- I got it pretty early in my career that loyalty for a company is concept to make you work harder without asking anything in return. And the moment the company shifts focus and you are out of it, then suddenly you understand that this loyalty wasn't kind of a credits account which you've been saving all this time. It's simply nothing. You are on your own and can fuck off.
So there's simply no place for loyalty in employer-employee relationships. One side pays money or whatever, the other is delivering the job being done. That's all.
- Keep in mind that the benefits of loyalty vary with the size of the organization and the number peers your name gets lost among in the org chart.
The larger the company, and the more they're ballooned out with abstract drones chomping on abstract work items, the more loyalty becomes a means for abuse. Turnover is rampant and their processes are built to optimally accommodate it. They're egregores, not people, and they don't experience loyalty or attachment. But they do benefit from yours, and so they'll milk it until you give up
But in smaller groups and smaller communities, where you're actually working with people, loyalty and even affection can really make a difference in how satisfying your worklife is, how much security you can feel in your opportunities, etc
It's not so much that there's "no place for loyalty in employer-employee relationships", it's just that the place for loyalty is different depending on what's inhabiting the employer role opposite you -- and the high-profile large employers of the modern age are incapable of reciprocating. But if loyalty comes naturally to you, and feels good to you when reciprocated, you have the option to look elsewhere instead of seething in resentment and disappointment.
- The term loyalty is dangerous for an employee.
Having seen companies of all sizes lay people off for the exact same reason - Returns did not match expectations - my personal perspective is to treat all employers the same.
No company with a balance sheet is loyal to employees. Keeping that idea in mind, and thus on an equal perspective, is healthy for both sides. "It's just business" is good advice and not just in movies.
- I agree in parts. Loyalty and corresponding benefits are a local optima. But when the macro is controlled and influenced by external (to the local) forces, and these forces have power, loyalty means nothing in terms of security. But you will still have good relationships with people and new opportunities may surface as a benefit.
But loyalty to a company is complete, utter BS.
- There are good and bad companies. How you are treated is how you gauge it, and good companies do deserve "working" loyality.
This is different from personal loyalty.
It's a little like politeness. Social grace. Don't demean yourself of course, but treating entities which treat you well reciprocally is valid and even moral.
- You can think of mutual-loyalty as an extended transaction, if you prefer. If, in exchange for you not planning on leaving the company, the company actively does its best to treat you well and preserve your job long-term, that can be a good trade-off.
The mutuality is important. You absolutely shouldn't think of yourself as "loyal" to a company that won't stick up for you. (And many companies won't, to be clear. If asked to choose between cutting executive salaries by 2% and firing you, most companies won't think too hard about that. You shouldn't be loyal to those ones.)
- I like the thought of this but how does it work in practice?
The company treats me well and preserves my job while I'm planning not to leave. Until they don't. Because once the transaction is more trouble than its worth - either financially, or politically, or interpersonally - I'm gone. But if I am planning to leave, the company doesn't know that and treats me the exact same way.
- All loyalty is a risk. Even loyalty to your spouse is a risk. Just like how all love and human trust is a risk.
To feel human you have to take these emotional risks. You shouldn’t bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute and utter loyalty to you. You shouldn’t bet your entire life that your spouse has absolute loyalty to you (we have divorce, pre-nups, and post-nups for a reason). But it strikes me as a pretty soulless existence to have no loyalty to your place of work, in the same way it would be a pretty soulless existence to never form loyalty with the people in your life, even if it isn’t absolute loyalty.
- Things don't deserve loyalty. Your company is a "thing".
People - people can absolutely deserve loyalty, and those people can be managers, coworkers, spouses, family, etc.
But don't mix the two up in your mind.
- >Things don't deserve loyalty. Your company is a "thing".
A country is a thing and loyalty to it is called "patriotism". A sports-team or TV show or band is a thing, loyalty to it is called "fandom". Loyalty to an idea or philosophy is called "being principled" or "idealism". Do you believe that things don't deserve loyalty, such that all of these are errors? Or do these examples not capture the sense of your statement?
- Yes, all of these things do not deserve loyalty. There are values i hold dear, if a philosophy or state holds on to the same values, i support them. If they turn away from them, no reason to be loyal.
- Are you perhaps confusing loyalty to an incumbent regime with loyalty to a nation or people?
- A nation can change, a people can become corrupt, the values stay and if for example a democracy steered by corrupted peoples betrays itself, a democrat with values can just soldier on without getting into any loyalty conflict. A sadness for what has fallen may linger.
- A nation? Or a economic zone?
A people? Or a population of foreign guest workers?
- "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I would have the guts to betray my country."
--EM Forster, "What I Believe"
- The problem here is that Forster is relativising the good.
I am not betraying my country by refusing to follow laws or decrees that require that I engage in intrinsically evil deeds. I am not loyal to my friend if I do evil things he asks me to do.
Our loyalty is to the objective good of our country and our friend. Otherwise, there is no such thing as loyalty.
- > A country is a thing and loyalty to it is called "patriotism".
That sort of loyalty is not quite the same: protecting your own to indirectly protect yourself. People often see their “external tribes” as an extension of their self much likely they do family/friends, rather than them being part of it like a company. I am a Spillett. I am a Yorkshireman, I am English, I am UKian, I am European, I work for TL. Notice the difference in language in that last one.
This is part of why some get so offended when you poke fun at their town/county/country: if they see it as an extension of their identity more than just somewhere they live then your disrespect is a personal attack. They would not likely defend their employer nearly as passionately.
- notice the mirage version of this with some companies - one can be a "googler" or so on, and companies try to encourage this identification
- That's right, they do not deserve loyalty. All of these things hijack our loyalty to people in the name of some higher-order goal. Sports team and TV show loyalty is there to get us to consume more. Loyalty to a country gets us to be reliable cogs in someone else's grand project. Loyalty to a philosophy gets us to be a cult leader's acolyte.
Skip the substitute and go for the real thing: loyalty to people. You can still join grand projects, but do it consciously rather than on instinct.
- Your examples are bizarre (sports teams are a matter of petty entertainment, not proper objects of loyalty). Philosophy isn't an object of loyalty either.
However, you should acquaint yourself with the principle of subsidiarity. Loyalty, duty, and love radiate outward from those who are owed the most diminishing to those who are owed the least (spouses, then children, then parents, etc., all the way through extended family and then community and nation and finally the human race). The loyalty is to the objective good. How that is expressed will be modified by contingent factors particular to a given person's situation.
- Perhaps it should be refined to say that "profit-oriented things" that view existence as purely transactions don't deserve loyalty.
- Sports franchises are the ultimate trick, in that they are profit-oriented, yet they somehow play on our tribal nature and fool us into forgetting about the profit part.
I guess you could argue the same for a church.
- Thanks to the financialization of everything, perhaps the same can be said of colleges and universities!
- Patriotism is mostly just propaganda to make people willing to kill and die for some old cynical geezers' delusions of grandeur. The guy said it right, countries don't deserve loyalty either. Lots of Russians are figuring this out firsthand these days.
- Unfortunately all managers focus on push rank, so why loyalty to them?
- This is an overly broad generalisation - there are many cases of managers that do their best to primarily look after those under them, not just focus on getting higher up.
- >You shouldn’t bet your life that a mega-corp has absolute and utter loyalty to you.
But your mega corp doesn't have loyalty to you. They have loyalty to their shareholders, and you are a means to that end. The shareholders are the spouse, and you are just the person they paid to make the yearly birthday present. If a little flattery gets them a better price, then they flatter. If their spouse's interests change, you'll never see them again.
- I think I agree with both perspectives. And it makes me realize that in the past when I've tried to draw hardcore no-loyalty / emotional attachment boundaries teammates / employers pick up in the vibe and it slowly becomes mildly but chronically toxic.
It's 100% an emergence scam behavior of corporate entities to trick their employees into developing loyalty and tricking managers / founders etc into thinking its not just a way of scamming lower-end employees imo... I never got the feeling that managers were consciously trying to trick us into developing loyalty, felt more like they were then ones drinking the most coolaid on it...
Also agree with the base human need to feel at least some loyalty in any relationship to feel like it's healthy.
I think my hack has been to develop loyalty to people on my team laterally. Seems to work but sometimes leadership / management still seems like they catch a whiff that I dont have a deep emotional need to respond to their frantic 8pm or Sunday afternoon Teams messages...
But if they fire me for not being loyal who cares, the economies doing great right?
- In addition to what others have said about loyalty to the people who happen to work at a company, which I agree with entirely:
I think it's good to have admiration for the company (or any organization) you work for. If you can't find anything you admire, it might be better to find another place to work where you can.
This implies having the privilege of having options. For me, it's probably the primary reason I try to direct my career toward having skills or connections that give me options.
- Being able to take pride in your work also helps a lot. In academia, my work may not be the most well compensated (it's perfectly reasonable for the area but I'm not going to be retiring early), but it is modern software that meaningfully helps others at my institution and doesn't actively make society worse.
- This soullessness wasn't always the case. Prior to the cost-cutting minmaxing of Jack Welch's industries-influential tenure as CEO of General Electric, corporate America wasn't quite so brazen about layoffs, because they weren't viewed as a way to maximize shareholder returns- and shareholder value wasn't viewed as the only priority for corporate leaders. (He also introduced what would later become stack ranking at Microsoft and other tech companies.)
On the other side, certainly a fluid labor market such as tech was a couple of years ago would foster a lack of loyalty, as employees hop from employer to employer for rapid career growth.
None of this necessarily contradicts with your point. It's just labor relations don't exist in a vacuum. Sometimes a lot needs to be done to earn trust in a low-trust cultural environment.
- Loyalty is worth it if you can reasonably assume it will be repaid in kind. Assuming you didn't make a huge mistake in partner selection, that assumption is valid for your spouse. It emphatically does NOT hold for your employer, who will drop you the instant you become a problem. Therefore, it makes no sense to be loyal to your employer beyond the bare minimum.
- It's not about feelings. It's about making human life possible, as we are social animals. We develop through relationships.
Loyalty is a commitment to the objective good of the other, of skin in the game. Loyalty is hierarchical and the particular variety and its entailed commitments depends on the particular nature of the relationship.
In a hyperindividualist liberal society, the presumption is basically Hobbesian; life is taken to be intrinsically and thoroughly adversarial and exploitative, and relationships are taken to be basically instrumental and transactional. (This even informs scientific interpretation, as science is downstream of culture.) Society is taken to be intrinsically a matter of "contract" or a kind of Mexican standoff. Loyalty is a quaint and anachronistic notion, a passing emotion that expires the moment the landscape of opportunities shifts. Provisional and temporary.
- Loyalty develops naturally in a good relationship. It's a fruit to be cherished, but it's not a goal that you should pursue for its own sake.
There's no point in asking first, whether employers should be loyal to their employers or vice versa. The important question is whether they are good to one another. If they are, you might also find loyalty among them, but that's not where the focus should be.
Someone who gets obsessed with loyalty too much, I think, is likely to have sinister intentions. They probably want you to be loyal to them but don't plan on being good to you.
- i think we can draw a distinction between loyalty to the company, either as an abstract entity or its concrete leadership, and human relationships with people who may also be employed there. there are two companies here, one has a stock ticker and the other is an organic collection of people. i dont owe either of them loyalty, but the second company might easily earn it.
- Yes, all loyalty is a risk. But the expectation in interpersonal relationships is typically that if you are loyal to someone they are loyal to you. There are literal rituals for people to swear that to each other in front of witnesses. Most people also intuitively understand that an unilateral breach of loyalty is a legitimate reason for ending this agreement.
With hypercapitalist corporations loyalty is a one-way street. The employee is expected to be loyal, while corporations drop them casually if it benefits them. Loyalty is realized when one of the sides endure some downsides in thr expectations that these will be resolved in the long term. So if you dump someone the minute that downside appears, you aren't and never have been loyal.
- This isn't universally true (and I'm saying this as someone who's been laid off three times in my career). When searching for a job, it's important to perform due diligence to ascertain whether the company is on solid footing, their strategy makes sense, and your role will be valued. But once you're there, who your boss is, including how well they mentor you and what their political clout is within the business, can absolutely make "loyalty" worthwhile because the ROI can be career acceleration (in terms of compensation, job title and also breadth/depth of experience/exposure) that goes far beyond just the direct pay when you consider the overall value.
- Employer? No. But I've seen some very smart coworkers value and reward deep, specialized knowledge that is built through working in the same area (of not just tech but also business application) for many years.
- This is the trap I fall into. I have had so many amazing colleagues and I want to do right by them. Sometimes it’s been trench camaraderie, sometimes just really great working relationships, but I almost always feel like I owe it to my fellow employees to work hard, do well for the company, etc.
It’s taken me a long time to learn, but that form of loyalty doesn’t equate to employer loyalty.
- I think that loyalty counts when the decision-makers are more localized. People who show up and demonstrate that they care will generally get the bonuses from their direct managers or higher up managers who recognize the effort (because it happened to cross their path somehow). But these monetary decisions are more and more just calculations on a spreadsheet - here's your 3% annual pay increase and we can allocate 10% of the workforce gets a larger raise to ensure 80% retention. When the layoffs come it has nothing to do loyalty and often has little to do with competence in the role. Hopefully the guy with the spreadsheet is considering whether they can continue to run the business with certain individuals or not, but I don't think it ever gets that granular. This is the MBA era of business.
- Loyalty to a company is broken because companies are typically too big.
Loyalty to people still has significant returns, _especially_ when you are specific with what you want and take control of how your interactions should work.
When I started my own business, a few-times-former employer became a client. The way they interacted with me changed dramatically overnight -- the CxOs treated me as a peer versus an employee. Was very strange to experience and a very welcome change.
- Agree 100% but for my own mental health I like to pretend loyalty does exist day to day but give myself a wake up call if that credit account as you call it is getting too big
- At least to me, loyalty _is_ the benefit. I can't conscience working for someone I hate or someone who I don't feel like I want to help succeed. I've definitely quit jobs before just because the senior leader in my reporting chain was replaced with some smarmy windbag I didn't believe in.
That's not to say it's _much_ of a benefit, but if the only thing a job gives me is a market-rational amount of dollars and health benefits in exchange for life-hours, the invisible hand ensures I can find that virtually anywhere.
- This isn't always true. I've been in engineering leadership a long time, and I've absolutely gone out of my way to cover for, or help out, engineers that I know put in the extra work, and I've seen other leaders do it too.
It's not unlimited, but it exists.
- I find it interesting how starkly bimodal attitudes toward employer loyalty are.
There is a middle ground between getting a company logo tattoo on one hand and on the other being a clock puncher, who fulfills the minimum job requirements and begrudges any request to put in extra effort.
It's possible, even admirable, to be diligent and take pride in one's work for reasons other than drinking the company kool-aid. It's possible to be diligent and work hard, and still leave if you are mistreated.
Yes, employment is inherently transactional, but for jobs like software engineering, machine learning engineering and other high education jobs, the aggregate of the transaction is much closer to a year of work than an hour or day of work. Also, the terms of the transaction often include a variable bonus for performance, as judged by the employer. It seems reasonable to incent people to work harder by offering more compensation in return. It's up to everyone to decide whether the terms of the transaction work for them, but there isn't One True Way™ for everyone regarding company loyalty.
It's also possible to be loyal to the people you work with--even your boss, if she merits it--without being loyal to The Company. I've worked in great teams in companies that have a reputation for being shitty employers. In one case, that didn't stop me from leaving because the job wasn't the right fit for my family and my wife was unhappy. I felt somewhat bad about leaving, but I still left.
Mixed feelings are okay.
- I was leaving a company recently and the fresh grads, with whom I had a good relationship, asked if I had any advice.
I said, “Always remember that the company is not your friend. I don’t mean your boss or your coworkers, they might well be or become your friend. I mean the company itself. If all is well, it may be an excellent ally, but the company can and sometimes will turn on you in an instant if its goals change. Your boss’s job, even if they are your friend, is ultimately to serve the company.
Go out there, work hard, have fun, but put your needs first in the bigger picture.”
- Companies don’t appreciate craftsmanship, in fact they openly state they would rather replace craftsmen with llm-based blop generators. So why not spend your time on your own thing? Be it your family/hobby.
- A “bonus” is not worth me consistently putting in 40 hours a week. That means I’m sacrificing time with my wife, family and friends, my vacation, my time at the gym, my time learning Spanish since we have decided to establish residency in Costa Rica and live their part time before and after I retire, etc.
I am going to give my employer 100% of my knowledge and close to that amount of energy for 40 hours a week. I love the company I work at now. It’s the best employer I have had (10 in 29 years). But I still treat it very transactional. They can ask me to go the extra mile occasionally. But only because they pay me well and stand by their word of “unlimited vacation as long as you meet expectations”.
The other the compsnies I really enjoyed were startups. But they always go to shit one way or the other - get acquired, get big and go public or go out of business.
I saw a Reddit thread the other day on r/startups or r/entrepreneur where the OP was talking about how they'll be working until the day he or she dies.> “When I’m on my deathbed, I won’t look back at my life and wish I had worked harder. I’ll look back and wish I spent more time with the people I loved.”I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. Had this person already seen the world and its many sights and wonders? Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead? Had they already swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, etc.
I completely get the drive to create; I have various side projects I make for fun and to learn. But I would never want to work for the rest of my life. Life is too short and the world is too big.
- Not everyone finds 'the work' to be an interrupt either, to be fair. Sometimes the work is the fulfilling part of life, its not having more traditional societal roles. Not to say family and friends aren't important, they absolutely are, but the way I think of it is this way:
When I started working on my own independent venture, I was worried about time. I'm not in a position to quit my job, and I don't think its going to be a VC thing. So I was struggling to find time, so I timed everything I did in a day.
When I did that, I found time I used to idle (IE, not simply relaxing or taking needed down time) with TV watching to be a few hours a day. Didn't even realize it was something I did, it was simply baked into the nightly routine.
Once I replaced that time with working time, I was able to get alot farther along. I suspect if my idea ever takes off, I can examine things more closely and find and shift more time like this.
This is all to say, that you can still enjoy working, prioritize work, but not leave family and friends completely in the lurch at the same time.
All that said: IMO, if you're putting in the hours, do it for yourself, unless you're either moving up to an executive role (or equivalent) at a company where you can cash out big, you're unfortunately a cog in the machine. The best course of action if you really love your work, is to find a sustainable way to work for yourself.
- The loss of work for its centering, routine, mental challenges, socialization across the generations, and sense of accomplishment is harmful to mental and even physical health.
Sure, a construction worker can't be climbing the rafters at 80 years old, but this idea that we just transition to leisure and getting together with friends at a certain point is both fairly novel and of dubious value.
- > Sure, a construction worker can't be climbing the rafters at 80 years old, but this idea that we just transition to leisure and getting together with friends at a certain point is both fairly novel and of dubious value.
Peopled died and killed for the right to a pension. And many more are still fighting for it around the world. To disregard that so costly-gain right so lightly seems quite a privileged position.
A cosy job, stress-free, well paid, creative... may be worth keeping if you do not have hobbies nor family. But that is not the case for most people. Rich people lives longer than the poor, job conditions is one important factor.
- The idea of retirement is literally thousands of years old at this point. Hell the Roman Empire even had the idea of pensions though it wasn’t that common at the time.
Aging inherently means being unable to be an independent productive member of society at some point. (Ed: well past what we consider retirement age.) Historically in agrarian societies few people reached this point so it wasn’t generally a significant burden to support them. What changed is lowering the retirement age and increased the number of people who live long enough to see it.
- > Historically in agrarian societies few people reached this point so it wasn’t generally a significant burden to support them
This isn't true.
https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/15/three-scor...
> ...in England, average life expectancy at birth varied between 35 and 40 years in the centuries between 1600 and 1800. It is a common misconception that, when life expectancy was so low, there must have been very few old people. In fact, the most common age for adult deaths was around 70 years, in line with the Biblical three score years and ten.
- You misunderstood what I was describing. 70 year olds can be quite productive doing manual labor in a way that basically no 90 year olds can.
- Except for, perhaps, Clint Eastwood.
- Or Michaelangelo.
- I was thinking about John B Goodenough
- Yep, infant mortality skews the average and has often led to this kind of misconception
- I don't think that's contradictory to OP though. You can find enrichment and fulfillment in work, while also maintaining balance with the other aspects of life.
- I have enough hobbies/interests/projects and community engagement that I’m not super worried about what I’ll do when I retire. This isn’t true for everyone but it would be good for society in the US if we focused less on work and more on joy.
- > The loss of work for its centering, routine, mental challenges, socialization across the generations, and sense of accomplishment is harmful to mental and even physical health.
Most jobs aren't any of these though. With automation and the shift to a service economy jobs have became more and more alienating
- There are options other than working to the exclusion of other fulfillment right up until a specific age cutoff and then having zero work.
Honestly saving all of that until retirement is not a great idea when you look at how many people die in their 60s and 70s and that if you have children and raise a family that's going to happen well before retirement as well.
You can also find routine, mental challenges, and socialization across the generations without "working" in the traditional sense of a full time job for an employer or your own business.
There are lots of ways to balance these things out, and to find that balance along the way instead of hoping you'll find it in some theoretical future retirement.
- That Samsung exec that died suddenly recently at 63 from cardiac arrest[0]?
You wonder: yeah, this guy made a fortune, but did he get to enjoy his life? If he had just stepped back and said, "I'm going to take a break and take it easy" on his 60th, would he still be alive?
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/24/tech/samsung-co-ceo-han-jong-...
- You can work, can do all that, without big w Work as the only format. Surely if society can compel people into work as a means to accomplish those positive ends you mentioned, it can be made in a way that still pushes towards those positive ends without many of the drawbacks our current system comes along with.
- I think the middle ground is healthy.
I'm in my early 30's, I have a job that I get to "create" in (I make video games).
> I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. Had this person already seen the world and its many sights and wonders? Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead? Had they already swam with whales, explored dense Amazonian jungles, climbed snowy mountains, explored the countless alleys and backstreets of Tokyo, etc.
Lots of these things are best done when you're younger, healthy, and able to do these things. I would _much_ rather live in a nice house in a nice area with exciting things to do from my mid 20's onwards and enjoy those things for years and years and years, rather than live in a smaller/cheaper/farther out place so that I can retire 10 years earlier and start living. I'd rather have 1-2 of those things to look forward to every year than say "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing all those things".
My dad counted down the days until he could retire, talked about how he would finally get to do X Y and Z. About 2 years before that, health conditions caught up and now he's not fit to do so many of those things that he was so excited and happy to do. If the tradeoff for me is working until I'm a little older while getting to enjoy the journey, rather than minmaxing the time that i can work and retire, then I'll choose to enjoy the ride.
- > I would _much_ rather live in a nice house in a nice area with exciting things to do from my mid 20's onwards and enjoy those things for years and years and years, rather than live in a smaller/cheaper/farther out place so that I can retire 10 years earlier and start living.
That's a false dichotomy. You can retire at least 25-30 years earlier than normal if you are a bit mindful of your spending and earn a decent salary. That makes the decision a bit harder doesn't it? Be frugal in your 20s and 30s, retire at 35-40 when you still mostly have your health, or so that you can actually focus on your health and increase your health span, and your 60s and 70s might be better than you expect. Whether this is worth it depends on your individual situation, how much do you earn, how painful is it for you to save, is there something you'd be retiring to, not just away from? I also wouldn't trade a life of misery for 10 retired years, but I don't think it's that simple.
- If normal is 65, then you’re saying you can retire at 35. I have a great salary and I pretty much don’t spend except necessities (rent, food, clothes, healthcare). I’m not even close.
I had an uncle pass last year and he was only 30 years older than me. He had already retired and a multi-millionaire in assets. Yet my aunt refused to retire because of a high paying job with little actual work. She kept working.> "I can't wait until I'm 50 and I can finally start doing all those things".When he passed, the family asked me to put together a montage video and shared their photos with me spanning his lifetime. The moments when he was the happiest seemed to be when they were traveling together. As students, as parents, as a couple after my cousins had graduated and started their own lives.
In those last years, he was "waiting" for my aunt to be ready and it felt sad that he didn't get to travel more because my aunt thought more about the money than the short lifetime they had left. His passing was like a wake up call of sorts; a reminder that life is shorter than anyone can expect. It's very hard to convey this in words until one experiences this first hand and feels the shock.
More recently in my own travels, I've realized the same as you: that traveling in your youth makes much more sense than traveling in your "golden" years. You have greater mobility, more energy, less ailments. 20's and 30's are prime for exploring the world. Work will always be there!
- I think it depends a lot on your finances though. If you come from a rich family and have parental support by all means it is amazing to travel young. But if your travel budget is coming out of your downpayment on your house that could easily be the difference between buying before house prices got out of control or not. For example if you could have bought in 2013 without travel and it takes you till 2015 to save up a 2013 downpayment but in 2015 house prices have gone up and your downpayment needs to be larger and it takes more time, etc.
- After reading a bit if history on travel/tourism I understood that this whole travel thing itself used to be luxury, upperclass thing. Most people would work and live where they are born, visit a few times in life outside for religious purpose or to attend important/relative's wedding etc. And that's about it.
For myself I didn't travel much for leisure when I was young, I am not traveling when I am middle aged and have more money and I do not plan to when I am old/retired. Even when I did whatever little travel, my memories are just about fight, arguments, or endless waiting for admission to a sight which finally after visiting is "What's the fuss was all about?".
On food the less I say the better. It was either over-hyped, over-priced. To top it all, concluding fine dining dinner of the trip when people after ordering table full of meal didn't eat a thing because they are far too drunk by then.
Overtime I have come to conclusion the people with sensibilities and resources to travel and enjoy are far fewer than people actually travel due to exhorting by incessant marketing of travel.
- Different strokes I guess! I will say that there's something unique I get from travelling that I don't get from anything else- the visceral in-person reminder that people are, at their core, very similar everywhere- mostly decent people just living their lives. It's like an antidote to the "other"-ing that sometimes creeps into the psyche from our media landscape.
- I wouldn't doubt a bit you said. It is just I come to conclusion that people are essentially same by reading (fiction, non-fiction) literature etc. So I do not feel the urge to go and confirm nonetheless :)
- > Work will always be there!
I really wish this were true; I'd take a year off to work on "life", but any sort of career pause, especially in this environment, seems to be a huge risk.
Ageism is a concern--hell, even finding a new mediocre job in today's market is very difficult.
I think it's "make hay while the sun shines". Seems the future has less opportunity, and there's plenty of time for underemployment later.
My experience is on the contrary. My largest gains in income have always come after a break. I'm making 2x what I made in 2020 after taking almost a year off to work on some side projects and startups (a YC submission)[0]. Then in 2023, decided to take another 8 months off to work on other side projects[1]> but any sort of career pause, especially in this environment, seems to be a huge risk.But I also used those times to make the things I wanted to make; what I learned along the way is that oftentimes the biggest barrier to getting a better offer is actually the lack of free time and patience. If you can create time for yourself and put that time to good use, you will come out of it better for it as long as you apply that time productively.
[0] https://www.thinktastic.com/#/
[1] https://turas.app (I had to get this one out of my system and a partner and I tried to see if we could make this one sustainable)
- Spent my 20s grinding away at getting great at building software. I enjoyed it mostly, but there are definite regrets, esp with tech never being able to shut up about how awesome AI is in killing off any notion of craft.
Re: travel: this is one of the big takeaways from the book Die With Zero: travel is much easier when you are younger even if it is more expensive (relative to your assets). Just got back from an Italy trip where I averaged 5mi a day walking. 10 years from now (50s) it’s a coin flip if it would be possible for me to sustain that much walking over 10 days. Probable? Yes. But not guaranteed.
A lot of this is relative to one's standards and objectives. You are certainly right that it is expensive relative to assets in one's youth, but it can still be quite attainable if backpacking, hostels, and street food are options.> even if it is more expensive (relative to your assets)When we went to Tokyo recently, the room we booked was tiny! The bed was only 6 or so inches away from the walls on each side. But for me, it was only a place to sleep at night and keep my luggage. If I had spent any more time than that in the hotel, it would have meant we did not spend enough time exploring Tokyo.
- years ago i stayed in a capsule in tokyo with shared bath house for something like $20!
- The cheapest hotels are often more interesting / memorable.
- Travelling isn’t the be all and end all of things either remember. That might be something that you prioritise but isn’t as important to other people. They might value time with family and friends, and that’s ok too. A bit like with food, “variety is the spice of life”
That was one of my first lines in my OP. My point is that exchanging your life time for money isn't the end all.> I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends.- > Travelling isn’t the be all and end all of things either remember.
I think you're missing the whole point. For you, traveling might not be that fun. For OP's uncle, apparently it was. He had to forego that because of reasons.
I do a fair share of traveling. I love it, and a few of my most cherished memories come from trips I did. This might come as a surprise to you, but the whole point of traveling is not to go from point A to point B or spend time in airports. The whole point is to do things you personally enjoy, including and not limited to spending time with people you enjoy being with. Most of the time, the destinations and the things we do are only the backdrop to the things we actually enjoy.
- Yup, many of the folks responding are glossing over this line in my OP:
> Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead?
- > I immediately wondered if this individual had a family, friends. (...)
The saddest thing I ever witnessed in a FANG was a participant of one of those workplace empowerment events. Even though her interview was focused on her bending over backwards to praise their employer's health insurance, the devil was in the details.
The interviewee was praising her employer for providing a nice health insurance, but she mentioned as side-notes that throughout her career she felt so much pressure to perform that she postponed having children until a point where her fertility doctor warned her that she might risk not be able to have children. When she finally felt her job was secured, she decided to not focus on her career anymore and finally went ahead with having children. Except that she was already in her 40s. She had to undergo a couple of years worth of fertility treatments until she finally managed to get pregnant, which was supposedly the focus of her intervention because her employer was so awesome for allowing her to seek medical treatments.
Everyone decides what's best for themselves, but being robbed of having children because you want to bend over backwards for your employer sounds like an awful tradeoff.
- It's a tough trade off. On the one hand, having a child in your 20's is how our biology is wired. On the other hand, in the modern age, those are also prime years for work and professional growth; I get it.
Last year, I (in my 40's) did a trip to Terceira[0] and after a few days of hiking, had shooting pain in my knee. I immediately wondered if I had torn something! It would be quite the pickle since I had traveled with a backpack. Luckily, it was ITBS (Iliotibial band syndrome) and went away with some Acetaminophen and rest.
But it made me regret that in my 20's I spent more time playing computer games than doing things like this hike that would be even challenging if I were to wait until I retired.
[0] https://youtu.be/DlFKc4OfbpM Terceira is a spectacular destination, by the way, and easy to access from JFK.
- 20s in tech is basically show up, do your work, and get paid a pittance of the value it generates.
- That's just "employment", or at least "not realising how many other people contribute to that value".
- I think you might be creating a backstory for this person without any knowledge to ground it on. That's inevitable, we all do it, but be careful about drawing conclusions based on unevidenced assumptions.
- First, you can do all those things while you work. They are called vacations, and in most of the World, you get 5 weeks/year minimum. With the rise of remote work, and nomadic lifestyles, you might even be able to do this while working in different ways.
A few people have said they can empathise with the notion of never retiring - which I think is a different thing - and I can kind of understand that too.
Work doesn't need to be 40+ hours/week of grind, and it doesn't need to be something you don't enjoy. Making money from those side projects - that can be your work. The reason why so many people want to be influencers, is because their work becomes something fun, where they learn, and where they create. I can imagine doing that for a long time.
So while I can't imagine working in a corp environment doing 40+ hours/week when I'm 70, can I imagine having my own side business? Maybe a few non-exec directorships? Perhaps help with a fractional/part-time gig one or two days a week? Sure.
Can I imagine just being on holiday for the rest of my life, where I'm constantly "exploring", or "experiencing" and never "applying" or "creating"? Not so much.
The old saying goes that if you earn money doing what you love, you never work a day in your life - and that might be where there's a disconnect, you're interpreting work as something not enjoyable, whereas for many of us, there's really deep pleasure in some aspects of it. All we want to do is dial that bit up, dial the other stuff down, and still do all those other things you mentioned too, perhaps as part of the "work".
- I always think this is very biased. Basically there are two things to consider:
1. People at deathbed usually don't think very clearly, and it suggests the deathbed experience overrules everything before
2. Many people just have work. They don't have a calling, and neither do they have a career. It does sound reasonable to drop work for something else, as long as money is fine.
- Excellent points.
Considering I have heard these "Deathbed Quotes" so many times with similar sounding refrain I am just inclined to ignore them.
And most people I know and see do drop work for family and friends ever so often as much their situation permits.
- > And most people I know and see do drop work for family and friends ever so often as much their situation permits.
Your experiences today may well be the result of this idea becoming more and more pervasive over the past 30 or so years, and the resulting reduction in employee loyalty to their employers.
- The travel things you describe to me are work (in a good way) getting away from it all can give you the clarity to know what big moves to make. I recently went to Tokyo and didn't touch work at all. The only way!
For those who can't afford that like the sister comment you can explore your own city (or suburbia or countryside). Everywhere is exotic to someone. In all 3 cases a bicycle does a good job!
- I'm part of the GenX crowd here. I can't imagine a day when I am not building or solving something.
- same here, until I closed our startup ~6 months ago and decided to do nothing after 19 years of working hard and pushing upwards. I lived with my partner so I wasn't paying rent, and now I changed my mind about retiring - I can't wait. I still got to dabble, I helped a founder friend with her core tech, I visited friends, played a bunch of video games, spent more time with my partner, and I loved it. Time felt comfy, I purposefully was not looking for work, my stress levels went down, I walked my dog at least an hour a day. I'm now going back to work, even harder problems and responsibilities, and while I'm likely to enjoy that, I am now looking forward to when I don't have to (assuming that happens)
- I hate that quote, it is so trite and stupid.
What poor person wouldn't want to have provided more for their family. What scientist would say I discovered enough. What engineer would say I built enough.
When you are alone who or what do you think about? People have different goals, dreams and desires. Claiming yours are the only ones worthy of pursuing seems rather arrogant.
- I would like to have some meaningful part-time work when I retire.
Sure, I garden, landscape, play with my tractor, spend more time playing guitar than any other hobby and go to the gym 3 times a week, but I would still want some sort of additional "purpose" to keep me engaged with society (I'm not exactly an introvert but left purely to my own devices I tend to entertain myself pretty solitarily).
- Speaking as a person who can’t see themselves stop working, I think an important factor is how one derives meaning from their life. For some it might be living amazing experiences, and for others it can be in helping others (which could qualify as work). The healthiest seems to be a combination of the two, with a different ratio depending on the person.
Here in the Netherlands it’s common to see retired people do volunteering work, as it can bring great pleasure and satisfaction to help people. There’s of course also the communal aspect of it.
It’s also common to see business owners for example in family businesses to keep working at the company after the official retirement age.
So I’d argue work does not have to be a chore and can be a source of meaning and purpose. But if it is just a means to an end, it makes sense to not want to work your entire life and good labor and retirement laws should protect people from having to work their entire life.
- "Work" here I would define as exchanging time for money.
Volunteering is not work.
For me personally, I make a distinction between "working" and "creating". I will always want to create (a very broad term), but I will not always want to work. In fact, I don't want to work now; I only want to create. The best is when I can exchange my creation for money -- then it is no longer work.
- You might enjoy a fella named marx. Labor is labor, my friend. It should be mostly devoted to things that enrich the lives of us and those around us. It is normal to want to work. It is the alienating nature of selling our labor for a pittance that ruins our lives.
- Then sell your labour for more than a pittance, if you're just haggling over the price.
- Ahh, silly me, I should have just starved on the streets until someone recognized my value.
- Unless you're in a country that embraced the teachings of Marx, you're more likely to die from too much food than not enough, or a class-based murder spree.
- No, work is effort expended to achieve a result. Whether it's paid or not is irrelevant, and many people work harder for free than they ever do in employment, because the incentives are right.
- This is a useless definition, especially in this context. Washing my dishes is not work, because it's ultimately irrelevant whether I do it or not, although I'm doing it still because I have a result in mind.
It also comes across as very out of touch and privileged, because unless you have a relatively cushy job, you would definitely not see the difference between being paid or not as irrelevant. There are plenty of people who have to work very hard just to make ends meet, be it physically exhausting work, or repetitive and monotonous work. And they will not have the capacity to work even harder once they clock out of work, no matter the incentives, because they'll be spent and unable to.
- > This is a useless definition, especially in this context.
No, it's a very apt and useful definition. It's just not one you appreciate.
> It also comes across as very out of touch and privileged, because unless you have a relatively cushy job, you would definitely not see the difference between being paid or not as irrelevant.
This comment is a straw man, because I didn't say pay was irrelevant. I said work is work whether you're paid or not.
It also ironically shows that you are out of touch and privileged, as your comment completely ignores two of the heaviest workloads in the world, housework and child-rearing. Neither are generally paid and both are most definitely work.
Only a completely out-of-touch and privileged person could think otherwise.
- > No, work is effort expended to achieve a result
By this definition, going to the toilet is "work". If that's the case, I never want to get to a point where I stop working.
- Well, it is, and the workload of ablution becomes greater as you age.
- I like to use a fuzzy definition (though, all definitions are fuzzy—what's a chair? Good luck...) based on whether it's common for someone with the means to do so, to pay others to do it for them, by choice and not due to disability or something like that.
Taking a shit? Not work. Cleaning the toilet? Work.
Eating dinner? Not work. Cooking dinner? Work.
Playing badminton on your lawn? Not work. Mowing the lawn? Work.
Napping on your Ikea couch? Not work. Assembling that couch? Work.
- How do you define "retirement"?
- > Whether it's paid or not is irrelevant
When someone contemplates the wisdom of an entrepreneur who says he’s going to work until he dies, they’re not worried he might volunteer too much.
- That's short-sighted. Most entrepreneurs, once they're financially stable, work for reasons other than money.
- "I work at a nonprofit"
"I worked on my yard today"
Your definition is arbitrary and goes against the established use of the word. Work can be many things. When people say they don't want to stop working, they are just saying they want to keep changing the world in big or small ways until they die.
- I wish I could do unpaid volunteer work and still afford live. By which I mean, I really hate that certain kinds of work are not deemed worthy enough of financial compensation, yet are still beneficial to people and society at large.
- Been there and done many of the things you described, have a family today and I still love being a founder and working very long weeks. I know not everyone is like this though.
The only unmet desire I have left to work towards is to serve others and improve everyone else's life. And building a big successful business is the best way to maximize that desire. The clearest derivatives of my work efforts are the great jobs and work created for everyone at the company and the improvement on our customers lives.
- > I completely get the drive to create; I have various side projects I make for fun and to learn.
Some of my side projects would be straight up finically impossible if I didn't have willing buyers for the product. I agree that creation is my ultimate motivation, but so long as I continue to enjoy and wish to pursue this those specific modes of creation, I have to accept that it will also be work. Perhaps that is where those other perspectives are also coming from?
- I probably say something similar to this. I plan to create for the rest of my life. I'm also trying to build a business out of this because I hope that someday it will give me even more freedom and maybe even extend that to my kids and grandkids, if I were successful enough. It also means that I can set my own priorities. I'll likely retire when I'm 65 (too late but I don't think I'll be prepared enough to do it earlier) and continue to "work" on my own stuff, maybe until I die.
But, yes, I've seen some of the world and I want to see more of it. I have a couple groups of friends that hang out more than once a month and I've traveled with them multiple times this year. I have family that I see pretty often. There's really not enough time for all the stuff I do but I'm still driven to create.
- Lost my grandpa a couple years ago and he said almost exactly “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard” on his deathbed.
- A lifetime is a long time. Viewpoints, opinions, standpoints, circumstances and plans rarely last a lifetime.
- I don't think it's that crazy in certain careers; I've seen a similar sentiment in academics.
Back in grad school, we had several professors emeriti who were teaching a class or two, or collaborating with a lab, because they just enjoyed it.
- I do think some individuals much prefer work over family or friends since 'work' relations are professional, formal and regulated while personal relationships lack those and are chaotic and random.
- Traveling all over the world is very bad for the environment and climate...
- I retired last year. Decided I’ve got enough money to last me the rest of my life if I live reasonably, and that’s good enough for me. I have a 40 hour a week job doing development, but it’s a passion project that I’m doing purely for enjoyment (and I’m working completely for equity). I felt my life instantly get easier the moment I quit my old job. It’s conceivable that this job will make me a pile of money, but I know it isn’t likely. I see my kids a lot more, I take time off when I need it, and I still feel like I’m doing something useful. I have decided that this is truly the way to live.
- Honestly - leave the whale, jungles, and over-touristed Tokyo-ites alone.
Travel lightly, get a feel for different environments and cultures, then take that perspective to your hometown.
Travel is frosting. The cake can be building a meaningful life that involves community, maybe family, and possibly meaningful work.
- Not everyone has the money to swim with whales or explore jungles. And even among the few that do, many would rather spend thier money on uplifting other people than self-indulgent ecotourism. Many would rather work until they die in full knowledge that doing so might help free thier children from work altogether. And a fair number still see productive work as a greater good than sloth or vanity.
- You can go hike the Appalachian Trail for free. Explore national parks for a nominal fee. Explore the sights and sounds of your nearest city without much cost at all.
- Not sure if you meant hiking the whole AT or not, but thru-hiking the AT costs an estimated $1k per month (most thru-hikers take 5-7 months and spend about 5-7 grand). Equipment, food, occasional lodging and doing nice things on the way, and you'll still likely have to be paying all your normal expenses while you're doing it.
- I have rent and calorie upkeep costs
- I saw an interview with Cesar Milan a few years back where he talked about how he survived after first coming to the US. He said something to the effect of (paraphrasing)
When we visited Tokyo last year, we ended up eating a lot of 7-11 onigiri for breakfast as there weren't many places open when we were up and heading out. $2 will take you a surprisingly long way if you're not picky.> "America is amazing, you could get two hotdogs for $1 at 7-11. That's all I needed to survive."The same for housing. I know folks that are making mid 6-figures who live in shared houses because housing is not something that they value; it's a place for them to sleep at night.
It's about what you value and then how you exchange your time on Earth.
- > That's all I needed to survive.
That sounds like a pretty grim way to live. As a tech worker, I’d rather “live” than survive. Each to their own.
> It's about what you value and then how you exchange your time on Earth.
I think you should take a look at this thread with this comment in mind - not everyone else values the same things as you and that’s ok.
- $2 7-11 onigiri is surprisingly good!
- Along the same lines, my parents - immigrants into the US in the late-80s - would always tell me that food in the US is cheap. Granted, this was more true for restaurant/fast-food prior to a few years ago. But the point still holds for grocery store items if you know how to cook/shop.
- This is such a retarded modern take on things, not everyone derives meaning from checking off a bucket list they read about on some internet listicle. For some of us, creating and contributing is the goal.
- The irony of this statement is; most of the people who have adopted the views you're criticizing used to believe what you believe. I am one of those individuals.
I used to think that my worth could be measured by the amount of work that I produced. That there was some big tally board and everytime I did something valuable I would get a "tick" and that the "ticks" would eventually be tallied up and there would be some reward. Some relief. Something.
Only after having been literally told "This is my company, my revenue, my profit, and there's no relief coming for you no matter how hard you try" by not one, but TWO different employers did I finally start to adopt the thinking of prioritizing my own well being.
And only after prioritizing my own well being did I develop this sense of value in things I enjoy. Armed with the knowledge about the value of myself I was able to finally prioritize between work and home.
I highly recommend the book "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson. It is really good at demonstrating how "if everything is sacred, then nothing is sacred."
- That wasn't the point and you've completely misread it. The very first point was "family and friends" and for me, travel is something that helps me experience the broader world. It's not a bucket list, it's the fact that this world is immense, filled with experiences and that we only have one lifetime to find those experiences that enrich our short time here.
The hypothetical question is is whether this individual has already experienced everything there was to experience and decided "No, working 9-9 is what I value in life!"
- > The hypothetical question is is whether this individual has already experienced everything there was to experience and decided "No, working 9-9 is what I value in life!"
This is a foolish question.
A person can’t experience “everything” even if given a life of 10,000 years.
Everybody has to decide what they value in life before experiencing everything.
The question is whether someone has decided that the thing they’re doing is what they personally find value in or not.
The alternative which I’ll admit is sad (and which is not what you have said to this point) is that someone is doing something that they do not find value in. Your whole point has been that working is not a good way to spend limited life, without acknowledging that what you call work someone else calls enrichment.
- Maybe the person just doesn’t care about swimming with whales or having friends? Does everybody really think the dense Amazon jungle is neat?
You’re projecting what you think makes life worth living onto someone else.
Can you really not imagine that for another person working is what they love as much as you seem to love climbing snowy mountains?
> Life is too short
I agree with this. It’s too short to think about how someone else is spending theirs.
- You're missing the forest for the trees.
You have one lifetime on this Earth and it is a big place with many experiences and sights. Do not regret in the end that you exchanged too much of that one lifetime for money rather than enriching it with many experiences be it with family, friends, or even by oneself.
- If you're reading r/startups or r/entrepreneur, I suspect original OP drives some satisfaction and meaning from building a money-making machine themselves.
Not everyone wants to travel the world their entire life, and working is an experience in itself that similarly may not resonate with everyone.
- Your trees are not someone else’s trees.
Is someone who climbs snowy mountains for a living (but who loves working on spreadsheets) trading too much of their one lifetime for money?
Different things enrich different people’s lives.
Can you not imagine that what you call “work” is the experience that gives this person enrichment?
To be honest from what I can see it seems like you are the person with a narrow worldview.
I never said they were; only that life is short -- find your forest. Quoting myself:> Your trees are not someone else’s trees
And I'm pretty certain that forest isn't exchanging your limited time in life for money. I'm giving concrete examples, not exclusive examples.> Had they already experienced everything good there is to experience in this one lifetime that they were so bored of it that they would prefer to work instead?Touch grass, my friend, and find your forest.
- You’re changing your tune pretty quick here and have artfully dodged essentially all of my questions.
> I'm pretty certain that forest isn't exchanging your limited time in life for money
A simple question — what if your forest happens to hand you money back? Are you still “pretty certain” of this?
- I dislike the word "loyalty" when talking about employment. Loyalty is for your spouse, friends and family. Your relationship with your employer is a contractual one.
When it comes to my job, I believe in doing your best possible work, being professional and acting in good faith. I expect to be paid fairly and treated with respect. If this relationship is mutually beneficial, it can go on for a long while. But it's important to remember that, as soon as it stops being beneficial to one party, it will be unilaterally rescinded.
- This is a very rich-world view of work. Most people can't just "unilaterally rescind" their employment if they decide they don't like it anymore.
I don't disagree with what you're getting at, just understand that loyalty is a necessity to a lot of folks, and I don't think it is because their values are misplaced.
- I understand your point, but I wouldn't call that loyalty either. Loyalty is a choice, you could cheat on your partner, but you choose not to.
What you're talking about is necessity. If you don't have the possibility to simply walk away from a job, then you're sticking around because you must, not because you're loyal.
- Yeah,that's loyalty in the same way that a hostage is loyal to their captor.
- They said "stops beneficial to one party", not that any of the parties stops liking it.
Many people don't like their jobs, that doesn't mean they don't benefit enough from it to pay bills.
- >Most people can't just "unilaterally rescind" their employment if they decide they don't like it anymore.
I suspect what's meant here is that most anyone can take a different job and leave one that no longer serves them, not that most anyone can walk away from a job without another lined up.
- 100% agree, loyalty goes both ways and we rarely see loyal employers (massive layoffs including hi-profile employee who dedicated their life to the company)
- Loyalty to a corporation is misplaced because it can only be as loyal as its agents are, and those are numerous and constantly shifting.
I think its fine to be loyal to individuals that have earned it, but don’t make the mistake of thinking your boss can guarantee your employment in all circumstances, that’s not how the corporate world works.
- Red flag if bosses use that word, it's either an attempt to manipulate or they have a weird entitled view of what you owe them.
- I don't like the word "loyalty" when talking about anything. It's not a virtue in any circumstance. Spouses, friends and family are just as likely to abuse it. A bullshit concept celebrated by those who crave power. It's Religion Light.
- While I strongly disagree with the framing of loyalty, it is also important to remember that there is a relationship between what you put into a job and what you get out of it. I'm not going to claim that the relationship is always going to be fair, but walking into a job while seeing everything as transactional is going to have a negative impact upon your employer, your coworkers, and yourself.
By all means, set boundaries. Make it clear that your time off is for you to pursue your own things (hobbies, families, friends, etc.). Also ensure that you are balancing your personal are professional obligations, which is to suggest that it is not reasonable for your priorities to become other people's problems just as it is not reasonable for other people's problems to become your problem. And if you do cross that line, don't view your trip to the unemployment line as a lack of "loyalty" from the company. It is you failing to hold yourself accountable.
Now I'm not going to claim that my words apply to every workplace. Some workplaces are seriously messed up and are truly exploitative. On the other hand, I have also seen workplaces where the employers try to be accommodating to an employee, yet the employee is "doing their best", either intentionally or unintentionally, to spread their misery.
- Systemically, there is a bias to find/retain employees that overcommit, and a bias for employers that will undercommit to the "relationship".
Rationally you can agree it is a purely transactional state. Working hours for compensation. Emotionally in tech many love the work itself, or the nerdy glamour of the industry, or the inherent intelectual bravadory and oneupmanship, and so are ripe for exploitation.
HR will draw you in, infecting your social life with company perks, values and "we are a family" messaging only to turn all process when it comes to an end.
But as the systemics are clear, each new generation will get drawn in. And tbh, often it can still be a good deal.
- I agree with your first paragraph, but I don’t really like the exploitation framing for tech jobs. Sure there is exploitation but there is also a lot of rest and vest going on. When you look at who’s delivering value in software it’s very unevenly distributed and only loosely correlated with raw work hours. A big part is collaboration and team dynamics. The ground dynamics are much more relevant than HR narratives when it comes to how a job feels and whether high expectations are motivating or seem exploitative.
- Eh, I'm okay with doing more than required, as long as the employer also does so on their part.
- butif the employer also do their part, then you're not doing more than required - you're doing _exactly_ what is required.
The only way to do more than required is when one party benefits more (e.g., employer gets free overtime, or an employee clocks more hours than they actually did).
- They won't.
- Well right now they do for me at least...
- I haven't seen much of a bias towards seeking out a predisposition to loyalty in employees except among authoritarian small business owner types who invariably underpay.
I don't think offering perks is necessarily supposed to engender loyalty. It's still a transactional relationship ("ok, google might pay less than the startup but I do get free lunches at google...").
In most companies I have more often seen not even a shred of expectation of loyalty. It's pretty normal to see critical employees quit at an inconvenient time on a critical project and the only person who expresses any bad feelings is the employee in question feeling a bit guilty.
- >I haven't seen much of a bias towards seeking out a predisposition to loyalty in employees except among authoritarian small business owner types who invariably underpay.
It's easy. Some red flags:
"This is not a 9 to 5 job, you should know that. But that's normal in this industry"
"We're looking for people who are passionate about their work"
"I won't sugarcoat it, there are good and bad weeks" in terms of workload and hours
"We see a gap in your resume here a decade ago - may I ask why you took time off during this time"
etc
Those are signals.
There's a normalization of sociopathy in the hiring process. That's how we filter. Or maybe it's just financial services?
- Yours are signals that a company is selecting for people who will consent to being overworked. That's not about loyalty.
Loyalty would be "we're looking for candidates who have long job tenures. do not apply if you never stayed at a job longer than 3 years".
- It's not 1950 anymore. Workers are no longer employed by people with a sense of community, duty, patriotism/nationalism, or anything else involving loyalty. The only loyalty is to the bottom line.
As such the employers will receive the same in return.
- I am just old enough to grow up amongst company men, believing that if you take care of a company, they will take care of you, and that a career at one organization is a prosperous and beneficial one. I found out the hard way (worked 20 years at essentially the same company) that this notion was dead or dying before I was even born, is virtually non-existent in tech companies, and is kinda dangerous to your career in this industry.
I still _like_ the idea, but remember loyalty much like respect is earned, not demanded or obligated. When it comes down to it, they don’t give a shit about you, so take care of yourself.
- It's a reciprocal agreement.
If my employer is decent and goes the extra mile, I'd be encouraged to do the same. If they're shitty, then they get what's in signed the contract, and that's it.
But... don't fall for the "we're family" nonsense. You're not. You're a disposable asset in a column on a spreadsheet somewhere.
"No-one's final words are ever: 'I wish I'd worked more'"
- Never confuse loyalty to a person with loyalty to an employer.
I have found loyalty to managers - when reciprocated - is the most valuable currency I have. It's led to both rewarding experiences & safety from the exact type of organizational change that makes loyalty to an employer useless.
Loyalty is for people & ideas, never organizations.
- You can be as quickly dismissed as the guy reads off a piece of paper (for liability purposes), swivels the camera round to HR rep, and your access is cut off right after the call.
You have pretty much a minute or two (if that) to bye a sentence to a couple chats, and it's over. Done.
Oh, and swing by to return equipment. Thanks.
Not that it's worse by any previous measure. Just the process folks will go through: bloodless, swift, smooth. (They have a list to get through.)
You can always wish it never happens, convince yourself every dawn or dusk commit proves something, but only the present reality ever mattered.
Every student of computer science should experience a simulated firing. At least to consider beyond the "system under test" and reflect on business and capital, to think on the end of things along with its beginning.
- For context, the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the above is true.
That said, he's a recruiter and there's nothing of value to be found in the blog post.
- Well they can't fire you totally on the spot in the UK, but I believe they can put you on immediate "gardening leave" where you lose all access to systems and buildings etc. You'll still get paid and are still technically employed, but you'll not be working on anything and can't go to the office.
I think there is some expectation for gardening leave to be available for the odd call or meeting for doing handovers etc, but realistically I don't think anyone would expect a disgruntled suddenly-made-redundant employee to really do that with any gusto or enthusiasm.
- "you'll still get paid and are still technically employed, but you'll not be working on anything and can't go to the office."
Oh noooooooooo, anything but that!
Joking aside, seriously, part of why this is all so traumatizing in the US is because the second you know you're getting laid off, you're not even thinking about the job or anything anymore. You're trying to guess how much COBRA is going to be and hoping you don't get seriously ill in the next N months.
Seriously, COBRA is often so fucking expensive that being laid off doesn't just mean loss of income, it means literally suddenly getting a NEGATIVE paycheck each month, as you now have to cover the % of the healthcare plan your employer was paying for. If I got laid off right now, i'd immediately start paying about $6000/mo for my current policy under COBRA. Then, if you do need to use it, it's still got a deducible and coinsurance!
So yeah, that's why summary dismissal is so painful in the US.
- You can actually be fired on the spot, this is called "summary dismissal", but only applies in case of gross misconduct, so the cases that become "office lore" ;)
- > the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the above is true.
You can absolutely be dismissed without cause in the UK, protections against this only kick in after two years of employment.
- > For context, the OP is in the EU and UK, where none of the above is true.
In the EU many protections -- depending on the member state -- only apply under certain conditions. For example, employees in companies with less than 10.25 FTE do not enjoy any termination protection beyond very short notice periods (between 1 and 7 month) in Germany.
- > do not enjoy any termination protection beyond very short notice periods (between 1 and 7 month) in Germany.
Not sure if that's a typo because several months of notice sounds long to me!
- You get 7 months notice after 20 years of employment. I think that puts it into perspective ;)
- idk, while trite, the bulleted list is full of common sense that’s all too easily forgotten:
> * Do not sacrifice your relationship with family and friends to appease your employer.
* Do not sacrifice your mental wellbeing to appease your employer.
* Do not sacrifice your dignity, values, and ethics to appease your employer.
* Do not buy into the bullshit hype of “hustle” to appease your employer.
- > You have pretty much a minute or two (if that) to bye a sentence to a couple chats, and it's over. Done.
When remote in this situation, I've shut off wifi and hard powered down right after meeting before they try and remote wipe.
I enjoyed making them squirm while I take a few weeks to mail back equipment, while receiving increasingly urgent emails.
Pointless I know, but was fun.
- The pros remote wipe overnight while you are sleeping, or at the very least during the meeting with HR and your VP. Waiting to terminate access until after the bad news is delivered is just asking for trouble!
- Others have already written in their comments on this post about how silly the idea of loyalty to a company is.
I think all I'll add to that is that I have ended up at the point where I doubt I'll ever give my "best" work to an employer again - I'm just there to put the JIRA tickets in the bag, so to speak.
My best work is now exclusively reserved for things in my free time that I have a personal interest in.
- Did a switch flip or was it a gradual turn?
I think about this too: should I just have a job to do the job well enough / adequately so to speak and then focus my brain power elsewhere (kids, house, amateur trades, etc)
- What does loyalty have to do with the quality of your work?
I’m all for boundaries by the way, not overworking etc, but my “best” work tends to come out unpredictably when the conditions are right. The people and project matter, but the fact that employment is transactional doesn’t really factor in for me.
- > What does loyalty have to do with the quality of your work?
For me? Everything
Maybe this won't be the case anymore when I get assigned to the severed floor, but until then...
> but my “best” work tends to come out unpredictably when the conditions are right
I get this, but the moment this "feeling" comes up during my 9-5 I nip it in the bud
- I read a book 20 years ago(forgot the name), one chapter is called "work as a mercenary', since then I detached my personal feeling from the companies I worked at, it served both sides well over the years.
- On the one hand, you are a single-person service provider and should act accordingly.
On the other hand, the individuals you work with will remember how much you helped them and how you made them feel, which will go a long way towards future engagements.
- > Do you treat your people well? > Glassdoor is your friend.
I have read, here on HN, that Glassdoor is not accurate. How do you realistically tell from outside if a company does treat their people well, or has a difficult culture? I've heard people mention churn, but people stick around even in those environments (especially for financial reasons) and churn is not always an indicator.
- Glassdoor isn't gospel but it is a useful data point.
>How do you realistically tell from outside if a company does treat their people well, or has a difficult culture?
The challenge there is that everyone has different interpretations of 'a difficult culture'. What's important (albeit difficult) is establishing an understanding of the type of environment you thrive in and the types of environments you struggle in. With that understanding, it's important to spend time during an interview process asking open-ended questions that might reveal the aspects you love/hate.
- There is also a bias on Glassdoor. I would imagine, much like product reviews, people are more likely to go out of their way to leave a negative review than a positive review of an employer.
- Hustle hard! Work is not everything! You are what you do! Life is adventure! Your team is your family! It's just business! Don't have expectations! No, do have expectations! This company is different! Wait, all companies are the same! Go on vacation! No! Come back! Be more productive! No, wait, be less productive, have work-life balance...
Just don't be an asshole. Some loyalty is fine... or not! It depends!
- You should be loyal to your craft, not to your employer.
You might have a job as a developer at some company that could get terminated at any time. Your skills and reputation remain irrespectively.
- What about the loyal loom operators?
- I am guessing some of those loom operators transitioned to mending and patching, and operating the new machines. Guessing we will do the same. Just not all of us will make it.
- Counterpoint - while the “company” itself (the gestalt of the group) are not incentivized to reciprocate loyalty, the relationships with individuals you work with within the team, across the company, and into customer and vendor relationships are worth cultivating. At the very least, a wide professional network is helpful and can extend beyond your current employment.
- I always scratch my head when someone refers to the “company”. A company is a bunch of people, and that’s the level at which I build relationships and make decisions about loyalty.
- There's a level where institutions are separate from the people that make them move. If your boss can get replaced without destroying your department, then that institutional layer exists.
- > the idea of spending 30 years working for the same employer is mind boggling
I've never seen someone staying at a job for 10+ years explain it by loyalty.
For some it's pure habbit and no need to move on, for others it's an equilibrium and they get better benefits from staying than the money they'd get leaving.
And in so many places, the people who were staying there their whole life just loved the job. They loved what they were doing either for society or for themselves. Some actually hated their employer, but it was a price to pay to do the job (I'd expect a ton of the Publix service people to be in that bucket)
- My Dad would agree with you. He enjoys his work, he likes the people, and he'll be the first to admit that he's been happy enough with the convenience of it all to prevent him from wondering if the grass might be greener elsewhere.
- I write from a new grad perspective, but as said, put your well-being and the well-being of those you care about above all.
Meanwhile don't beat yourself up if you are young (bonus if you just relocated for work) and spent too much time at work or feel "loyal" to your employer. Wind down, of course, but don't beat yourself up.
- Even if you are content at your job, there are risks in staying for very long periods of time.
If you've ever joined an org where key people have been there for decades then you'll know of the immense amount of interior knowledge that these folks have. At best, they become instituional memories of the org, at worst, a cabal. The worst case is obvious: you can't get anything done barring their approval, and as a newbie you aren't in the club. But the best case is more insidious: because of the long timers, no one has documented processes, recorded the special tricks needed for the job, or done a simulation of what would happen if one of these key people were to evaporate. (And it does happen, because after 20+ years on the job, they are at the age where sudden death strikes happen, eg heart attacks.)
If you become one of these people, great, but you may find that you have expert knowledge in a very small domain, which is difficult if you get laid off. Which brings me on to my next point.
If you stay at a place for a long time, you are going to build a network of work friends, who, naturally, also stayed at the same place for your tenure. This is great, but also dangerous, because the network of people who can help you find a new job are not dispersed and at the same risk of layoffs as you.
If you work in the widget industry, and you and all your buddies work for WidgetCorp, what happens when WidgetCorp lays you off? Who do you call to start finding work in widgets? You need a diaspora of people in your industry who you knew from WidgetCo but who moved on to WidgetInc or whatever, and likewise, you yourself can be that person by moving on from your company after a few years.
- > what happens when WidgetCorp lays you off?
While you're at widgetcorp, make your name known in the industry as the expert of widgets. Essentially, it's a sort of public portfilio. Surely, there are widgetcorp competitors out there, which if they get wind of your immenent layoff, might take a bet at hiring you. Not to mention you might be able to poach the other members of widgetcorp as an entire team.
- Personally I would be willing to accept a slightly lower salary to get off the merry-go-round. I'd like to be in one place for a while where I can do some good work without so much of the craziness.
- Meta comment: the situation with employee-employer loyalty seems pretty similar to the loyalty situation in other aspects of modern life like dating/marriage partner-partner, politician-constituent, or friend-friend: you're not incentivized to be loyal and in a lot of situations, you're actually incentivized to not be loyal and to continually look for better opportunities.
To me, that feels like a failure of the deeper social system. I want to be loyal to the people I work for/with, not treat our relationship like a transaction that is socially acceptable to end at any minute. And in a bigger sense, I don't think it results in organizations that do truly good work over longer timescales.
Maybe the solution isn't Japanese-style one megacorporation for life employment...but a few steps toward incentivizing loyalty probably wouldn't hurt.
- That's complete nonsense. An employer is nothing like a partner. And as for those who are not loyal to friends, they will quickly find themselves without any.
As long as the employer is not solving world hunger or finding a cure for disease, the relationship is strictly transactional, and will remain as such.
- I didn't say that they are similar types of things, but that similar incentive structures are at play across them. That seems pretty obvious to me if we look at 1) the way employees make more money by changing jobs often and 2) how people using dating apps are always complaining about FOMO, infinite choice, and so on. In both situations the "user" is incentivized to not be loyal.
- They're not the same. Commitment is a thing in personal relationships. In a professional relationship, it is still a thing, but it is contingent on the employer demonstrating it. The first side to break the commitment is the one who is in the wrong.
Infinite choice is something to exercise before making a commitment, not after it.
- After working at the same (big tech) company for nine years, I feel like an outlier. My career has had phases of intense hard work and periods of rest. However, my happiness was influenced by many other factors. While working hard and being in the flow can be incredibly gratifying, it can also be stressful. Additionally, the relationships at work play a significant role, more so than the work itself.
In my friend circle, I’ve noticed that the happiest people are those who are pursuing their own interests and achieving moderate success in them. Ultimately, this seems to create a sense of purpose. And I am envious of such people.
Work is also a crucial component of the "work-life" balance dichotomy. If you’re not working enough, you’re likely to feel unhappy.
- Most wars involve deception at some level and then loyalty is vital. You need to prove that to the command center in stages. But when you get in you're rewarded handsomely.
Many low quality engineers have accidently stumbled upon this lucrative truth, simply because they had low optionality to move elsewhere and therefore also rank ethical considerations very low as a motivating criterion.
- A company is a machine, it cannot give loyalty back. Ever.
Loyalty in people disappeared decades ago (I would say earlier, but I wasn't there). You are mistaking strength by numbers for loyalty. What you describe is nothing like it.
- Individuals within a company can be loyal, and sometimes corporate decisions are made based on perceived loyalty
- I think you are mistaking hierarchy and obedience for loyalty.
- I’ve worked with many “Mittelstand” companies in Germany—often fourth-generation family businesses. Time and again, I’ve seen how the board and CEO go above and beyond to ensure their employees are taken care of, in both good times and bad. And when you talk to people working there, you can feel this mutual sense of loyalty reflected in their words.
I’m not saying this is common in the tech industry at all, but I can confirm that loyalty between a company (and yes, I’m deliberately using company over people here) and its employees does exist—on a broader scale and in the most positive sense. This doesn’t mean that hard, economical decisions don’t need to be made or that people live in a cloud of blind loyalty.
But there’s a lot of beauty and wellbeing in this dynamic, if you’re willing to explore it—and it’s definitely something I personally strive for.
- I think we lost something important when company loyalty was thrown aside in favor of the present "every person for themselves" attitudes.
We lost long-term planning. When companies and employees both view their relationship as inherently limited to just a few years before one or the other tires of them and trades in for a new model, we lose the ability to envision a real, tangible future for the organization. We stopped building institutions meant to withstand the tests of time, and built an armada of startups solely designed to cash out as quickly as possible, sold to corporate conglomerates leaping from fad to fad without any inkling as to how everything comes together or integrates. We deluded ourselves with maths, formulas, models, spreadsheets of information demonstrating that this attitude was the most valuable approach, tacitly admitting that long-term planning and execution was so difficult that the only viable approach is making more money tomorrow than we did yesterday, and everything else will work out fine because that's someone else's job.
Not related to OP's article (which is excellent and concise, highly recommended in general), but just a personal mourning of a lost future by someone who thrives in said environments, but can't find any that exist in this world. I'm a literal dinosaur in that regard, I guess: thriving through consistent adaptation and execution on long-term strategies and plans, built for a fifty-year tenure but living in a society where gig work doesn't even last fifteen minutes.
Alas.
- > We lost long-term planning. When companies and employees both view their relationship as inherently limited to just a few years before one or the other tires of them and trades in for a new model, we lose the ability to envision a real, tangible future for the organization.
Yeah, and there is an actual historical moment and culprit to pin this on:
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/01/1101505691/short-term-profits...
- If you die, would the employer bat an eye before they reposted your position, or would they hold your position and chair to honor you.
Loyalty doesn't last. At the most you can build up some good will and favour, and that almost always has a clock running.
- Delicious swag mmm on that desk
- Everybody hides his true opinion about this subject.
- Spot on. Modern jobs are 100% transactional with very few exceptions.
This is a relatively new development, and there ARE some counterexamples available among the large employers local to me, but you can't assume you'll get one. (In Houston, for example, if a long-term employee of an oil major is on the "layoff list" close to a tenure milestone, they'll find a way to keep them -- 20 years is a magic number for retention of insurance here.)
PEOPLE can be worthy of loyalty, but in a large corporation being loyal to a manager who is 4 layers down the tree is silly. You can and will be laid off by people who don't know your name. It's one reason I've stayed in smaller firms. I'm loyal to MY boss, because he owns the firm, and because he's showed ME loyalty.
- How much are jobs then attained in purely transactional ways?
Perhaps I am too invested in people, but relationships matter my industry (insurance). I think you develop them in part by not being purely transactional, and they later help if you need to love, explore, or change.
Am I wrong about that dynamic?
- > Note: This post originally appeared in HackerNoon in 2018. I’m republishing it here in order to preserve and share the original piece.
- > I’m constantly witness to colleagues in the tech industry posting on LinkedIn about how great their employer
Whatever happened to dignity?
- Don't do it. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
- I quit.
- Well, I won't say I had it major good, but I did stay with my last job for almost 27 years.
That tends to draw some pretty nasty stuff from this crowd, with the most charitable, accusing me of being a "chump," but there were reasons, and I don't regret it.
- > Do not buy into the bullshit hype of “hustle” to appease your employer
I completely disagree here. Hustling under the right leadership is as good for you as for the business. You learn the industry, hone your skills, network, and improve your understanding of the interactions between different business functions. IME, people who go above and beyond and produce value beyond just doing what their immediate supervisor tells them - even challenging them in the right ways for a better outcome - tend to survive through layoffs too. You can make work a reasonable part of your life, but still try your damndest during those hours.
- There's a difference between trying your damndest during working hours, and hustle nonsense. In my experience, employers see time spent on site as a measure of success more than how productive you are during your regular workday.
So I read that to mean, don't kill yourself working unpaid overtime. You can still do a great job, working established working hours. I agree with that 100%. While I'm at work, I'm at work. But the moment that the day is over, work does not exist and will not exist.
- This article is written by a recruiter. Recruiters make less money if everyone stays put. So repeating this trope about employees being transactions might be great for them, but it does not contribute to a more friendly society.
A bit of trust and loyalty makes working together a lot more enjoyable. And not every CEO is a narcissist. Just stay away from the really big companies, and you might be fine.
- I hadn't considered the idea that my motivation for writing this might be interpreted as a ploy to generate more business. :)
Most of my perspective comes from working for and with startups. There's nothing wrong with a bit of mutual trust and loyalty. I'm simply warning that too much of either can be detrimental.
- > So repeating this trope about employees being transactions might be great for them, but it does not contribute to a more friendly society.
And repeating the trope that employees should be loyal to employers only benefit corporations and those that profit from them, to the detriment of labour.
- I have found that in the age of work from home its increasingly difficult to have any loyalty or community with the people I work with. Been in my current company for ~4 years and I just feel nothing for them. The pay is good so I work hard. Other than that, 90% of my co-workers are off shore so I have almost no interaction with them aside from a 2 hour or so overlap in the morning. Couldn't tell you what most of their names are or what they do. They are just a series of letters sending me teams messages asking me for help or to work on a ticket.
The entire thing is a black box. I put work in and I get money out.
- The sad fact is that the people best suited to thrive in a context where relationships are transactional and mostly dependent on continued usefulness to both parties - are sociopaths/machiavellian types.
And these are precisely the people who are most okay with shouting from the rooftop that their company is the best in the world - then doing so from a different company 2-3 years later.
It's good for mental health to understand that. These people do not have better jobs or work for better companies on average - they just say they do because it's better for their career and have no shame or accountability in doing so publicly.
- My view is that you can't be loyal to a company because a company can't be loyal to you.
Loyalty is personal. You can be loyal to a boss because that boss has earned it over time by demonstrating that they are also loyal to you and will have your back.
- I am not loyal to my employer. I am loyal to doing competent work. If our goals align, then we will get on.
Any gaslighting or bullshit past that will be fucked off instantly.
- > I am loyal to doing competent work. If our goals align, then we will get on.
100% agreed here, but I've also noticed I've had a fair few managers who didn't know what to do with someone like this. Sure, promotions are nice and what not, but if I'm not producing interesting work (or managing a team of people producing interesting work), it's pretty difficult to care about said job, and I'll move on quickly.
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- I think one of the most important part of an employee is being loyal to the company. But if there was some other company that pays more for my loyalty...
I'm going to wherever they value my loyalty the most.
- That's not what loyalty means. It means that the employer will pay you fairly and treat you decently. It doesn't mean they will pay you top dollar. What you described is a purely contractual relationship, and such job hopping comes with its own strong risks.
