4 ms·

Carmack is a hero for me but he seems to come across as very naive here. I employ other people now and employees who argue this sort of stuff isn't copying are

Carmack is a hero for me but he seems to come across as very naive here. I employ other people now and employees who argue this sort of stuff isn't copying are toxic to the culture and ethics of work. When you are paid a salary every month, I actually don't care if you are productive. But the least I expect you to be is loyal. And I am no monster for expecting that.

Strom 10y ago
Loyalty in a free market is a pipe dream. Extremely few employers will stay loyal to their employees when times get rough, say when an employee gets very sick and can't work for several years. Thus no rational person should have any long term loyality to an employer if the market providers better alternatives.
- LeicaLatte 10y ago
  This is a big reason why a US company might prefer immigrant workers. Local workers tend to treat their jobs more as transactions and less like a relationship with their employer. Immigrant workers come with built in motivation to stick to their employers and stay loyal.
logfromblammo 10y ago
You have unrealistic expectations for 2017, i think. The loyalty you receive will be proportional to the loyalty you demonstrate. When I am paid a salary every month, my expectation is that I am being paid for services rendered, and that what I am paid is a fraction of the value I produced. There is no loyalty demonstrated there; it's just business. As the company I work for now had in the past kicked me to the curb with only 3 days of notice and no severance whatsoever, I don't feel particularly loyal to them. But I'm still doing their work [again], and they are paying me salary for it [again]. I'm just a worker bee to them, and they're just a mealticket to me. It works out fine as long as I sleep with one eye open. The instant I can secure a better deal for me, I will pack up my personal possessions and go. I won't take a few weeks to wrap things up in a neat little package. I'll just turn in my badges and walk out. I will stop caring about the company that used to pay my salary on the day I get my last paycheck from them. I know they never cared about me; they only ever cared about my work product. In practice, in the real world, US employees won't be loyal, because US companies have in aggregate treated them like fungible resources, rather than people. The instant they are no longer profitable to keep, they are fired. So it isn't the employees that are polluting the workplace culture. The employers will eventually be hoist on their own collective petard, but it isn't as though the rest of us will come away clean from that disaster to bask in our schadenfreude, either. It's nice that you think that temporarily supporting unproductive employees until things turn back around is good business practice, but you're sort of swimming against the tide. I started my career with a small measure of loyalty, but a series of disloyal acts has conditioned me to instead be strictly mercenary. You're no monster, but you shouldn't expect that other employers are anywhere near your level of cooperation with their employees.
- LeicaLatte 10y ago
  It is amazing to me how loyalty is this unrealistic expectation in the US job market. I still believe paying a salary every month is a risk for any employer and I appreciate that. The abundance of opportunities in a free market is a poor reason for letting go of important things like loyalty, gratefulness.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    I am not grateful to my grocer for stocking milk in the dairy case. They set the price, and I pay it if I want the milk. If the price is higher than I am willing to pay, I do not buy it. Loyalty does not enter into the equation. If it did, the grocer might offer me lower prices for shopping only at that store, or additional services not available to first-time or fickle customers. Paying a salary is zero risk for an "at will" employee. You are paying for the work, or at least for the exclusive on-demand availability. Whether that can be monetized to a degree sufficient to pay the salary is entirely attributable to management's effort and skill. If at any time you feel that you do not have the skill or the will to make the employee's labor cashflow-positive, you can fire them. In contrast, the employee taking on a salaried position with a new employer is a much greater risk. That often becomes their sole source of income, they may be foregoing other available opportunities to take it, and may also be relocating to an area that is less advantageous for them personally. It is for these reasons that I believe the burden is upon the employer to make demonstrable shows of loyalty to their employees first, to prove that they are trustworthy employers. Instead, they are often the ones to betray even the low default levels of employee loyalty. These days, I hear about mass layoffs far more often than I hear about employee strikes or walkouts. I agree that we should mourn deeply the passing of employer-employee loyalty, but it has been fading for quite a long time. If you are a loyal employer, you will eventually see more loyalty in your employees. In time, they will even enhance your reputation via word-of-mouth recommendations. But reputation is slow to build and easy to squander, and US employers have utterly destroyed any reputation they may have had for loyalty. I am surprised that you are amazed, but that may only be because you have never worked "at will" jobs in markets away from hot-spots like SV and NYC. Even just by reading HN, you should have noticed that the endemic career advice to maximize your earnings is to change jobs every 2-4 years, and only spend a longer period at a single job if a lucrative vesting schedule demands it. Employers do not retain and retrain temporarily unproductive employees, nor do they make noticeable efforts to retain productive ones with bonuses and pay rises.

Strom 10y ago

Loyalty in a free market is a pipe dream. Extremely few employers will stay loyal to their employees when times get rough, say when an employee gets very sick and can't work for several years. Thus no rational person should have any long term loyality to an employer if the market providers better alternatives.

LeicaLatte 10y ago
This is a big reason why a US company might prefer immigrant workers. Local workers tend to treat their jobs more as transactions and less like a relationship with their employer. Immigrant workers come with built in motivation to stick to their employers and stay loyal.

logfromblammo 10y ago

You have unrealistic expectations for 2017, i think. The loyalty you receive will be proportional to the loyalty you demonstrate. When I am paid a salary every month, my expectation is that I am being paid for services rendered, and that what I am paid is a fraction of the value I produced. There is no loyalty demonstrated there; it's just business. As the company I work for now had in the past kicked me to the curb with only 3 days of notice and no severance whatsoever, I don't feel particularly loyal to them. But I'm still doing their work [again], and they are paying me salary for it [again]. I'm just a worker bee to them, and they're just a mealticket to me. It works out fine as long as I sleep with one eye open. The instant I can secure a better deal for me, I will pack up my personal possessions and go. I won't take a few weeks to wrap things up in a neat little package. I'll just turn in my badges and walk out. I will stop caring about the company that used to pay my salary on the day I get my last paycheck from them. I know they never cared about me; they only ever cared about my work product. In practice, in the real world, US employees won't be loyal, because US companies have in aggregate treated them like fungible resources, rather than people. The instant they are no longer profitable to keep, they are fired. So it isn't the employees that are polluting the workplace culture. The employers will eventually be hoist on their own collective petard, but it isn't as though the rest of us will come away clean from that disaster to bask in our schadenfreude, either. It's nice that you think that temporarily supporting unproductive employees until things turn back around is good business practice, but you're sort of swimming against the tide. I started my career with a small measure of loyalty, but a series of disloyal acts has conditioned me to instead be strictly mercenary. You're no monster, but you shouldn't expect that other employers are anywhere near your level of cooperation with their employees.

LeicaLatte 10y ago
It is amazing to me how loyalty is this unrealistic expectation in the US job market. I still believe paying a salary every month is a risk for any employer and I appreciate that. The abundance of opportunities in a free market is a poor reason for letting go of important things like loyalty, gratefulness.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  I am not grateful to my grocer for stocking milk in the dairy case. They set the price, and I pay it if I want the milk. If the price is higher than I am willing to pay, I do not buy it. Loyalty does not enter into the equation. If it did, the grocer might offer me lower prices for shopping only at that store, or additional services not available to first-time or fickle customers. Paying a salary is zero risk for an "at will" employee. You are paying for the work, or at least for the exclusive on-demand availability. Whether that can be monetized to a degree sufficient to pay the salary is entirely attributable to management's effort and skill. If at any time you feel that you do not have the skill or the will to make the employee's labor cashflow-positive, you can fire them. In contrast, the employee taking on a salaried position with a new employer is a much greater risk. That often becomes their sole source of income, they may be foregoing other available opportunities to take it, and may also be relocating to an area that is less advantageous for them personally. It is for these reasons that I believe the burden is upon the employer to make demonstrable shows of loyalty to their employees first, to prove that they are trustworthy employers. Instead, they are often the ones to betray even the low default levels of employee loyalty. These days, I hear about mass layoffs far more often than I hear about employee strikes or walkouts. I agree that we should mourn deeply the passing of employer-employee loyalty, but it has been fading for quite a long time. If you are a loyal employer, you will eventually see more loyalty in your employees. In time, they will even enhance your reputation via word-of-mouth recommendations. But reputation is slow to build and easy to squander, and US employers have utterly destroyed any reputation they may have had for loyalty. I am surprised that you are amazed, but that may only be because you have never worked "at will" jobs in markets away from hot-spots like SV and NYC. Even just by reading HN, you should have noticed that the endemic career advice to maximize your earnings is to change jobs every 2-4 years, and only spend a longer period at a single job if a lucrative vesting schedule demands it. Employers do not retain and retrain temporarily unproductive employees, nor do they make noticeable efforts to retain productive ones with bonuses and pay rises.