Smaller, family-owned companies can be loyal to a fault.
Long-time employees can be hard to get rid of. One good deed, closing one big deal, sticking with the company during tough times, being buddies with the right people...
A lot of owners can be sympathetic to certain people as well. Keeping employees that miss work for any excuse, moochers that get raises for no reason, bad performers, it can be tough for other employers that won't realize that there isn't anything they can do themselves about this, and to just focus on their own work.
On the other hand, I've seen people go through family crisis, health issues, etc and still receive a paycheck for months at a time when missing lots of work.
To the extent that markets are efficient, they’ll be replaced by companies who are willing to dump employees when it’s not profitable to keep them. That’s the system we’ve chosen for ourselves so far.
To the extent that some companies are loyal represents a market failure. TBH, I’ll take a safety net and free education to re-train in a new industry any day of the week over a boss doing me favors and making me feel like i owe favors too. Our economy is beyond bartering and favor systems. Keep personal relationships for personal time and work relationships at work time. I’ll be friends with my peers, i don’t need to be friends with the boss.
Any contractual relationship has a transactional side. And an employer-employee relationship is asymmetrical in a way that will always impact things, and make it impossible for a 100% human relationship to form. Any attempt is like a Frankenstein version of a real friendship. If you want to be friends, it requires equal footing, that means equity and partnerships.
I wonder if you've ever had the pleasure of working for a small company full of the owner's incompetent friends and family. Loyalty is nice within reason, but it can be pathological.
I didn't think that, quite the contrary. Since you seem to have trouble with comprehension, let me break this comment thread down for you:
- GP says that loyalty isn't always always a good thing because it causes small companies to keep incompetent or lazy employees.
- You make an ideological remark about how GP is "sticking up for Corporate Man" by saying that.
- I respond that yes, in fact, small companies often do employ useless people out of misplaced loyalty, perhaps you just haven't personally experienced it.
- You somehow misinterpret my comment as accusing YOU of sticking up for companies. I did not. Don't worry, I fully understand that your entire philosophy boils down to "companies bad".
It seems that you, asshole, have misunderstood me then. Sticking up for companies was the part where they propagated the myth that companies sometimes have loyalty to their employees. They do not.
You then took that as a premise that I somehow would also belive in (of course I don’t).
Then you made your little ideological remark. And we were all better off for it.
You really came back after four days just to try to spin this in a way that makes it look like you were in the right?
> You then took that as a premise that I somehow would also belive in (of course I don’t).
Lol no, I didn't. You're either still misunderstanding, or being deliberately obtuse. My point is that some companies DO have loyalty, and a subset of those are loyal to all the wrong employees. I'm fully aware that you disagree with both of those things. If I thought you agreed with them, why would I have commented in the first place?
Long-time employees can be hard to get rid of. One good deed, closing one big deal, sticking with the company during tough times, being buddies with the right people...
A lot of owners can be sympathetic to certain people as well. Keeping employees that miss work for any excuse, moochers that get raises for no reason, bad performers, it can be tough for other employers that won't realize that there isn't anything they can do themselves about this, and to just focus on their own work.
On the other hand, I've seen people go through family crisis, health issues, etc and still receive a paycheck for months at a time when missing lots of work.
That's a loyal company.