4 ms·

Your first point pretty much explains everything, because it is an effect, not a cause. The reason why top employees don't treat large corporations as 30-year

Your first point pretty much explains everything, because it is an effect, not a cause. The reason why top employees don't treat large corporations as 30-year destinations is because it is clear they will downsize us at the drop of a quarterly revenue. It isn't "brilliant" employees who recognize this, but all employees, and workers have quite reasonably responded by withholding all loyalty from their employer and behaving as if they are autonomous agents in a free market, which in fact they are. This works out well for people in tech who are even moderately competent because it gives us mobility, but pretty badly for everyone else. However, just as corporate management took the lead in losing money by treating long-term, highly knowledgeable, high-skill employees as disposable parts, they are going to have to take the lead by realizing that employee turnover is enormously expensive and it's only going to get worse as new generations enter the workforce with the express intent of exploiting their employers for all they're worth. It would, after all, be positively immoral for a worker to do anything else in the modern corporate environment.

hkmurakami 12y ago
>It would, after all, be positively immoral for a worker to do anything else in the modern corporate environment. This really struck a chord with me, with the rhetoric of the last few decades that it is a company's (and management/board) moral obligation to shareholders to do everything in their power that is not expressly against the word of the law to maximize their profits. In a similar vein, a worker is morally obligated to his or her "shareholders" (him/herself, family, etc.) to maximize his or her financial (or other, personal) gain.
- sharkweek 12y ago
  I learned quickly in a layoff how little a company actually cares about you - Sure they threw us a small severance package (attached to a nice "you won't do anything to harm the company's reputation" clause), but at the end of the day, you owe them nothing and they owe you nothing other than an exchange of services. Employment is so transactional nowadays. Without pensions, there is not really a point in staying in one place too long anymore. Studies show that it's pretty common after two years in the same place you'll end up effectively losing money. http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees-that-stay-in-companies-longer-than-2-years-get-paid-50-less/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees...
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> just as corporate management took the lead in losing money by treating long-term, highly knowledgeable, high-skill employees as disposable parts, they are going to have to take the lead by realizing that employee turnover is enormously expensive Maximize your short-term gains, but then you lose long-term - what a "big surprise". I don't see how this will self-correct. Corporations are genetically predisposed to think short-term, and the tendency is only getting worse in the new reality.

hkmurakami 12y ago

>It would, after all, be positively immoral for a worker to do anything else in the modern corporate environment. This really struck a chord with me, with the rhetoric of the last few decades that it is a company's (and management/board) moral obligation to shareholders to do everything in their power that is not expressly against the word of the law to maximize their profits. In a similar vein, a worker is morally obligated to his or her "shareholders" (him/herself, family, etc.) to maximize his or her financial (or other, personal) gain.

sharkweek 12y ago
I learned quickly in a layoff how little a company actually cares about you - Sure they threw us a small severance package (attached to a nice "you won't do anything to harm the company's reputation" clause), but at the end of the day, you owe them nothing and they owe you nothing other than an exchange of services. Employment is so transactional nowadays. Without pensions, there is not really a point in staying in one place too long anymore. Studies show that it's pretty common after two years in the same place you'll end up effectively losing money. http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees-that-stay-in-companies-longer-than-2-years-get-paid-50-less/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees...

Florin_Andrei 12y ago

> just as corporate management took the lead in losing money by treating long-term, highly knowledgeable, high-skill employees as disposable parts, they are going to have to take the lead by realizing that employee turnover is enormously expensive Maximize your short-term gains, but then you lose long-term - what a "big surprise". I don't see how this will self-correct. Corporations are genetically predisposed to think short-term, and the tendency is only getting worse in the new reality.