Comment by swatcoder

There is a special form of small company that's even worse. It's the kind where "we're a family". Those are worse than anything a big company bureaucracy / bean-counting could ever be.

My parents told me to be loyal to people, not companies.

People get me a job when I look for one.

>But in smaller groups and smaller communities, where you're actually working with people, loyalty and even affection can really make a difference in how satisfying your worklife is, how much security you can feel in your opportunities, etc

I've been in IT for over 20 years, mostly working in small to mid-sized companies. Small companies will let you go as soon as they feel a pinch. every company is the same, no matter their size.

You're expected to give two weeks' notice, but they can let you go without any notice.

Corporate loyalty is the dumbest trick employers ever pulled.

The term loyalty is dangerous for an employee.

Having seen companies of all sizes lay people off for the exact same reason - Returns did not match expectations - my personal perspective is to treat all employers the same.

No company with a balance sheet is loyal to employees. Keeping that idea in mind, and thus on an equal perspective, is healthy for both sides. "It's just business" is good advice and not just in movies.

The larger the company, and the more they're ballooned out with abstract drones chomping on abstract work items

I was actually thinking about this the other day. When an employer implements an "aloof" layer between the work done and the bottom line, the employer and employee don't get to bond. You and your company should be on the same page when it comes to generating business and on the same page when it comes to concerns. Shipmates, for real. With layers of management of all varieties (middle management, project management, developer management (this is tricky because the Dev Lead becomes your only connection to the bottom line)), the "aloofness" leads to unfulfilled lives. That's when the employee doesn't feel fulfilled or understands who they are on the ship. And it follows that the captain(s) of the ship (leadership) are unfulfilled because they are no longer in love with the crew (can easily fire, hire, layoff, disconnect from the employees lives). I haven't fully thought this thought out so I will probably expand on it as time goes on, but this is my line of thinking at the moment.

It's a love issue due to a lack of direct bonding (and no, company social gatherings and "fun" is not the bonding I am talking about. I am talking about taking on Moby Dick together). The love is indirectly routed through these other layers until it's been fully diluted and misunderstood, unfulfilling to all. Everyone must love the ship, the crew, the captain, the ocean, and the whale they are hunting.

I've worked at large companies (a Fortune 50 for ten years), and small (current employer is six people), and in my experience the small businesses treated employees the worst. At a large organization, there is a sense of orderliness and process that sometimes works in the employee's favor; your "loyalty" is on the record and categorizes you in a specific way. In a "family"-size company, it's often the case that only family members, family friends, or family co-religionists are of value to the owners; this truth then emerges at the worst time for you.

That loyalty and affection your are feeling is only going one way. I've worked for small and large places. Work is always transactional. The day the CFO at your 10 person startup that "feels like a family" gets some pressure from investors to cut costs, well, your loyalty does not factor into the decision making.

This difference is because smaller organizations are less of an entity in their own right, and more of an actual group of people doing things together (even if legally the company might still be a separate entity).

As organizations grow, they become more than a mere sum of its parts. It seems to be an emergent phenomenon driven by complexity - as humans interact, this very interaction creates something resembling an entity in its own right past a certain scale, with its own agenda (distinct from individual agendas of its constituent humans) and drive for self-preservation as a whole - the egregore that you mentioned. My pet theory is that this starts to happen when you scale beyond the Dunbar number, but the effect is only obvious at scales where most members of the organization are faceless strangers to each other.

Either way, this emergent entity is decidedly amoral.

I agree in parts. Loyalty and corresponding benefits are a local optima. But when the macro is controlled and influenced by external (to the local) forces, and these forces have power, loyalty means nothing in terms of security. But you will still have good relationships with people and new opportunities may surface as a benefit.

But loyalty to a company is complete, utter BS.

IME smaller communities make firing/layoffs different but not less likely. Startups will lay people off for money regardless of any level of loyalty regardless of size. In fact it is even more disappointing to work very very closely with people who would lay you off overnight if their investor decides they want heads to roll.

tbh that feels completely backwards. In large orgs, you are a number and transparently so. People come and go, processes are set up that assume attrition.

In a smaller shop, there's less flex overall for departures and more incentive to abuse the personal relationships built.

You are right that loyalty changes depending on org chart, but it's how senior you are. Senior execs have more vested in the company, both in their career and stock options.