The problem here isn't that jobs don't provide job security, it's that they lie about it. How many times has someone called your company a "family"? Why is talk

The problem here isn't that jobs don't provide job security, it's that they lie about it. How many times has someone called your company a "family"? Why is talking about a future in which you don't work for your company taboo? I'd have no problem working for a company that I knew wouldn't hesitate to fire me, except that there's no way to judge when that might happen. I'd appreciate hearing, "If we don't get this next round of funding, we might have to let you go," but instead the funding talks are done in secrecy while we go out for drinks and talk about how the company is such a family and how you're doing a good job, until suddenly someone is getting laid off. The flipside of this is that if you do have job stability, it's usually not worth it to stay anyway. I've always worked for companies who needed me more than I needed them, so I've never really had to worry about job security. Over the past decade I've switched jobs 7 times, each time getting a 10-20% increase in income. In 5 of those cases I wanted to stay at my employer, but when I asked for a 10%-ish raise and explained that I could get more than that by leaving, they came back with 4-5% answers. In two cases they noted that 3% was "standard" (which was true for them--I talk to my coworkers about pay). In many cases, never giving significant raises works for companies: I still know people working year after year at my previous employers and accepting their annual 3% raise. The underlying problem in both cases is that companies simply don't care about your goals. You're an equation to them, which can be tipped in their favor either by treating you like a liquid asset and firing you at their convenience, or by not paying you what you're worth. It's not an "alliance": that implies shared goals. It's companies using their workers for the company's goals, no matter what that entails, even if it means pretending that it's a family or an alliance when it's not.