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.
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.