Itamar Turner-Trauring latest Software Clown newsletter¹ (#105) was about this. The author wrote about a similar story where a company he worked at changed as it grew and layoffs were made.
He concluded with some really good points:
| I came away from the experience unable to commit myself to a company. In part this was an ethical stance: who controls the company can change, and change quickly. So loyalty to a company meant committing to follow people who shouldn't be followed, not because authority is inherently bad, but because in most companies authority cannot be rescinded by the workers in its power.
| But it was also an emotional reaction: I'd put a lot of myself into my job, only to see my work—and my friends' work—destroyed in an incompetent power grab. I didn't want to go through that again.
| The thing about loyalty, though, is that it's motivating: you give your loyalty because you want something or someone to succeed. So if you're past the point of pure survival, where do you find motivation if not in loyalty?
| Eventually I came round to solidarity, a thornier path than loyalty. Loyalty is simple, because it starts with an answer: your country, your cause, your company, your friends—above all. Solidarity is complex, because it starts with a question: beyond yourself, beyond your friends, beyond your cause, beyond your country, what ought you do to help everyone?
In essence, its essential that we as software professionals work in company that's really motivates us and hence can call us to grow, otherwise we would soon find ourself getting left behind in fast paced software world. Seen this happening to experienced developers in my company.
Or: you recognize that you are a disposable commodity, accept that fact, and focus your growth not along dimensions that benefit your company, but strictly in ways that benefit you and your loved ones.
You are only valuable if you can align those well with company goals. That’s the way I see it: I try to find employers where the dot product of their desire vector and my desire vector is high and where the dot product of their desire vector and my capability vector is high. Not just the basis vectors but the actual value.
So far it’s worked. But I haven’t had the decades of experience yet to reflect on it.
>You are only valuable if you can align those well with company goals.
As I see it, that's my manager's job. He's always blathering on about aligning with this or with that, but I have more than enough work to keep me busy and if he wants me to work on something else, he will tell me. This has worked well for me for 2 decades and I'm more than satisfied with my benefits and compensation that I'm happy to just keep plugging along.
Haha, I imagine neither of our experiences has sufficient predictive power as to what works. Ah well, let’s hope the next decades don’t teach us both too many hard lessons about our respective philosophies.
It is the job of both of you. However the motivations are different. Over time one or the other will be more useful to follow.
Your manager needs you to bridge the gap between when the company was doing yesterday (this is what is making the money today), and what the company will do tomorrow. When your manager sees that next year they will need a skill and gets you to develop that skill they have your domain knowledge of the existing product to apply to the next thing and the whole gets done faster because of your experience and new skills.
You are responsible for yourself. If the next job is a variation on what you did today no training is required so he won't give it - it makes you less valuable to outsiders so you won't leave. Also because you are not growing he doesn't have to give you top raises to keep you from leaving - which is more money to give someone else who is better than you. The downside of this is you need to guess where the next big thing will be and sometimes you will be wrong.
Your manager's job is aligning their talents with company goals. When your manager aligns you with company goals, that's no longer called a 'job', is illegal in civilized countries, and isn't a role many folks seek out.
If your goals are too closely aligned with the company's, you risk devaluing yourself for your own or the next company's goals. If your goals are too different from your company's, you risk finding yourself out of a job.
it's surprising how few realize this. I would use different words than "disposable commodity" but the point is the same. Your job is the revenue stream for you and yours. Your focus should be maximizing that revenue stream, it doesn't matter what company the end is attached to. If you're a live-to-work type and your life is defined by your work that's perfectly fine too, the stream goes from revenue to.. I don't know, a "fulfillment" stream. But again, the focus is maximizing that stream not what it's connected to.
What are your thoughts on "maximizing the revenue stream"? We commonly hear that job hopping is one way to maximize income. Contracting and consulting? Others?
what works for me is just keeping my professional network in good shape and my ears up. I've doubled my pay in about 5 years by just keeping in touch with people. My last transition started with a simple linkedin msg like "hey I'm starting a new practice at this other firm, i need a delivery director, you in?" and that was that.
As the sibling comment points out, be loyal to individuals. Also, if you are rank and file employee, caring for the industry more than the company produces better long-term results.
Caring for your industry also produces things like open source contributions, conference talks, and other forms of collaboration which are arguably of greater benefit to your personal career than they are to your current employer.
The way loyalty has always worked is that your first loyalty is to individuals, like yourself, your family, boss and immediate coworkers, and your second loyalty is to the collective you all belong to, like your company, extended family and neighborhood.
People who can't recognize second loyalties can't be trusted, and need to be weeded out of an organization before it hits hard times, otherwise they just won't be able to be relied on.
Your company isn't just some faceless entity interested only in profits. It's face is all of you and it exists to keep all of you fed and with a roof over your head. A company with a headcount of 40 people can provide for 200+ individuals. All 40 of those will work together to bail out the company because the company provides for themselves and their families. It's simply immature to not recognize that.
You shouldn't be expected to choose your second loyalty over your first, except in very rare situations. But those situations exist and you should recognize them. When it's crunch time, it's crunch time. Crunch time all the time demands a re-evaluation of priorities, but so long as it's relatively rare, put in the hours and build solidarity with the people you're working hard with.
You shouldn't make your second loyalty your first, is how the sentiment should be expressed.
People who can't recognize second loyalties can't be trusted, and need to be weeded out of an organization before it hits hard times, otherwise they just won't be able to be relied on.
Do you think if a company hits hard times they aren’t going to lay people off? The first loyalty of a company is to the owners of the company. I’m not making a moral judgment. If a company is going through hard times, it would be irresponsible for them not to lay people off. I would even go so far as to say that if a company isn’t going through hard times and they saw that they could be more profitable with fewer people they should.
It's face is all of you and it exists to keep all of you fed and with a roof over your head.
No, a privately held investor backed company’s primary goal is to provide a return on investment for its investors via an exit. A public company’s primary goal is to provide a return to its shareholders. The employees are just a means to that end. Anyone who doesn’t understand their place in the hierarchy is doing themselves a disservice.
It is my responsibility to keep my family fed and not my employer. My employer is just a means to that end. If I can find another employer that can do that better, and the other trade offs are worth it, I will leave.
A company shouldn't be laying people off in hard times. They might let some contracts end, and if someone leaves for other reasons they won't be replaced; but they shouldn't be laying people off. They should have savings for hard times. That might mean no rasises for a couple years - including the CEO, but everybody has a job. Every time they lay someone off they forever lose everything that person knew.
Hard times are should be used to invest in the next product free from the distraction of supporting the current ones (since nobody is buying). When good times return they are met with the introduction of great new products.
A layoff should mean that the company is exiting whatever industry you are in. Thus it should not be a few people - but everybody at once.
The reality is few companies are managed well enough to pull the above off.
You use the word “should” a lot to describe things that a non executive employee has no control over, and only limited visibility on. The point is that trust in your company to do these things for your sake is misplaced.
You should have visibility by past behavior. A company that has a history of lay-offs is going to do it again. A company that has managed downturns without layoffs is likely to do pull it off again.
Of course a company can change, so you have to be prepared for anything. This isn't a bad idea for other reasons: there are a lot of people right now not living at home because of the California fires which requires some emergency savings.
Germany companies are heavily incentivized not to lay off people in downturns. Workers here are generally less mobile (esp. outside of tech) so when you loose an employee and then go somewhere else, they’ll probably never come back.
The federal government has programs to assist companies with this. With the approval of the goverment, you can impose “Kurzarbeit” and let your employees only work, for example, 3 days a week for 6 months. The other 2 days a week they’d then get“Kurzarbeitergeld”, equivalent in amount to unemployment benefits (~65% of your net salary). This obviously only gets approved in economic downturns or for things outside of the control of the company (weather, natural disaster), not of one company is mismanaged but the sector as a whole does well.
That is the complete opposite of what happens in the US.
At one company that I worked for, one guy was laid off and came back 4 or 5 times on contract in different roles (QA, L2 support, and as a field technician).
I see both sides. As someone in a high demand field in an area with plenty of tech jobs (not on the west coast), it doesn’t bother me personally. I have literally gone from “I want another job” to “Ive got another job” within less than a month on numerous occasions.
If I were hiring, I would be a lot more reluctant to hire someone if I knew I couldn’t let them go without a lot of red tape. I might just try to get by with fewer people.
But, I consider myself to be a big government free market capitalist. Make hiring and laying off easy and provide a large social safety net paid for by taxing corporations- a better form of unemployment insurance.
> The first loyalty of a company is to the owners of the company.
Of course it is. That falls right in line with the 'two loyalties' framework. Everybody is out for themselves and their immediate families first, for the rest of the company second. This includes the owners. Expecting it to work any other way is just foolish.
> No, a privately held investor backed company’s primary goal...
You mean the leadership's. Each IC has their own priorities. But yes, this is part of its first loyalty. It's the second loyalty aspect that you have to be wary of. If the company seems to have no regard at all for the well-being of the workers, then that's an unhealthy company and you should steer clear if you can.
> It is my responsibility to keep my family fed and not my employer. My employer is just a means to that end. If I can find another employer that can do that better, and the other trade offs are worth it, I will leave.
Your company isn't just some faceless entity interested only in profits. It's face is all of you and it exists to keep all of you fed and with a roof over your head.
We all have experienced that in hard times a company's only loyalty is to its shareholders. At times, upper management may decide to divert some of the resources to itself, but that's a small, exclusive circle that most are not part of..
If the company is in existential crisis, then yes, the shareholders will all be out for themselves. They do, ya know, own the company. There should be a buffer zone between 'hard times' and 'existential crisis'. Some companies are always in hard times. Avoid them if you can, because it's always crunch time. Startups are constantly in existential crisis until they find product-market fit.
If these inspiring words were more true, you’d see employees taking pay cuts instead of layoffs. Remember, an individual’s loyalty is also to their career.
I mean I think I would do the same in the right scenario but both times I’ve been through layoffs it wasn’t even a discussion—leadership assumed it wasn’t a viable strategy.
It was a small company and I was young and didn't have many bills to pay. They had laid off the excess already and if they laid anyone else off the company would have just been toast. Worked out alright. Got about 4 extra weeks off in the summer.
> if the company does better, everyone working there does better
Is the theory, but rarely the reality. The truth is that at any company of a certain size or larger, you're a replaceable cog, and nothing you do - positive or negative - will affect the trajectory of the company. It's easy to become cynical in that environment.
That's probably true, but that's the opposite of what the article is talking about. Transitioning from nothing to startup to small business is not the same as working at multibillion international company.
| 2088. The employee is bound not only to perform his work with prudence and diligence, but also to act faithfully and honestly and not use any confidential information he obtains in the performance or in the course of his work.
| These obligations continue for a reasonable time after the contract terminates and permanently where the information concerns the reputation and privacy of others.
Not disclosing confidential information is more ethics than loyalty. That that may fall under a legal definition of loyalty in some areas, but I think in more common parlance that behavior would just be professionalism. Even then there has to be some degree of judiciousness between what a company might consider confidential and what is just industry knowledge. And over time, a lot of what might be held confidential, becomes common practice too.
Agreed, that's why I worded it as "is often considered". The law being a bit vague, employers often present it as employees needing to be personally loyal.
The law asks one to "act faithfully". Faithfully can easily be used as a synonym for devoted and some employers ask a religious devotion to the company.
this seems overly cynical. companies are absolutely loyal and stand by their employees. that match is rare, just as it is rare to find another person that will stay with you through good and bad times
I don’t get why people don’t realize that we’re all playing capitalism and it doesn’t make sense to tie your hands behind your back for the sake of some company that doesn’t care about you. One thing to pass up some profits to be a more decent person or whatever, another to do it for an abstract entity that would happily toss you onto the street for a few dollars were it able to.
He concluded with some really good points:
| I came away from the experience unable to commit myself to a company. In part this was an ethical stance: who controls the company can change, and change quickly. So loyalty to a company meant committing to follow people who shouldn't be followed, not because authority is inherently bad, but because in most companies authority cannot be rescinded by the workers in its power.
| But it was also an emotional reaction: I'd put a lot of myself into my job, only to see my work—and my friends' work—destroyed in an incompetent power grab. I didn't want to go through that again.
| The thing about loyalty, though, is that it's motivating: you give your loyalty because you want something or someone to succeed. So if you're past the point of pure survival, where do you find motivation if not in loyalty?
| Eventually I came round to solidarity, a thornier path than loyalty. Loyalty is simple, because it starts with an answer: your country, your cause, your company, your friends—above all. Solidarity is complex, because it starts with a question: beyond yourself, beyond your friends, beyond your cause, beyond your country, what ought you do to help everyone?
¹ https://codewithoutrules.com/softwareclown/