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1071 points namukang | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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sudomateo ◴[] No.43678303[source]
> But I was also immediately ripped away from my calendar, docs, code, and more.

Layoffs are never easy. I've been through a few myself and it really takes the wind out of your sails. That being said, this sentence made me pause a bit. None of these things mentioned are actually yours. They are the property of Google.

One thing that helped me immensely in my career is understanding that my relationship with a company is a business relationship. They pay me for my time and skills and nothing more. Today I can have a job and tomorrow maybe not. I recommended learning how to separate your value from your employer. It's not easy but it's necessary. I'm not saying you can't enjoy what you do or be excited by it but don't fully tether yourself and your well-being to a company.

Godspeed!

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anal_reactor ◴[] No.43678589[source]
> I recommended learning how to separate your value from your employer.

This is a very recent development. Through the entirety of human history you'd keep working for the same employer for your entire life, which means it was very much worth it to cultivate that relationship, it's only now that we change jobs every two years. A friend of mine has a company in a very small town, and was complaining about an employee being lazy. I suggested "just fire him if he doesn't do his job", to which I heard "and then what? I'll have a jobless bum walking around my town. Thanks but no". This really shifted my perspective: the situation where employer and employee have no moral obligations towards one another and it's "business only" is not how the society at large should function.

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1. hnbad ◴[] No.43679805[source]
> Through the entirety of human history you'd keep working for the same employer for your entire life

Just looking at the Western world that breaks down during industrialization and falls apart if you go further back then that, journeymen (i.e. tradesmen who had completed their apprenticeship) would often literally travel from town to town for several years to work under different masters before submitting their work to a guild for evaluation and becoming masters themselves. I guess you could say serfs worked "for the same employer" because their feudal lords owned them as part of the territory but that seems like a stretch.

It's not so much that employees used to "keep working for the same employer for their entire lives", it's more that the people running and operating businesses used to be part of a local community and there used to be an understanding of a shared responsibility beyond private property claims.

This isn't something employees can change, either. Even employers aren't really able to change this because they too have to operate in the same economic system that contributes to this effect. It's probably more extreme in the US (and some places in the US more than others) but the economic system does not care for such sentimentalities and a business that does will put itself at an economic disadvantage, especially where the social fabric has already been sufficiently eroded to avoid bad optics (e.g. WalMart arguably failed in Germany because its attitude to employees felt extremely off-putting both to workers and consumers at the time but that resistance may have been eroded by the behavior of other companies since to the point where it would no longer make them stand out the same way if they tried to re-enter the market now - economic changes making this unfeasible notwithstanding).