As an Employee, You Are Disposable (2023)

This is not news.

If you are loyal to your employer and do not own a significant part of the organization, then you should take a good hard look at why you're loyal -- and whether or not your employer is loyal to you in return.

Hint: in most companies, they aren't. It's exceedingly rare.

Base your decisions accordingly.

I will note, however, that there is also more to the story than simply "being disposable." An argument can be made that laying off however many employees also helps to preserve the ongoing livelihood of the employees who remain.

The error is often not in the layoff. It's in over-hiring in the first place. And that changes the "how evil are these people?" equation rather drastically IMO.

Of course, this is just the random off-the-cuff thoughts of someone who is currently far too alcoholated, so YMMV, and--

Look! A boulder of salt!

And on that note, I'm going to bed. Tootles!

Work for yourself, not for your employer. Your employer will fire you the second it is profitable for them, that's how it is.

It doesn't mean that you have to hate your job. Just stop and reflect from time to time, and make sure you are being compensated for what you do. If not, you need to change something (ask for a raise, look for another job, work less, ...).

As developers, IMHO you should always push for open sourcing as much as you can, ideally with a copyleft license and no CLA. Because it is beneficial for you personally: it means that you can reuse your code after you leave, and if you manage to make it copyleft and accept external contributions, it will force your employer to keep distributing the sources after you leave.

I really don't get why developers sometimes go out of their way to help their employer keep their code proprietary, it should be the other way round.

People here are talking about loyalty, when they really shouldn't be. A company is not your family. Hell, a company isn't even something you can form a bond with. You can be loyal to the people in a company, but the relationship with the company is purely transactional, and it lasts exactly as long as it's mutually beneficial.

Thinking that you should stay in a company even after it stops being beneficial for you will not lead to anything good.

In my early career, I used to believe in doing whatever it took to stay with a company, becoming emotionally invested in every line of code and system I developed. However, after a few negative experiences with bosses who didn't treat me well, I came to realize a few things:

- My code is disposable, and I should not become overly attached to it

- Loyalty should be mutual and based on a healthy relationship where both parties are willing to invest

This is why we need labor unions. The power dynamics are almost universally stacked in favor of the employer. Unions can equalize this to an extent. You will still be disposable, but at least you will get better terms if you end up getting disposed of.

The opposite is also true: as an employer, you are disposable.

I think, according to the comments I see on HN, it is a bit too much, on both sides. Employees get laid off for no good reason, we already know that part, but many employees don't hesitate to quit when the company needs them the most.

I think the system would benefit from a bit more loyalty, on both sides. You don't have to get married to your employer, but I have the feeling that with a bit more loyalty, both employees and employers could make more beneficial long term plans.

I'm pretty tired of having to argue with leadership about adjusting salaries by inflation. Of course they will begrudgingly eat up increases in other costs due to inflation, but the buck stops with the employees. Keep people that are performing on par or more happy? Naaaah, let's lose internal knowledge and money onboarding a new employee.

I'm tired...

If you believe your company has your best interests at heart then you're just a mark waiting to be given some unpleasant news some day soon.

As a manager I've personally saved a few folks over the years from a very arbitrary sacking, and it often comes down to a few VPs scheming in some back room with little or no context on what they're planning, and pure luck that you can get to them before they make any announcements.

As an employer, you are disposable, too.

The difference is the amount of time each side has, to develop an understanding of what that means.

I have trouble understanding how people work for such big companies. Of course if the scale is 1000 employees "the company" cannot care about you; it is an institution not a bunch of people anymore. There is no upper layer to blame, the structure and scale themselves are the culprit.

I decided against that and work in a small company. Work-life balance is nice, we are friends and we all care (at least some bit) about the company itself. That is, because "the company" is us.

> “We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

The part that I find most galling about managers with this attitude is that they still expect loyalty, unpaid overtime etc. from their employees.

I'm reading here and else comments suggesting things like "don't get overly attached" or "don't define yourself by the role you fill" or "don't base your identity on your job"

But how do you "not" do these things?

It seems like I am doing these things automatically and I don't even know how the alternative world where I'm not doing these things looks like.

Context: big American tech, hiring tens of thousands of “engineers” through leetcode during a financial boom, and then firing a substantial part with an email during the bust.

I was disposed of recently after 4 years. Looking back now I feel I put in too many hours, filled in for roles and responsibilities without financial compensation. I'm 40 and still making these types of mistakes. Just an overwhelming feeling of sadness and frustration.

High five for all the other recently made redundant peeps.

Not at my company. We’re more like a family than a traditional startup.

>“There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them,” Mr Gurner said. “We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

At least in historical times there was the ocassional revolt against the feudal overlords, and types saying such things were stomped which kept them in some humility.

Hell, even Louis XVI saw himself guillotined when he pushed his luck too far.

one thing I believe is in the near future - software will go towards small service firms i.e 1-3 people or at most 20 like law firms etc. given the prevalence of open source. second, being software is now a commodity with 0 price.

you can use a generic crm, erp etc .. but most the valuable workflows are 1 of 1. hence need to be bespoke. case in point SAP implementation consultants.

however, the huge obstacle is most "software" engineers don't think like engineers or businessmen but think like scientists and tend to be dogmatic.

the huge affinity for "dick" swinging sorry ladies .... i.e showing how smart you're and coming up with the most complex contraption e.g kubernetes, react means we will never get to that level. as most engineers won't be able to deliver things solo or with a small team and hence will rely on employment.

and please don't mention A.I -- humans can't make predictable userland software as is.

Don't base your identity on your job.

“There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them,” Mr Gurner said. “We need to remind people they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

As much of a tool as this guy seems to be, it's hard to say he's wrong here. I've also been noticing a surge of tech people treating companies as some kind of social service / adult daycare where it's the company's responsibility to make sure the employee and their family are living a good life. It's really bizarre.

I think most advice here is bad for long term career. Yes, you should ask to be paid for what you are worth, you should walk away from toxic culture and avoid being exploited.

Having said that, you need to care, care about your work, your team. You must give it all you have and have the pride of having produced great outcome. You will learn and grow and have a great network of people.

Don't do this for others. Do it for yourselves and your mental health, because the joy of having done your best will be more rewarding in the long term.

We put our savings on Wall Street firms aiming to "maximize shareholder value at any cost" and then complain when these companies end up treating employees like cattle.

Why is an employer allowed and socially accepted to hire more than one person to do the same job, and even have someone shadowing you, but an employee might get fired if caught working another job? Why can an employer fire someone on the spot without notice, but an employee is expected to give a notice period? These are among many questions that highlight the power dynamics between employers and employees.

I have been a lousy employee, average employee, exceptional employee at various jobs in my life. The one thing that is 100% common in all these jobs? Nobody gave a shit. The only people who cared a tiny bit were my immediate team mates, that too because their deliverables were tied to my own.

Anyone young reading this - the only thing that you will get for doing good work is more work. Of course there are exceptions (these exceptions are usually more at team level than organization level), but they are rare.

If you don't agree, try asking for more than 2% raise and see how the conversation goes. Unless your employer is totally dependent on you or you have some rare skill, chances of you getting treated fairly are pretty low.

I used to be idealistic and look down upon people who work two remote jobs effectively getting paid twice for the same time. I don't do it myself, but I have gotten off my high horse and no longer frown on such practices. If they can make it work, more power to them. Loyalty to an employer is like loyalty to Trump, it is just a one way street

If you are not a shareholder of the company you work at, you are basically a cow that is being milked and once you no longer can be milked or business decides they need to pivot to pork, you'll get slaughtered.

Always do bare minimum, just enough to not be fired but keep your managers upset. Never do more than what you are paid to do and adjust your performance based on how happy you are with the pay and how much money company makes off your work.

Seen examples when employee on £80k found a way to optimise some queries in the product. That translated to substantially lowered bills and increased sales. Talking millions in extra revenue. Did they get a bonus? Bump in the salary? No. Soon after company found a new investor who brought in their own team and that developer was let go.

Lesson - never go out of your way, never do more than you are asked to do. Save any brilliant ideas to yourself. Maybe when they let you go, you will use them at your own business and get competitive advantage.

If I could perhaps offer a middle of the road take.

I think there's immaturity on both sides of this. Many employees are treating employment as a kind of child-parent relationship, where as long as they're at least moderately obedient, they're entitled to be taken care of.

On the other hand, there's certain employers who feel a childish need to show how strong they are, by being ruthless, and making big dramatic "difficult" changes (not difficult for them) as a kind of theatrical performance of how action-taking they are.

If approached maturely, employers would be reticent to do layoffs like this, because they show comically poor staffing management, and cause huge waste and losses. And employees would put more effort into career defence, rather than putting all effort into working hard for an employer, who they can't guarantee will or can reciprocate their loyalty.

I.e. greater diligence is needed on both sides.

> The recent tech layoffs have shown that employees are disposable in the eyes of executives.

In reality they are. There may be only a handful of employees in the world who are truly irreplaceable. Without employee X the shelves will still get stacked, the reports written, the coffee made, the code written, the product sold.

Naturally this also applies to the executives too ...

The nature of the relationship between the employer and employee is spelled out in the employment agreement (in the US). Sure it is legalize but the nature of the relationship is clear:

Any company that claims to be a "family" should put an employment agreement in front of you that reflects that. I have yet to see anything even remotely resembling such a relationship.

Rather, ime, the nature of the relationship spelled out is one of asymmetric power, rights, and remedies.

And if you work at a place as an employee that has made a situation where you ARN'T disposable, you should either try and change that or leave.

If there's a single point of failure like that, the company is being mismanaged. NOBODY leaving, getting sick, taking a holiday or even dying, should leave the rest of the company at risk.

Companies should most certainly value employees and treat us with respect, but they should also be setup to allow for employees not being around forever.

I don't think have seen any different since always. You have to always look for the next job, IT companies do not last, this is how it works.

It's not just a legal matter, it's objectively the economy. Even if you would enforce it, a company would not be able to make money in some cases.

Boards and top management care just about money anyway, so you'll get extra degrees of shit.

Depends on your job and relevance to the company’s bottom land AND the ramp time for new talent. I’m in charge of delivering two products. If they canned me, their roadmap would be toast for the next five years. And we’re so short staffed there’s no one to fill my role or bring someone in and ramp them even if they could find someone.

I wonder how often average employee leaves company voluntary when they are not needed or produce value? I see some rockstars pursuing their own goals, but how many of your average employees would do it? And not do it for other reasons like wanting a career change or more opportunities. Purely just for good of the employer?

Really if you aren't disposable barring literal world class individuals, then management is utterly incompetent at their jobs. Even in a utopian happy relationship you could get hit by the proverbial bus or truck and then the company and everyone else in it is screwed.

Even as a cofounder of a vc backed startup, both of us felt disposable and replaceable by the investors.

Of course, it also depends on the local laws. In some countries, there are stronger employee protection laws.

My employer wanted to do layoffs. They had to come up with an offer that's so good that some employees accepted it (everyone who wanted to remain in the company did).

I've always thought that if you were to plot your disposability it would be some function of the size of the company you work at. In a small company or startup you are more "valuable" than in a large organization.

so.. more beatings until morale improves?

Related: "Disposable Employers (2014)"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40932252

Loyalty is lock-in, lock-in makes the one locked in more vulnerable, and more vulnerable means less power, and less power means less compensation.

Many employee perspectives here will change the day they start their own company with their own money and hire people to work for them.

It’s not good to keep fixating on how much the cruel executives make. They are employees just like you, and they have similar worries and concerns. Also, loyalty cuts both ways. Companies will invest more time and energy in employees they know they can count on. You have to decide whether to take that risk or remain suspicious and bitter. Even with all that, both sides have the right to cut ties at any time. Its not so much like a marriage as it is a long time living arrangement.

I hope this is a lesson to workers to make career decisions with the same level of detachment that your employers do.

I lot of the discourse on here is flavored by an industry experiencing more than 20 years of boom times.

Why would you ever think you weren’t? Also, think of it as a sports team, not a family (ew)

Choice of terms in "human resources" tell enough on those people's perspective

Work to make your employer disposable too by always marketing yourself and networking.

If anyone at a company isn’t disposable then the company isn’t resilient.

> The recent tech layoffs have shown that employees are disposable in the eyes of executives

Ah, yes. Employees, who would easily switch jobs for whatever reason when it's beneficial for them, complain that they can be let go when it's beneficial for the organization.

I'm thinking majority owner CEO is the least disposable employee

And your employer should also be as disposable for you.

What I love about this is the narrative around loyalty like we are some kind of samurai. A company gets all the benefit to call itself "a family" and to push employees to be loyal to the company as there's a high cost in offboarding and onboarding people (knowledge, morale, the fact that new joiners aren't really contributing at their best capacity for the first 3/6 months at least depending on seniority etc). Even during resume screening there's always a lot of questions on why people "jump" from a place to another if they have changed jobs every two years.

But a company makes mistakes (over hire, product line that don't work, market expansions that don't bring the expected results, overspending etc) and never talk about this openly (the responsibility is always on the market, the situation etc) and often they have obligations towards the investors or the market (if they are public).

There's also a psychological burden in changing jobs (impostor syndrome, fear of something unknown, new domain etcetc) and companies use this to convince people to stay. Most of the job of a people manager is to convince people that they are in the best place they could be and focus them on new challenges so they don't have time to think.

Don't be fooled by any company, if they think they have to fire you because some spreadsheet calculation told them it is the best thing to do, they will.

tldr; Decide what's best for you (and your family if you have one) and never feel bad about it. Loyalty is not a thing in the workplace.

ps i have personally witnessed and went through horrible situations where managers had to openly lie about people performance and fired a bunch because the company made bad predictions over their expected revenue and had to fire people to "prove they were doing something about it" and show some cost reduction to the investors. Once a ceo literally cried on hangouts while communicating the decision to fire a whole department, and the day after (while those people were still part of the company) did a whole motivational speech about how that was going to be the best year for the company and we had a lot to look forward to.

Developing nonfree software is not worth it.

“Shareholder value” reigns supreme in this late-stage capitalistic world. The executive class lives extraordinarily well off the fruits of the enterprise while the rest lives off the scraps.

> It’s okay to like your job and employer. Just understand that, as an employee, you are disposable.

This is a) trivial and self-evident, and b) symmetrical in the sense that company is disposable too: any employee may fire the company at any time and get to another company with a two weeks notice. So, what's the point?

Capitalism is a brutal, fatally flawed system that just so happens to work pretty well depending on which side of the game you are on. Sometimes, everybody sort of gets by on it, but that requires sustained heavy-handed out-of-band correction also known as government intervention.

We have set a game in motion that even sounds bad in theory leads to hideous results. That it quasi-works in practice is a goddamn miracle and a testament to our flexibility. I say quasi, because for it to work for the top of the pyramid it requires large swaths of our species to exist in bitter, soul-crushing poverty and, given that morality is not really an issue for us psychopaths, it remains to be seen if our recent penchant for planet-scale destruction has any long-lasting effects on our ability to survive as a species.

Half a million

Ok, so why are you still employed.

I feel like Marx wrote something poignant about this.

Rachma

Lately, especially with the layoffs frenzies, I've been rethinking one of my engineering culture practices in particular: having a culture of everyone maintaining documentation for everything (using particular lightweight methods and conventions).

It's a lot harder harder to tell people to do this (because it's professional, it's effective for your team and company, and you'll be valued as a great engineer)... when they can look around themselves, at our industry, and see all the sociopathic execs at companies having great years... getting rid of people to make numbers look even better.

And making a liar out of me for telling people they should be thinking about our collective success, rather than hoarding information for job security, or declining to help out a colleague in what (in a sociopathic company) could be a zero-sum game.

I still believe in great engineering teams, and I will heal or smite any toxic elements within my power... but I haven't yet figured out how to reconcile my best-practice culture theories with the current reality, when we see all these prominent techbro companies revealing more of their true nature in a way that employees can't ignore.

One idea is to bootstrap a company that's better, and not get into a VC trap that eventually will probably make you be jerks even if you weren't already predisposed. (It's hard-mode, compared to just getting some VC money, hiring people, and just repeatedly trying to look like you have growth potential. Also, you have to share the equity more equitably, or you're telling people that the truth is that it's transactional, and most of the talk about focusing on the success of the whole is a swindle, to get them to do what you want to make you specifically rich.)

Another idea is to find a good company, and work within that. (But that's hard, when even the ones that profess to be more values-oriented than most are usually just a veneer over the familiar sunny-sociopath culture.)

Another idea is to hire a team with values compatible with the good culture theory, and if the company starts going bad, we idealistically or on principle still do things right. And it the company really stabs itself in the face, and we have to move on to other places, we'll have that network of a rare great team.

TL;DR it is a job

Hate to break this to you, folks, but as a human, you are disposable.