6 ms·

About 12 years ago I was working for a PC Magazine competitor when they cut the Managing Editor loose, a man who'd worked there 20+ years and was in his late 50

About 12 years ago I was working for a PC Magazine competitor when they cut the Managing Editor loose, a man who'd worked there 20+ years and was in his late 50s. I ran into him in the bathroom, tears in his eyes, asking me what he was going to do now? That this is how they reward decades of loyalty? Ironically that magazine, dedicated to predicting future technology trends, would go down the toilet some years later because they didn't see technology trends like Google and internet advertising coming. Companies have no loyalty folks...neither should you.

user5994461 8y ago
How does it have anything to loyalty? A job doesn't last a lifetime. There aren't that many company that even live a full decade.
- karmajunkie 8y ago
  When an employer will happily use up your most productive years and let you go as soon as it isn't constantly profitable... A job might as well be for a lifetime. It's not an uncommon story, true. But it's a pretty shitty one.
  - yostrovs 8y ago
    The firing happened because company ran out of money. That's what happened to most magazines lately.
    - markoman 8y ago
      I totally agree. Economics in the media industry (print or web) have been hellish for 10 years or more. Paywalls are unpopular, don't work and go against the 'free information' culture of the internet. However, the email he was sent firing him which he screenshotted to Twitter, was indeed so curt as to be rude, as he said. Its just that these editors and publishers are so behind the 8-ball to be desensitized to the types of cost-cutting that they do everyday. It must have never occurred to that editor that they were in this case firing someone who is a near-institution in the PC periodical literature.
g5095 8y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SO1F_u2_iE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SO1F_u2_iE
redm 8y ago
"Companies have no loyalty folks...neither should you." That's a broad brush to paint with; companies are just a group of people, not some inhuman construct. People make the decisions and just like every other aspect of life, some people care don't put their impact on others first, or can't because of circumstances. Not every company discards employees like garbage, and it's a lousy narrative to propagate.
- osrec 8y ago
  Usually when you have groups of people trying to maximise their own gains, selfishness and ruthlessness tend to dominate the group.
- skh 8y ago
  What you write is true but one can never know for sure if you are in a nice company. Even if you are in a nice company today you don’t it will remain nice. You don’t know what economic factors will occur that may turn the company culture toxic. The company may be bought out tomorrow and new management might suck. Since you can’t know that these possibilities won’t occur it’s best to keep the mindset that the company is not your friend. They do not have loyalty to you in perpetuity. It’s a business and not a person. It’s run by people but the more people it is being run by the easier it is for them emotionally to treat everything in business terms. Do not have loyalty to a company. It’s just business and not personal.
- jccalhoun 8y ago
  That may be true but then your boss's boss fires my boss and brings in someone new and doesn't know or care about you or your company gets bought just to shut down a competitor or any of a million other things.
- ksec 8y ago
  >Not every company discards employees like garbage, and it's a lousy narrative to propagate. Depending on which industry you are in or nations. But generally speaking there are less than 10% chance of this so call Good company, so I argue this is not a broad brush at all.
- 8y ago
dghughes 8y ago
Thre's also the "faux friend" situation too. The people you work with have to get along with you but they are not your friends. If you're laid off you'll probably never heard from any of them ever again. And HR isn't your friend either. Many young people misunderstand the role of HR and believe it is a shoulder to cry on. Think of HR as just another company product or tool.
- abandonliberty 8y ago
  HR is there to maximize the value and minimize the risk from your humans. Everything in a company is designed to maximize (short term) shareholder value. This isn't evil; the company needs shareholder value to survive.
  - frabbit 8y ago
    "This isn't evil; the company needs shareholder value to survive." Viruses need animal hosts in order to survive. That isn't evil either. But if you're the host it's bad for you. Companies as embodied in capitalism are generally bad for most humans in the long term. They are an irrational and little understood mechanism receiving un-critical, near-religious adulation.
  - AtlasBarfed 8y ago
    That is junk economics and libertarianism. Companies certainly can and are evil, unrestrained competition is basically drug cartel turf wars/slavery, and maximized shareholder value doesn't produce the most competitive products and long-term health of a company, it produces the most short-term money to investors.
- titusjohnson 8y ago
  Yeah, lots of people think HR is resources for humans, but it’s really for the management of resources that are humans.
  - WalterSear 8y ago
    I prefer the term Human Accounting myself.
abandonliberty 8y ago
It's just business. Obedience to authority can make people do terrible things, as shown in the Milgram experiment, and in business you have a whole chain of authorities.
- chris_wot 8y ago
  The Milgram experiment has been thoroughly discredited.
  - abandonliberty 8y ago
    Source? The only item under validity on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Validity) is a book, rather than a journal, and it's far from thoroughly discrediting.
    - chris_wot 8y ago
      There are quite a few sources: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-electric-shocks-experiment-drew-wrong-conclusions-about-evil-say-psychologists-9712600.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-el... http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3489337.htm http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3489337.htm https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731691-000-the-shocking-truth-of-stanley-milgrams-obedience-experiments/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731691-000-the-shoc... https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper... In terms of a meta-analysis, try this one: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0098628316677644 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0098628316677644
      - abandonliberty 8y ago
        Thanks for sharing that was quite interesting. This one in particular argues: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjso.12074 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjso.12074 (1) willingness to perform unpleasant tasks is contingent upon identification with collective goals and (2) leaders cultivate identification with those goals by making them seem virtuous rather than vicious and thereby ameliorating the stress that achieving them entails. Quite interesting perspective on leadership. I suspect it's a bit of both. However, from your first link: "But many psychologists argue that even with methodological holes and moral lapses, the basic finding of Milgram’s work, the rate of obedience, still holds up. " Doesn't seem thoroughly discredited to me.
garyfirestorm 8y ago
'You're loyal to your work, not company'
XalvinX 8y ago
No, you absolutely should not trust or be loyal to for-profit companies, as either employee or consumer. Everyone's got at least one story, and most people many. My second serious job situation after college taught me well about capitalism and trusting companies...never again. They use you, you use them...remember that well. Money is, indeed, the root of all evil. Dvorak was a large part of the heart and soul of PC Mag since the beginning or very close thereto. I used to read it all the way back to I guess 1980 and I always loved his columns and in fact still go the website and read them nowadays once in a while. They can fuck off and die.

user5994461 8y ago

How does it have anything to loyalty? A job doesn't last a lifetime. There aren't that many company that even live a full decade.

karmajunkie 8y ago
When an employer will happily use up your most productive years and let you go as soon as it isn't constantly profitable... A job might as well be for a lifetime. It's not an uncommon story, true. But it's a pretty shitty one.
- yostrovs 8y ago
  The firing happened because company ran out of money. That's what happened to most magazines lately.
  - markoman 8y ago
    I totally agree. Economics in the media industry (print or web) have been hellish for 10 years or more. Paywalls are unpopular, don't work and go against the 'free information' culture of the internet. However, the email he was sent firing him which he screenshotted to Twitter, was indeed so curt as to be rude, as he said. Its just that these editors and publishers are so behind the 8-ball to be desensitized to the types of cost-cutting that they do everyday. It must have never occurred to that editor that they were in this case firing someone who is a near-institution in the PC periodical literature.

g5095 8y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SO1F_u2_iE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SO1F_u2_iE

redm 8y ago

"Companies have no loyalty folks...neither should you." That's a broad brush to paint with; companies are just a group of people, not some inhuman construct. People make the decisions and just like every other aspect of life, some people care don't put their impact on others first, or can't because of circumstances. Not every company discards employees like garbage, and it's a lousy narrative to propagate.

osrec 8y ago
Usually when you have groups of people trying to maximise their own gains, selfishness and ruthlessness tend to dominate the group.
skh 8y ago
What you write is true but one can never know for sure if you are in a nice company. Even if you are in a nice company today you don’t it will remain nice. You don’t know what economic factors will occur that may turn the company culture toxic. The company may be bought out tomorrow and new management might suck. Since you can’t know that these possibilities won’t occur it’s best to keep the mindset that the company is not your friend. They do not have loyalty to you in perpetuity. It’s a business and not a person. It’s run by people but the more people it is being run by the easier it is for them emotionally to treat everything in business terms. Do not have loyalty to a company. It’s just business and not personal.
jccalhoun 8y ago
That may be true but then your boss's boss fires my boss and brings in someone new and doesn't know or care about you or your company gets bought just to shut down a competitor or any of a million other things.
ksec 8y ago
>Not every company discards employees like garbage, and it's a lousy narrative to propagate. Depending on which industry you are in or nations. But generally speaking there are less than 10% chance of this so call Good company, so I argue this is not a broad brush at all.
8y ago

dghughes 8y ago

Thre's also the "faux friend" situation too. The people you work with have to get along with you but they are not your friends. If you're laid off you'll probably never heard from any of them ever again. And HR isn't your friend either. Many young people misunderstand the role of HR and believe it is a shoulder to cry on. Think of HR as just another company product or tool.

abandonliberty 8y ago
HR is there to maximize the value and minimize the risk from your humans. Everything in a company is designed to maximize (short term) shareholder value. This isn't evil; the company needs shareholder value to survive.
- frabbit 8y ago
  "This isn't evil; the company needs shareholder value to survive." Viruses need animal hosts in order to survive. That isn't evil either. But if you're the host it's bad for you. Companies as embodied in capitalism are generally bad for most humans in the long term. They are an irrational and little understood mechanism receiving un-critical, near-religious adulation.
- AtlasBarfed 8y ago
  That is junk economics and libertarianism. Companies certainly can and are evil, unrestrained competition is basically drug cartel turf wars/slavery, and maximized shareholder value doesn't produce the most competitive products and long-term health of a company, it produces the most short-term money to investors.
titusjohnson 8y ago
Yeah, lots of people think HR is resources for humans, but it’s really for the management of resources that are humans.
- WalterSear 8y ago
  I prefer the term Human Accounting myself.

abandonliberty 8y ago

It's just business. Obedience to authority can make people do terrible things, as shown in the Milgram experiment, and in business you have a whole chain of authorities.

chris_wot 8y ago
The Milgram experiment has been thoroughly discredited.
- abandonliberty 8y ago
  Source? The only item under validity on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Validity) is a book, rather than a journal, and it's far from thoroughly discrediting.
  - chris_wot 8y ago
    There are quite a few sources: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinking-one-of-psychologys-most-infamous-experiments/384913/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/rethinkin... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-electric-shocks-experiment-drew-wrong-conclusions-about-evil-say-psychologists-9712600.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/famous-milgram-el... http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3489337.htm http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3489337.htm https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731691-000-the-shocking-truth-of-stanley-milgrams-obedience-experiments/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731691-000-the-shoc... https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-exper... In terms of a meta-analysis, try this one: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0098628316677644 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0098628316677644
    - abandonliberty 8y ago
      Thanks for sharing that was quite interesting. This one in particular argues: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjso.12074 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjso.12074 (1) willingness to perform unpleasant tasks is contingent upon identification with collective goals and (2) leaders cultivate identification with those goals by making them seem virtuous rather than vicious and thereby ameliorating the stress that achieving them entails. Quite interesting perspective on leadership. I suspect it's a bit of both. However, from your first link: "But many psychologists argue that even with methodological holes and moral lapses, the basic finding of Milgram’s work, the rate of obedience, still holds up. " Doesn't seem thoroughly discredited to me.

garyfirestorm 8y ago

'You're loyal to your work, not company'

XalvinX 8y ago

No, you absolutely should not trust or be loyal to for-profit companies, as either employee or consumer. Everyone's got at least one story, and most people many. My second serious job situation after college taught me well about capitalism and trusting companies...never again. They use you, you use them...remember that well. Money is, indeed, the root of all evil. Dvorak was a large part of the heart and soul of PC Mag since the beginning or very close thereto. I used to read it all the way back to I guess 1980 and I always loved his columns and in fact still go the website and read them nowadays once in a while. They can fuck off and die.