logoalt Hacker News

steveBK123today at 2:17 PM1 replyview on HN

There is no employer loyalty, that died in the 90s.

My dad worked as an engineer in the same firm for 30 years and retired. The company was founded before his father was born, and was publicly listed before he was born.

Substantially every company I have worked for didn't even exist 30 years before I joined, let alone before I or my father were born. Most won't be around in 30 years.

Several employers nearly went out of business, had substantial layoffs, or went thru mergers that materially impacted my department/team/job. The guys at the very top were always fine, because how could the guy in charge be responsible?

Even within the companies I stayed 5 years, I had multiple roles/bosses/teams.


Replies

jack_trippertoday at 2:43 PM

>There is no employer loyalty, that died in the 90s.

As a millennial kid at the time, I remember the 90's movies and sitcoms (Office Space, Friends, the Matrix, Fight Club, etc) where the biggest problem GenX had at the time was, *checks notes*, the lack of purpose from being bored out of their minds by a safe and mundane 9-5 cubicle job that paid the bills to support a family and indulge in mindless consumerism to fill the void.

Oh boy, if only we knew that was as good as it would ever be from then on.

I remember the mass layoffs Yahoo had at the dot com bubble crash, when they had a 5-15 minute 1:1 with every worker they laid off. Now you just wake up one day to find your account locked and you put it together that you got laid off, then you read in the news about mass layoffs happening while they're now hiring the same positions in India and their stock is going up.

No wonder young people now would rather just see the whole system burn to the ground and roast marshmallows on the resulting bonfire, when you're being stack-ranked, min-maxed and farmed like cattle on the altar of shareholder returns.

show 2 replies