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by magnetic·9y ago·view on hn ↗
> What else would they be motivated by?

The actual work (what is being done), the mission of the company (are you helping kids send pictures that disappear after 10 seconds or are you working on finding a cure to hearing loss?), the team, the location (do I have to spend 2h commuting?), the opportunities to learn, the opportunities to grow, etc. We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration, you will be treated as a "disposable mercenary" because that's exactly what you are. You will never be trusted, because your loyalty is directed at whoever shows more $$ to you.

Companies value more than just pure technical skills: loyalty, teamwork, communication skills, attitude, ethics, drive, independence, etc... If you only play in that one dimension, the game becomes very rough for both sides. I've never seen that work well, except for very short term assignments.

7 comments
> We each value different things, but if money is your only consideration, you will be treated as a "disposable mercenary" because that's exactly what you are. You will never be trusted, because your loyalty is directed at whoever shows more $$ to you.

The problem is that most companies treat you that way anyway. If you want me to not act as a "disposable mercenary", want me to stay longer and want me to give you loyalty, give me a contract to prove it. Unless you're willing to surrender your power to dispose of me at will, I'm going to treat you as if you'll use it at any time.

As soon as companies are loyal to their employee, I will be loyal to them.

Work is a simple contract. I give time. I get money. Period. The company will not hesitate to throw me under the bus if it can bring more money, and I do not see why I should be more considerate toward them ?

Perhaps then, you should consider looking to work for a company that will be loyal to you. :)
I have worked or consulted for a few that went too far the other way and it wasn't that great either. If the company is too loyal, then it can create a corrosive environment because good employees sometimes leave for reasons unrelated to the employee-business relationship, family, retirement, health, etc. The bad ones seem to never leave, though.

Honestly, I would rather work somewhere that is willing to get rid of useless and/or corrosive employees than somewhere that refuses to do so out of misguided loyalty.

This is sooo true. Its very easy for bad apples to abuse systems put in place to give employees stability...

Its a strange problem I guess. Systems are put in place to keep good employees around but are abused by bad ones. Then those systems are thrown out and everyone suffers.

I've never seen a loyal company. I'm not even sure what that would look like.
Wow. I managed a good number of downvotes for even suggesting they exist.

I can say of a previous employer, all of the senior management took pay cuts before impacting the rest of us in a downturn. When my department did have to reduce by a person (I was the obvious choice to downsize), the entire (small) department, including my boss, took a furlough day instead. (Obviously, I started looking for new offers at this point, but I was never unemployed due to this.) Love that company. Great people.

I think a lot of people here may have experience with two types of terrible corporate environments: Faceless entity behemoths and cutthroat startups. There's a whole realm of small to medium traditional businesses out there where the owner knows everyone personally, and actually cares about the people who works for them.

Well, when the company owners share their non-re-invested profits with the employee, we can talk about that...
And when the company invests his own money in the company we can talk about that.
Unless your family owns the company, no such thing exists.
How does one determine such a thing?
If they value those things, then they should be happy to compensate employees that have shown those traits at above market value. Then you retain the talent, and you likely do not run into compensation issues moving forward. Generally you see stagnation in pay, or the company expects you're willing to make well below market rate because it's a product you care about. At the end of the day I care about survival and feeding my family.
Unless you run a non-profit, your company is also motivated by money and all your work and mission are only means to an end, which is to maximize the shareholders profit. That's why the company was founded, right?

Of course you have the right to deny a rise and let the employee go, maybe it really doesn't fit in your budget and/or you can hire someone else for less, but don't talk like the employee is wrong for searching a opportunity to grow.

I really find the "make the world a better place" rhetoric funny. Because, at the end of the day, you're right.

Companies exist to make money.

Many non-profits exist to make money too. Some people find doing a non-profit makes more money than a "for profit" company. I do think that money isn't always the main motivator, it's more complex than that. But generally, at the end of the day, money matters, even for non-profits.
I am not a disposable mercenary because I want to be. I am that because years of "at will" employment and layoffs made me into that. Loyalty is a two-way street, and employers have torn up their end of it with bulldozers.

Money must be my only consideration, because that is usually the only thing of value that I get out of the employer-employee relationship.

All those work-related properties reduce to money and time. A shorter commute means less time spent in traffic and less money spent on fuel and maintenance, but often also means more money spent on housing. If my company wrote software for managing cancer trials instead of flight mission planning for military aviation, I might give them a break of 2-3% on my salary expectations. But if they offer $20000/year less than I currently earn (anecdotally, this has happened to me), well, sorry doe-eyed leukemia kids, but I have to make rent.

As for the team... Well, do you pay them enough to stay? People who entice others to join because they foster a great team environment should be paid more, not less, and your suggestion implies the opposite--that people who work on a good team should be willing to accept lower salaries.

If you have employees coming to you with competing offers every six months, that means one thing: your raises are not competitive with the market. We all know that job hunting is a stressful, unpleasant ordeal, and that is a cost that satisfied employees won't be willing to pay. If you see competitive offers from your employees, not only do you pay too little, but you pay so little that someone was willing to do the job-hunting dance in order to find better pay.

Anecdotally (n~=9) I have found your final statement to be inaccurate. Companies are interested purely in how much money they can make from your work. Your individual manager at a company may value more things, but those things might not translate to another manager, or might not help you if the money is ever a problem. For instance, you might get a $500 discretionary bonus for exemplary work one month, and be laid off with 3 days notice and no severance the next (this actually happened to me).

Companies value money. I value money. As long as we are both honest about this, it tends to work out. It doesn't get rough; it's just business as usual. It is only when people start lying about how their companies value things that problems occur. Based on the statistics, companies generally value loyalty at -3% of current salary per year, or worse. The article implies -7%, I think; the math wasn't entirely clear, and heavily assumptions-based.

The only times I have allowed myself to be underpaid in money is when I was getting experience that I hoped would pay off in a higher wage later.

A wage that will enable me to buy a house and my kids to go to college.

Loyalty is not a asset that a bank nor college accepts as payment.

Furthermore, a company is a paper entity, a legal fiction. A company is not a person. A company has no conscious, no dreams, no aspirations.

No human being should pledge loyalty to a piece of paper - which is not capable of returning that loyalty.

Mission? Loyalty? Company values? Which would do you live in? You are speaking as if the companies are doing a favor to the employees by giving them a job and the employees are at the mercy of these companies.

Being employed with a company is a business transaction, where one party sells their time and skills in exchange for money.

Aren't employees disposable anyway? When the company runs low on cash, they are not going to hesitate to fire you to restore the financial health of itself.

Companies are motivated by money. It is in my interest to be motivated by money too. Companies are not loyal to employees. It is foolish to expect employees to be loyal to companies.

Perhaps you're getting caught in the labels, like mission & loyalty. It's not about buzz words, or receiving favors.

In my experience, there is a substantial difference in the quality of work of a person who cares about what they're doing and someone who doesn't care. Perhaps you've worked with a contractor who was willing to do a half-assed job, only fixing things if they were cornered. I certainly have.

Money can motivate that caring only so much.

One may not bothered about things like mission and loyalty, care a lot about their income and yet care a lot about the work they are doing.

Caring about money, caring about mission and loyalty and caring about work are all orthogonal to each other.