- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- workreform@lemmy.world
‘I’m proud of being a job hopper’: Seattle engineer’s post about company loyalty goes viral::undefined
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there absolutely is no loyalty from an organisation.
This is why I jump ship without any further thought or feeling of remorse. They would throw you out on your butt without a second’s hesitation whenever they feel like it.
Companies get mad when the employees look at their jobs the way execs look at their employees. Cue outrage. The only reason they mad is because they own the newspapers, too.
The audacity of these removed. I have a mercenary outlook on work too. If you love me, keep paying me good.
I’m not loyal to anybody, I’m a demon / I have no loyalty for anyone, never did, never will
I’ve been practicing the mercenary method for about 5 years now. Since then I’ve significantly increased my salary and I’ve been a lot happier at work. That on top of learning to say “no” has improved my career life exponentially. NO loyalty. No unpaid overtime. No going above and beyond for a company that isn’t going to return the favor.
What about when they do return the favour, though?
As someone who has spent a fair bit of time on the other side of this issue, I’ve found people tend to assume I’m being shitty even as I am actively going out of my way to accommodate and support them.
One time I moved someone from hourly to salary because he was very receptive to guidance and was learning very quickly - essentially I didn’t want him to be compared on hourly terms as his pay increased, since the cap for more independent salaried employees was much higher. I was kinda risking my own ass in doing this since he had neither experience nor education, but I saw incredible potential, and felt it made sense. As part of this, to ensure he wouldn’t be shortchanged by the conversion, I had payroll add 5K when they switched him. I expected this would be well received, but he had so many concerns that made absolutely no sense. We got through it, but in the end it seems he thought that all of the extra time I was spending personally to teach him a new role and help him get from ~40K to 100K within a year and a half was something to be wary of.
I have many stories like this. Sometimes when I feel hurt by people I’ve been so loyal to, I get urges to stop being compassionate and stop prioritizing their concerns so heavily. I don’t think I’ll ever change, but it is extra exhausting to go through this stuff over and over only to be lumped in with folks who do treat people like shit.
Perhaps the model is just fundamentally broken, and there’s no way to win as long as there is any sort of power differential in the relationship (implied or otherwise). More and more I feel that that is what I’m up against, and no amount of concern for an employee’s wellbeing will ever be able to overcome this.
So, my question is not rhetorical - I realize this isn’t my post, but I’m super curious about others’ perspective on this: are you open to the idea that at some point in your career someone might actually care about your wellbeing? Will it matter to you, or just … get whatever you can, and never stop trying to fuck the system?
they dont even pay enough for our loyalty lmao
Companies: “You are nothing but a cog in a machine. You will be placed in the machine if and only if you help the machine generate maximum profit. If your presence ever causes the machine to generate less than maximum profit you will be summarily discarded.”
Employees: “Okay, so you try to get the maximum profit for you and I try to get the maximum profit for me.”
Companies: surprisePikachu.jpg
This is something that is still better in Germany. Companies are forced to have somewhat of an employee loyalty and some corporation go well above what the law forces them to (like VW). The way things are going lately, it feels like this won’t be like this forever. But atm it’s still one of the good things about Germany.
Most people over-index on maximizing compensation or holding on to stability. But there’s more to work than money and stability. Work is about growth, building connections, working on things you care about, being challenged and creating a legacy.
Fucking legacy? Is this a joke? Who gives a shit about what shitty products they launch for FAANG companies? I certainly don’t - not beyond keeping my resume and portfolio up to date.
Compensation and stability are the only things that matter beyond basic working conditions and a non-toxic environment.
Well in my case I created a legacy by helping to unionize my workplace. I don’t even care if I’m ever remembered for that, not many legacies can be beat
Man we’ve lost something along the way. When did our jobs become purely a means of money and contributing nothing to society.
Man we’ve lost something along the way. When did our jobs become purely a means of money and contributing nothing to society.
This mythic past where our jobs meant “more than money” and we “contributed to society” never existed anywhere
Removed by mod
Probably around the time they took away pensions
When society began treating people as an exploitable resource.
Ain’t nobody giving increases like new bosses.
You want loyalty? That’s what pensions were for. Fuck your 401k, I can invest myself, thanks.
You want loyalty? Give better increases.
Fuck your 401k, I can invest myself, thanks
You can’t match your own contributions, though.
It’s only up to 6% though.
It’s still free money. Between maxing that ans espp, I basically got a free $16k last year.
Yeah it’s free money but it’s not as much as what grandfather would have gotten in his pension
Spot on.
At the end of the day, software developers desire two things: An interesting technical challenge, and fair pay/benefits for the work done. If you can’t provide either, you have a problem. Not the employee.
Companies like to straddle the technical challenges appeal where they’re innovative risk takers but don’t you dare try to improve on any existing system. If they just want firefighters then say so and accept that people aren’t going to be passionate about it.
Companies don’t even take risks anymore. They wait for some startup to take all the risks, acquire them, and integrate some partial abomination into their existing product
Nguyen previously wrote a guest post in Business Insider that detailed his post-graduation move from New York City to Seattle for a tech job and how it “turned out to be the loneliest time of my life.”
Sounds like The Seattle Freeze.
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Anyway. Yeah, if I’m looking at a candidate and see they had three jobs in three years, that’s a minus. Are they insufferable and they’re being fired? Are they actually bad at their job? Even if they are good at their job, are they going to stick around here long enough to be worth the resources spent onboarding them?
It’s a risky move.
Would be better if employers made more effort to retain people, but here we are.
I live in Seattle and honestly have never experienced any freeze at all. Maybe it’s because I’m queer or maybe it’s because I have good social skills, but I have had no issue integrating myself with the community here and have made lots of friends. Seattle responds well to those who put themselves out there and aren’t republican weirdos.
I’m just glad I have a name for what I’d also agree was the single most lonely time of my own life, hunkered-down in a North Seattle apartment for 18 months before bailing on my green card and h1 and going back to Vancouver.
Because the weather wasn’t the issue; but I’d suggest improving the rail transit and rolling the shitty moldy wet-wood lowboy apartments into something more dense to allow for beneficial green-space. This emerald city needs a little more greenery!
But transit and greenery may be a little avant-garde for a country still undecided on the issue of felons as kings :-\
I wanted to thank you for sharing your experience and make sure to validate you in this, because it really sounds very difficult to go through. Hopefully things are doing better for you recently.
I’ve averaged ~12 job hops in the last 6 years and I wouldn’t change a thing. Compensation growth has been roughly 6.05x. The previous 6 years was…maybe 3? And maybe 2x.
I owe the big corps nothing. I meet expectations and deliverables and I support my team however I can, but that’s about it.
Can I ask what you do for a living? In Canada, such gains are basically impossible on income. If you were earning $70k as a low level software developer, there’s no way you could, in 6 years, without skill upgrading and promotions, change that into $400k+
Please don’t extrapolate based on what you read here. The people who are saying they do this are among a very elite group of people who came out of high-end technical programs. They have the pedigree and are sought after so they can do this as much as they like. You most likely cannot get away with this.
I graduated with a 2.8 GPA. I learned everything on the job(s). My first few years were 80 hour weeks not because I had to, but because I wanted to learn [everything I didn’t learn in school].
My friend never graduated and makes way more money than I do (I believe post-tax $600k but I’m only about 90% sure). Software Engineering is a booming arena right now if you have the right buzz words on your resume and soft skills for the interview. I say booming now, but Sep-Dec last year were rough. However, the market for CS job opportunities is bouncing back.
It’s a game that can be played and succeeded at, regardless of pedigree, but aptitude matters. Even my favorite bartender at my local dive bar is studying it in their free time and, frankly, they’re getting pretty good at it fast. I think they’ll be just fine.
But eventually don’t you risk being unhireable with this sort of work history? We recently hired someone who had a similar work history and I remember that being very much a red flag when we hired them. Turns out the red flag should have been payed attention too since history is a good predictor of future behaviors.
As a hiring manager I would think twice about investing anything in an employee who jumps around THAT much. I mean I don’t blame you, I’ve had the same job for 23 years and I could be making a lot more money. But salary is not everything and I love my job. My mental health is very much an extra benefit.
Even assuming that it’s all W2, it’s a self-resolving problem- if no one will hire you because you’re unstable, you stay at the existing job. That works until either you’ve been there long enough to appear stable, or you find an employer that’s not concerned about it.
That’s assuming you don’t get laid off, sadly. Ask me how I know.
Being laid off may be seen as a mitigating factor. It’s a no-fault termination and can easily be explained to the next hiring manager.
Even if I got laid off twice in a row in six months though? In this market? Both times it was with around half the company as well. One was an acquisition with the new US owner preferring people in India, the other one was a “pivot” after sales sold something that they themselves couldn’t really describe.
I didn’t get to hiring managers and explanations in the first place. I got told at one point by a hiring manager that they would rather hire some Googler who recently got laid off, since the pipeline is full of those. The fact that six months later they laid said hiring manager off with his team as well does not really make me feel vindicated either.
No worries though, I got my plans sorted out, no better time to get more specialized, go back to uni and get into a niche but growing field I like.
He also noted higher pay and easier promotions. “I had a 20% pay bump moving from Amazon to Microsoft for the same role and job responsibilities,” Nguyen wrote.
Industries promote this, especially the publicly traded ones, whether they realize it or not (I’m sure they do). It looks worse on a corporate balance sheet and subsequent earnings quarterly earnings report to pay someone 20% more than to hire someone at a new pay scale. It’s absolutely insane that we’ve gotten ourselves to this point as a society, but here we are.
I think it’s also very acceptable to have full time contractors on the payroll with no end date for the same reason.
why?
Contractors can be paid out of project budgets, they don’t need benefits and other perks aside from cash and they can be hired and terminated quickly with no severance
And that goes back to the engineer’s original ask to show him what companies have employee loyalty.
Replacing full time employees who at least have a slight stake in the company with easily replaceable contractors there to complete a project doesn’t put the best foot forward in the loyalty regard.
original ask
When you leave the car lot, you need to use regular words like ‘request’ or ‘question’.
I don’t understand how it works out for them though. Hiring is so much more expensive than retaining staff, not just the higher salary, but the loss of productivity from losing someone with institutional knowledge and needing to train the new person which can take a really long time to get them up to speed.
don’t understand how it works out for them though. Hiring is so much more expensive than retaining
You’re using logic, and that may trip you up here.
Hiring is spread out into different cost buckets, whereas a 20% hit to one resource’s payroll stays in payroll.
You see if you slice the cake enough times. There becomes more cake.
That’s called accounting.
