable retirement, but had to borrow against his 401k to make it through until he could get another job. He was the safety officer for the entire factory, 15+ years of experience doing that. Now he's too close to retirement age and no one will hire him, even though he's personally a long way from retirement.
So now he's working a physically demanding job on the line making cars. All that experience and skills with safety? Junk.
No company has loyalty to their employees. It's all about the next quarter.
> It's all about the next quarter.
Not sure that follows from your friend's story. In that particular case, it seems to have been about bad management, unless having only college-degreed folks on the floor improved short term financials.
Definitely an example of a short sighted decision, though.
CAN that even exist? The mercenary approach seems to me the only one that doesn't fall prey to living in a fantasy about how things "Should" be -- there is only the way they are: it's a business relationship.
Younger me thought otherwise. I was big into startup culture, enjoyed the comradery of working long hours, taking pride in this thing we were building together. Management was great. Hierarchy was minimal. I felt "valued"... And then we were all let go with a phone call. I remember just being like "...Ohhhhh. Right." It's a business relationship. That's as far as it goes. Anything else is an illusion.
Fully remote lifestyle business where everyone's workload is around 12-24 hours a week with $100k+ salaries. Everyone in the company makes around the same amount (CEO to junior). Full transparency for the accounting books. Excess profits get evenly distributed to everyone. No investors to answer to. A job that gives enough time and money to do what you want in life.
This is really only for people who are already good at something though.
> > I would love to work in an environment where
> > I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that
> CAN that even exist?
I would be very loyal to a place that helped me grow as a person with continuing education opportunities.
I would also be very loyal to a place that had a solid balance of feature delivery versus vs. technical debt management. (I feel this benefits the company in the medium to long run as well, even moreso than the engineers)
Those things would not necessarily be hard to achieve and would pay for themselves.
Yet nobody actually seems to run their company that way.
I guess the fundamental roadblock is that so many things in capitalism force you to think only about the short game. Thinking even 12 months ahead is often viewed as sheer insanity.
As an engineer, I understand the pressures faced by higher-ups. Keeping the lights on is expensive. Investors want results sooner or later. And higher-ups often don't have the engineering chops to understand why good engineering processes can be such force multipliers enabling faster delivery in 18, 24, 72, whatever months.
Modern software development is highly dysfunctional
but we somehow refuse to tackle it.
Sure, it's pretty rare to hear from anybody that their particular field runs smoothly.
But our field. Man oh man. We know what tech debt is, and we know how it affects the time+effort required to achieve a certain velocity. And yet we spend more time shooting ourselves in the foot than doing anything else.
Quite honestly I feel that the problem has become massively worse in the last decade, with everybody cargo-culting the highly complex architectures of FAANG companies when in reality much simpler alternatives would be an order of magnitude better.
Every dollar paid to me is a dollar less for the founder/VCs.
It's only when you get fired, you start to see clearly and are able to come out of that flowery lala land of "we're a team", "we're a family" and all that misplaced rather abused analogies.
It's just a commercial relationship rooted in generating profit (nothing wrong with that) for which have to collaborate with others. There's no team, there's no family.
Any prose and poetry beides that is also about squeezing every ounce of profit. It is a for profit activity so at least be direct and honest about it and refrain from borrowing analogies from other social constructs.
Maybe I disagree about the part about "only when you get fired". To me it was enough seeing people getting fired, or having promotions postponed multiple times for no reason, or seeing a co-worker getting a verbal offers of a raise getting rescinded after they denied a job offer from another company.
E: For reference, I wouldn’t downvote this because it ain’t wrong.
I had a team member fired the other day (he probably deserved it) and no one even bothered to tell me. I figured he quit and reached out wishing him well. I felt pretty awkward when I found out he was let go. The problem was they aren't even back filling his role, I just have to pick up the slack. He does a job totally different than mine that I really have no experience doing. I'm just winging it and not really caring about it. If they don't replace the guy I'm not putting in extra hours to ensure what he was doing gets done. Give me half his salary and I'll care.
IMO "in a team" is actually achievable if you conceptualize it like a pro sports team where you can get laid off for under-performing, change in overall strategy, injuries etc. The players are still part of a team though.
My current company did layoffs and I don't think anyone is feeling "loyal" but I certainly feel like a member of a team because my coworkers and I work collaboratively towards shared goals and step in to support each other. We don't do this out of any loyalty to the company but because this behavior helps us work better together in a way that is more pleasant and is rewarded by the company.
Start your own business.
Those kinds of companies (the examples I know of are small, < 200 folks) actually have a chance of maintaining a coherent, caring culture. Not to say that folks don't get laid off or tough decisions made, but humanity is still present.
I enjoyed Small Giants for more profiles of these kinds of companies: https://www.amazon.com/Small-Giants-Companies-Instead-10th-A...
The only difference is that I make a point of leaving my current job in 18 to 24 months. That is the sweet spot. No matter how good or bad I think the job is. Always get a raise in the switch. Rinse and repeat. I actually avoid getting promotions in whatever is my current job, those are detrimental, seldom the raise is compatible with the increase in responsibility.
I worked for companies I liked and for companies I personally hated, the procedure is always the same. Has been working wonders for me in the past 2 decades.
Work is something I do to earn money. If companies can replace people for less or cut them they do. Why be loyal in that kind of environment? I will work hard for the money they pay me though.
At one point I got a job offer for 25% more than I currently made. I told my current director at the time that I got a job offer for 40% more. The director matched the imaginary 40% and I stayed for another year. This company habitually fired people for the most minor of productivity drop offs. They had just recently promoted me without providing a raise. You reap what you sow.
I would love to work in an environment where I felt valued as a person but I have yet to find that. Remote work makes that even harder to find now.