alt Hacker News> The pink slip comes as a total surprise. It always comes as a surprise. You did everything you were told, even waited patiently like you were asked. You trusted the organization to reward you in turn - and now you've lost your job.
Your reward is your paycheck. On Friday night, the balance anyone owes anyone is zero.
You didn’t “trust” them at all. They had no further obligations to you, nor you to them. You seem to have invented obligations that don’t exist.
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This is not about employer vs employee and job security. In fact, the post mentions that there could be good reasons for layoffs. What the post highlights is -
1. Trust - When an employer tells the employee something and then ignores it - then a truth based culture gives in to cynicism. Communications in the company become suspect. Even when there are win-win situations, where cooperation could lead to positive outcomes for both management and workers, a lack of trust means the company cant execute.
Also, this will affect communications with customers and shareholders.
2. Regardless of being right, the author is helping others in similar situations, who can adjust their expectations.
3. The post isn't so much about company vs employee, but competing factions within the company, who are invested in alternative tools/proposals. Promotion is used as a means of making one's faction stronger. This need not be for the benefit of the company or customers. Lobbying will also, of course, affect truth.
Factions might be inevitable (and there can even be good reasons - people genuinely have differences of opinion). But, if the company has good leaders, they will prevent this from erupting into a strong zero-sum conflicts which drown other goals - company's profits, promoting competent people, a culture of trust.
I agree, which is why all that garbage that we are supposed to regurgitate during interviews about wanting to save the world, or why this company is so interesting, in reality it is a meaningless theather.
We sell our work, they give us a paycheck, done, lets not make it more than it is.
The fact that so many companies operate this way is really depressing. I want to work with people I trust to have some genuine respect for my future, personally or career wise.
There is nothing more destructive than talking to people daily, having a good working relationship with them, and then randomly getting laid off with no warning or explanation. Years of positive interactions go up in smoke overnight, because the company couldn’t bother to treat you like a human with needs, and instead act as if you’re just a mercenary.
And to be clear, I’m not talking about budgetary or performance issues that lead to layoffs. I mean when you’ve done good work for a company for years, then out of the blue, get a meeting request for a Friday afternoon.
It makes for a cold, mercenary world that I want no part of.