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> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer t

> such as for example the notion that it's somewhat something to be ashamed of for an employee to leave its employer, while it's perfectly OK for the employer to terminate the employee at any time. Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. When there is enough choice people change jobs all the time - the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons - I see people change 2 jobs within a year, demand all sorts of things - last round of job interviews I did the interviewers spent double the time explaining why their company was a great fit for me instead of actually interviewing me for position - compared to the usual narrative of asking why I fit them. The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand and both sides take advantage. Firing and quitting can have negative implications for both sides, just depends on scenario. I don't see where shame enters the equation.

zulgan 7y ago
I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.
- ironic_ali 7y ago
  Ask yourself why you feel these emotions, because the culture you're in had to have made you learn them. The companies you have worked for sure as hell do not care about you once you leave. Source: personal experience
  - CathedralBorrow 7y ago
    All correct, but cultural things like these can't exactly be dispelled with logic.
    - kingkawn 7y ago
      Culture comes from people. Taking the reins of culture and leading it to new places is entirely natural
- raducu 7y ago
  Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate. It absolutely is cultural.
  - Cederfjard 7y ago
    Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care). I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Does your toddler have control over their bowels? This stuff develops, but it's not always cultural.
- JackFr 7y ago
  Back in the day, Merrill Lynch had a rep for hiring really green people on the cheap, doing a very good job training them up, and then not paying them according to their new value in the market. When you would leave, managers would often lay the guilt trip about "What you owe us..." (to which the proper response is the line from Goodfellas -"F* you. Pay me.") There was a sitewide IT town hall in NY when I was there and some senior MD brought this problem up. "We're investing a lot of money in training people and then having difficulty retaining them." From the crowd of around 1000 a voice cried out "Stop training them!"
  - noobermin 7y ago
    Why is the response to stop training them rather than train them and then pay them their worth?
    - JackFr 7y ago
      That's not the correct response. I'm pretty sure the person was being facetious.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Is that really what you want though? Ever wonder why all our schools are becoming job training centers?
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual. To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ? I think as job market turns from oversupply to undersupply the culture changes simply out of nececity.
  - bjourne 7y ago
    No worker would ever get hired if he or she were open with that they would leave the company the very instance a better offer came around. Companies, on the other hand, have no trouble hiring even when they admit that they'd fire you the very instance someone who can do the job for less pay comes around. Loyalty in the work place is a one-way street. It goes from the worker to the company but not the other way around.
    - aflag 7y ago
      That depends on demand/supply. Tech companies in cities with high demand for engineers have no problem hiring people who will leave as soon as something better shows up.
      - bjourne 7y ago
        That is subtly different from what I wrote. :) I wrote that no one who were open about it would be unable to find a job. If you told your interviewer that your only objective is to maximize salary they would (rightly) treat you as a sociopath. A company whose only objective is to minimize salaries (and therefore maximize profits) is also a "sociopath" but that is somehow acceptable.
        aflag 7y ago
        Yeah, that's true, I guess you'd normally wouldn't say that. Although I've worked a guy once that said something similar and got hired anyway. He still works in the same place after a couple years and still has the same attitude. I think that most people make it up to be a lot less socially acceptable than it actually is.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
What proportion of the total jobs market [in your country || in your supply chains] are you looking at though. The parent might be a generalisation but you're objecting based on the thinnest sliver of contrary occupations. Seems like the parent could well be on the money for all menial roles?
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  The whole thing is much better explained through supply demand and security. When job supply is low you want to maintain a close relationship with your employer because you hope this grants job security. When the demand outpaces supply suddenly people are forced to bid up wages - I agree that the culture might need time to catch up - like initially the risk averse will still be stuck in this mode and few will change jobs, but as the demand ramps up the terms get better and switch job becomes much more common - culture changes and even the most cautious cannot ignore the market trends - I've seen this first hand in my local market over the last few years where the salaries went up 2x in 3 years. How medival servitude explains any of this better is beyond me.
  - wukerplank 7y ago
    Have a look a low wage/low skill jobs. There is no such thing as security, employees are subject to their employer's benevolence. They even have to accept circumstances that might violate laws. They can't fight it because they need the job, even if they hate it. I'm too busy to do the research for you, but Amazon warehouse workers are the first examples that come to my mind.
    - rubber_duck 7y ago
      I've worked those jobs when I was younger - none of those people would feel any shame quitting for a better job so I'm not sure what your argument is.
      - dkersten 7y ago
        Why should they? They're typically underpaid and in not so great conditions, but even if they aren't, why should they feel shape for quitting for a better job? If you fulfill your contractual obligations, you don't owe your employer anything and leaving any job for a better one is totally not something to be ashamed about. If anything, shame on the employer for doing a bad job in retaining their employees.
sterileopinions 7y ago
>The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand Well that's not true. There are laws strictly regulating the supply and demand from the labor side of things.
noobermin 7y ago
While I have bones to pick out of OP, your post assumes your experience is the norm and not far away from the median.
- flmontpetit 7y ago
  For real. Being a software developer is probably the easiest and safest career you can have without being born into wealth. edit: I should also mention having options is not really a blessing when they're all bad.
  - sillyquiet 7y ago
    `easiest` ?
    - flmontpetit 7y ago
      Yes. Being a software developer is easy. It's not necessarily the case, but I can think of no other trade that pays so well and offers so many opportunities for so little ability, effort, accountability, responsibility and stress.
      - sol_remmy2 7y ago
        Where do you work? I'm in operations and spent 10pm-3am last night responding to an incident. There's a lady here going bald in her early 30s. Stress is high, responsibility is high, accountability is high, effort is high. I can think of literally 1000s of jobs that are easier
        flmontpetit 7y ago
        I'm a C# dev and the only anxiety I've experienced has lied in having to maintain garbage legacy code.
    - dbingham 7y ago
      Yes. Ever done manual labor? Or something that requires both intense manual labor and intellectual problem solving, like carpentry or many of the building trades? Or think about all the various fields that require intense intellectual output, with nothing like the rewards and security of software engineering. We've got it good. Though, really, the ideal would be for all workers to be treated more like we are, and less like replaceable, abusable cogs in a machine.
lucasverra 7y ago
> Your entire post is overgeneralization and des-dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis. This apply here also. Thank you for laying it out for me
magashna 7y ago
Software development is far from the norm. People working menial jobs don't have the luxury of making demands or changing jobs on a whim.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Even many software development jobs don't have that option. It's a bubble within a bubble that gives the employee the power.
HSO 7y ago
> Your entire post is overgeneralization …proceeds to extrapolate from "my local dev market" to economy with thousands of sectors and tens of millions of workers without a trace of irony or self-awareness. Um, ok. As others have pointed out, being in software engineering at this particular point in time is probably not super representative.
- rubber_duck 7y ago
  No I just gave one counterexample where his theory clearly breaks down and gave a more general explanation based on supply and demand.
watwut 7y ago
In the past, there definitely was such norm. The "job hopping" was seen as negative. Even today, I software development and especially sillicon valley is a bit of outlier - people in our industry change more often then in other industries.
kerkeslager 7y ago
What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do background checks, call references, and even run credit checks on potential employees. Ask a potential employer for references or any information on their financials, and that's weird. The latter is particularly strange, because the employer is paying the employee, so the employee has a much larger interest in making sure the employer can pay them.
- ailideex 7y ago
  > It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. Nope.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikelyons 7y ago
    "Nope." is cute and shows you're cocksure about that. However, the reality is that this happens all the time and is never punished by culture as "unprofessional" for a corporation to do. Who would punish them? The customers?
    - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
      >Who would punish them? The customers? Future potential employees. If I go on glassdoor and read about this happening I'm either going to A: raise my rates as I need to keep a larger emergency fund to deal with these guys B: decline to work there at all They end up only ever getting entry level kids to work for them. The system sort of works in that regard if you come from a non-traditional background you can work for a year or two at a job like that, skill up and move on.
navigatesol 7y ago
>the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons Do you think your local development market is remotely representative of the nature of national employment trends in general? And you accuse the OP of "over-generalization"?
waitwhatwhere 7y ago
“I don’t see where shame enters the equation.” Perhaps because you’ve generalized away, to the point of absurdity, the dramatic effects of a number of well debated set of systems that maintain social norms.
crimsonalucard 7y ago
>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. What kind of garbage comment is this statement? Argue the points of disagreement but saying something offensive like this serves no purpose and is just plain wrong, rude and disgusting.
andrepd 7y ago
>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis I find that the main thesis is actually pretty sound. Historically speaking, the current (capitalistic) labour / production system is a direct descendant of the medieval feudal labour relations that existed in Europe 900 years ago. When you truly look at it, they are pretty identical in their core mechanics. There is a class system, there is servitude, there is limited social mobility. It's just that the outer appearance is different, that some aspects are improved (in degree, not in kind, if I'm making myself understood), and finally that the technological advances mask the inequality and the problems in the system (a world where one person has 500$ and the other 500,000$ seems better than one where one has 1$ and the other 1,000$, but they are equally unequal).

zulgan 7y ago

I guess this is cultural as well, I(anecdotally) absolutely feel shame when I am about to leave a company, or even negotiate.

ironic_ali 7y ago
Ask yourself why you feel these emotions, because the culture you're in had to have made you learn them. The companies you have worked for sure as hell do not care about you once you leave. Source: personal experience
- CathedralBorrow 7y ago
  All correct, but cultural things like these can't exactly be dispelled with logic.
  - kingkawn 7y ago
    Culture comes from people. Taking the reins of culture and leading it to new places is entirely natural
raducu 7y ago
Funny because my todler is never ashamed to loudly demand what she wants, yet as adults we feel shame when we want to negotiate. It absolutely is cultural.
- Cederfjard 7y ago
  Well, isn't also the case that a toddler still hasn't fully developed their empathy and other mental faculties, and thus aren't capable of understanding the full extent of how their behavior affects others (and indeed why they should care). I'm not saying that anyone should feel ashamed to negotiate for better compensation (quite the opposite!), but I'm also not sure that you can look at those little uncooked narcissists and conclude "this is how a human being naturally behaves". I think it's pretty normal for a person with mature emotions to feel at least a bit bad when making demands.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Does your toddler have control over their bowels? This stuff develops, but it's not always cultural.
JackFr 7y ago
Back in the day, Merrill Lynch had a rep for hiring really green people on the cheap, doing a very good job training them up, and then not paying them according to their new value in the market. When you would leave, managers would often lay the guilt trip about "What you owe us..." (to which the proper response is the line from Goodfellas -"F* you. Pay me.") There was a sitewide IT town hall in NY when I was there and some senior MD brought this problem up. "We're investing a lot of money in training people and then having difficulty retaining them." From the crowd of around 1000 a voice cried out "Stop training them!"
- noobermin 7y ago
  Why is the response to stop training them rather than train them and then pay them their worth?
  - JackFr 7y ago
    That's not the correct response. I'm pretty sure the person was being facetious.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Is that really what you want though? Ever wonder why all our schools are becoming job training centers?
rubber_duck 7y ago
I don't think it's purely cultural because chances are you have co-workers who don't have these issues at all just as I know people who are limiting themselves because of feelings like this - I would say this is more individual. To flip it around - do you feel other people who leave the company did something shameful ? Do you see judging from others (especially outside of co-workers where it's incentive based) ? I think as job market turns from oversupply to undersupply the culture changes simply out of nececity.
- bjourne 7y ago
  No worker would ever get hired if he or she were open with that they would leave the company the very instance a better offer came around. Companies, on the other hand, have no trouble hiring even when they admit that they'd fire you the very instance someone who can do the job for less pay comes around. Loyalty in the work place is a one-way street. It goes from the worker to the company but not the other way around.
  - aflag 7y ago
    That depends on demand/supply. Tech companies in cities with high demand for engineers have no problem hiring people who will leave as soon as something better shows up.
    - bjourne 7y ago
      That is subtly different from what I wrote. :) I wrote that no one who were open about it would be unable to find a job. If you told your interviewer that your only objective is to maximize salary they would (rightly) treat you as a sociopath. A company whose only objective is to minimize salaries (and therefore maximize profits) is also a "sociopath" but that is somehow acceptable.
      - aflag 7y ago
        Yeah, that's true, I guess you'd normally wouldn't say that. Although I've worked a guy once that said something similar and got hired anyway. He still works in the same place after a couple years and still has the same attitude. I think that most people make it up to be a lot less socially acceptable than it actually is.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

What proportion of the total jobs market [in your country || in your supply chains] are you looking at though. The parent might be a generalisation but you're objecting based on the thinnest sliver of contrary occupations. Seems like the parent could well be on the money for all menial roles?

rubber_duck 7y ago
The whole thing is much better explained through supply demand and security. When job supply is low you want to maintain a close relationship with your employer because you hope this grants job security. When the demand outpaces supply suddenly people are forced to bid up wages - I agree that the culture might need time to catch up - like initially the risk averse will still be stuck in this mode and few will change jobs, but as the demand ramps up the terms get better and switch job becomes much more common - culture changes and even the most cautious cannot ignore the market trends - I've seen this first hand in my local market over the last few years where the salaries went up 2x in 3 years. How medival servitude explains any of this better is beyond me.
- wukerplank 7y ago
  Have a look a low wage/low skill jobs. There is no such thing as security, employees are subject to their employer's benevolence. They even have to accept circumstances that might violate laws. They can't fight it because they need the job, even if they hate it. I'm too busy to do the research for you, but Amazon warehouse workers are the first examples that come to my mind.
  - rubber_duck 7y ago
    I've worked those jobs when I was younger - none of those people would feel any shame quitting for a better job so I'm not sure what your argument is.
    - dkersten 7y ago
      Why should they? They're typically underpaid and in not so great conditions, but even if they aren't, why should they feel shape for quitting for a better job? If you fulfill your contractual obligations, you don't owe your employer anything and leaving any job for a better one is totally not something to be ashamed about. If anything, shame on the employer for doing a bad job in retaining their employees.

sterileopinions 7y ago

>The situation is pretty much dictated by supply/demand Well that's not true. There are laws strictly regulating the supply and demand from the labor side of things.

noobermin 7y ago

While I have bones to pick out of OP, your post assumes your experience is the norm and not far away from the median.

flmontpetit 7y ago
For real. Being a software developer is probably the easiest and safest career you can have without being born into wealth. edit: I should also mention having options is not really a blessing when they're all bad.
- sillyquiet 7y ago
  `easiest` ?
  - flmontpetit 7y ago
    Yes. Being a software developer is easy. It's not necessarily the case, but I can think of no other trade that pays so well and offers so many opportunities for so little ability, effort, accountability, responsibility and stress.
    - sol_remmy2 7y ago
      Where do you work? I'm in operations and spent 10pm-3am last night responding to an incident. There's a lady here going bald in her early 30s. Stress is high, responsibility is high, accountability is high, effort is high. I can think of literally 1000s of jobs that are easier
      - flmontpetit 7y ago
        I'm a C# dev and the only anxiety I've experienced has lied in having to maintain garbage legacy code.
  - dbingham 7y ago
    Yes. Ever done manual labor? Or something that requires both intense manual labor and intellectual problem solving, like carpentry or many of the building trades? Or think about all the various fields that require intense intellectual output, with nothing like the rewards and security of software engineering. We've got it good. Though, really, the ideal would be for all workers to be treated more like we are, and less like replaceable, abusable cogs in a machine.

lucasverra 7y ago

> Your entire post is overgeneralization and des-dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis. This apply here also. Thank you for laying it out for me

magashna 7y ago

Software development is far from the norm. People working menial jobs don't have the luxury of making demands or changing jobs on a whim.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Even many software development jobs don't have that option. It's a bubble within a bubble that gives the employee the power.

HSO 7y ago

> Your entire post is overgeneralization …proceeds to extrapolate from "my local dev market" to economy with thousands of sectors and tens of millions of workers without a trace of irony or self-awareness. Um, ok. As others have pointed out, being in software engineering at this particular point in time is probably not super representative.

rubber_duck 7y ago
No I just gave one counterexample where his theory clearly breaks down and gave a more general explanation based on supply and demand.

watwut 7y ago

In the past, there definitely was such norm. The "job hopping" was seen as negative. Even today, I software development and especially sillicon valley is a bit of outlier - people in our industry change more often then in other industries.

kerkeslager 7y ago

What's your supply and demand explanation for the following norms? - It's considered professional for employees give their employers two weeks notice before leaving. It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. - It's considered unprofessional to talk about what you're getting paid. - It's considered normal for potential employers to do background checks, call references, and even run credit checks on potential employees. Ask a potential employer for references or any information on their financials, and that's weird. The latter is particularly strange, because the employer is paying the employee, so the employee has a much larger interest in making sure the employer can pay them.

ailideex 7y ago
> It's considered completely reasonable for employers to terminate employees and not even pay them for the rest of the day. Nope.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mikelyons 7y ago
  "Nope." is cute and shows you're cocksure about that. However, the reality is that this happens all the time and is never punished by culture as "unprofessional" for a corporation to do. Who would punish them? The customers?
  - fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
    >Who would punish them? The customers? Future potential employees. If I go on glassdoor and read about this happening I'm either going to A: raise my rates as I need to keep a larger emergency fund to deal with these guys B: decline to work there at all They end up only ever getting entry level kids to work for them. The system sort of works in that regard if you come from a non-traditional background you can work for a year or two at a job like that, skill up and move on.

navigatesol 7y ago

>the demand in my local dev market went through the roof last couple of years for multiple reasons Do you think your local development market is remotely representative of the nature of national employment trends in general? And you accuse the OP of "over-generalization"?

waitwhatwhere 7y ago

“I don’t see where shame enters the equation.” Perhaps because you’ve generalized away, to the point of absurdity, the dramatic effects of a number of well debated set of systems that maintain social norms.

crimsonalucard 7y ago

>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis but this here is the most obvious example. What kind of garbage comment is this statement? Argue the points of disagreement but saying something offensive like this serves no purpose and is just plain wrong, rude and disgusting.

andrepd 7y ago

>Your entire post is overgeneralization and dramatizing to prove some poorly thought out hypothesis I find that the main thesis is actually pretty sound. Historically speaking, the current (capitalistic) labour / production system is a direct descendant of the medieval feudal labour relations that existed in Europe 900 years ago. When you truly look at it, they are pretty identical in their core mechanics. There is a class system, there is servitude, there is limited social mobility. It's just that the outer appearance is different, that some aspects are improved (in degree, not in kind, if I'm making myself understood), and finally that the technological advances mask the inequality and the problems in the system (a world where one person has 500$ and the other 500,000$ seems better than one where one has 1$ and the other 1,000$, but they are equally unequal).