Wednesday 4 April 2007

Loyalty

Corporate loyalty, where the individual is loyal to the collective, is rare these days, primarily because the collective has been so disloyal to us as individuals. I heard a similar point to this espoused in Cory Doctorow's podcast novel "Eastern Standard Tribe", and it's started resonating with me. His point was that if you're not loyal to the collective (the corporation, the country, your subculture tribe) then don't expect the collective to be loyal to you and treat you well. That got me thinking about why we see no corporate loyalty in the modern workforce anymore. I believe the problem is as I've stated above.

Because we've heard (or experienced) stories of companies firing hundreds of employees at the drop of a hat, with no more reason than to boost quarterly profits, our tenures feel flimsy. Even if our own company is not one of those, it's hard to project the opposite image these days. So, with the end of job security comes the end of employee loyalty and that's that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been at this company for 4.5 years now.
PPS - Everyone raises their eyebrows at that.

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