> If you are loyal to your employer and do not own a significant part of the organization, then you should take a good hard look at why you're loyal -- and whether or not your employer is loyal to you in return.
As someone who works at a 2 person company (my boss and me), it's the good relationship with him along with the relaxed work environment. Sure, we have to be profitable, but not exceedingly so.
> I will note, however, that there is also more to the story than simply "being disposable." An argument can be made that laying off however many employees also helps to preserve the ongoing livelihood of the employees who remain.
> The error is often not in the layoff. It's in over-hiring in the first place. And that changes the "how evil are these people?" equation rather drastically IMO.
Those are mostly a problem at larger companies, IME.
I was exceedingly lucky with most of my jobs so far, in the sense that I mostly got good work environments where employees are actually valued beyond mere numbers. I wish others would be as lucky as I was.
I have personal experience of a company keeping me employed WAY beyond where it was profitable for them, as they simply didn't have the need for me due to not enough contracts. They provided me with a lot of learning resources. I went almost half a year in total without any real work for me to do. They were aware of that.
They really tried hard to find a way to keep me on, so while I was disposable in the end, they truly did try to keep me on, and to me, that indicates them valuing me beyond the mere numbers.
But they probably thought there would be more contracts, and keeping you on for 6 months, or even a year, would probably be cheaper than hiring and onboarding someone new.
Why’d they keep you on? Are you just a really nice person? Are they just really nice people? Or did they think you’d be profitable to them in the future? Or some combination of all 3?
Option 2 and 3 for sure. I can't say whether option 1 applies. But my opinion on them is not just informed by keeping me on for longer than necessary, but rather many additional supporting experiences. Like actually getting to talk to the C levels and bringing in suggestions/asking questions and such.
My understanding of your messages indicates to me that you think I was saying that the company doesn't care about numbers. While I was meaning that the company treated me as an actual valued human and did well to me.
As someone who works at a 2 person company (my boss and me), it's the good relationship with him along with the relaxed work environment. Sure, we have to be profitable, but not exceedingly so.
> I will note, however, that there is also more to the story than simply "being disposable." An argument can be made that laying off however many employees also helps to preserve the ongoing livelihood of the employees who remain.
> The error is often not in the layoff. It's in over-hiring in the first place. And that changes the "how evil are these people?" equation rather drastically IMO.
Those are mostly a problem at larger companies, IME.
I was exceedingly lucky with most of my jobs so far, in the sense that I mostly got good work environments where employees are actually valued beyond mere numbers. I wish others would be as lucky as I was.