raeoflyte
Senior Associate
Joined: Feb 3, 2011 15:43:53 GMT -5
Posts: 14,720
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 15:14:15 GMT -5
Post by raeoflyte on Mar 22, 2011 15:14:15 GMT -5
Dancinmama--I'm glad to hear that other sectors keep on top of employees salaries!
Thyme--that is a good point too. I absolutely hate the phrase, 'I've been doing this for 20 years!' Because it's always followed by pointless complaining. I usually want to tell them that they probably sucked 20 years ago too!
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 15:57:51 GMT -5
Post by tt00 on Mar 22, 2011 15:57:51 GMT -5
I must laugh at this one. What loyalty and why should I give it to any of these corporations these days? I am just a number for them and when they finish using me up then it is out the door for me and the rest of the employees. The many things I have seen and experienced during my short corporate young life, I have learned very quickly there is none. Tried that once very early on and got burned no more my lesson learned. I just make sure I am on top of my work game so that I can move on to the next corporation which is build my skills/learn then leave. Rinse and repeat. ;D You want advancement and more pay and more skills you have to be willing to move from corporation to corporation. I don't have the patience to sit around and settle for what the company will allow me to do and what not.
As far as retirement. I am pretty much on my own anyways. Most companies have or are in the process of phasing out pensions for my age group.
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 16:05:29 GMT -5
Post by tt00 on Mar 22, 2011 16:05:29 GMT -5
All I can say those that still believe in company loyalty needs to watch this PBS documentary www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/All I can say is in this documentary a well known airline company forfeited their employees pensions while the upper management/ CEO left with his still in tack and left with millions. And some of these loyal long-term employees will now be forced to work the rest of the retirement lifes.
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phil5185
Junior Associate
Joined: Dec 26, 2010 15:45:49 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 17:06:33 GMT -5
Post by phil5185 on Mar 22, 2011 17:06:33 GMT -5
You want advancement and more pay and more skills you have to be willing to move from corporation to corporation. As far as retirement. I am pretty much on my own anyways. Most companies have or are in the process of phasing out pensions for my age group. I've had the opposite experience, I don't share your cynicism. My employer (100,000 employees) continually monitored industry salaries and had a plan in place to retain the best & brightest. The company felt that it was expensive to recruit, orient, train new employees so they gave 'retention raises' to keep good people. And then we recruited at the colleges to bring in new grads to avoid 'technological inbreeding'. You are right about phasing out pensions, most major corporations phased them out in the 1985 to 1998 period and redirected that corporate contribution for the 401k 'match'. But most employees favored that change - people like the 401k portability plus the large lump sum that you can leave to your heirs or spend as you wish. (But you are young, do you remember the pension phase out?)
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thyme4change
Community Leader
Joined: Dec 26, 2010 13:54:08 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 17:19:04 GMT -5
Post by thyme4change on Mar 22, 2011 17:19:04 GMT -5
I agree that in many companies promoting from within is more prevelant than going outside the company and bringing someone in that hasn't already held that title. I mean - if I'm going to go with someone who has never been a manager before, or a director before, or a VP before, I will stick with the devil I know. Granted, if I don't feel like I have the bench strength, I will go outside the company - but I will only pick up people that have held similiar titles with similiar jobs.
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gooddecisions
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 22, 2010 13:42:28 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 17:32:17 GMT -5
Post by gooddecisions on Mar 22, 2011 17:32:17 GMT -5
........."You are right about phasing out pensions, most major corporations phased them out in the 1985 to 1998 period and redirected that corporate contribution for the 401k 'match'. But most employees favored that change - people like the 401k portability plus the large lump sum that you can leave to your heirs or spend as you wish. (But you are young, do you remember the pension phase out?)"
The only problem with the 401(k) versus the pension plan is that with the pension plan you were guaranteed a specific amount based on your highest salary at your end date. With a 401(k), it takes a lot of time for that money to start making significant progress and if your salary is low in the early years (when it matters!)- your employer isn't giving you much.
For example, when my salary was lower, my employer only had to contribute 1,500 a year. And, there is no way to make up the time for those ealier years of very low employer contributions. In 10 years, my employer has contributed a total of 26K. Thank goodness I had the insight to not focus my contributions on percentage of income and instead tighted my belt in order to max out to the limitations.
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Tiny
Senior Associate
Joined: Dec 29, 2010 21:22:34 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 17:37:04 GMT -5
Post by Tiny on Mar 22, 2011 17:37:04 GMT -5
I don't understand why it's assume an employer should be 'loyal' to it's employees... things change, business changes, technology changes, people change. Should an employer hold on to an employee that doesn't want to change or is unable to change when Change happens? Why is the employer who is letting someone go who's got 17 years of service seen as 'kicking them to the curb'? Does the employer 'owe' them a job? I watched a friend with nearly 30 years with the same employer loose her job. She had plenty of warning signs - for a couple of years - that her position was gonna go away. We (her friends) could see the writing on the wall... her peril sensitive glasses kicked in every time she thought about it - so I assume since she was in denial that she too could see the writing on the wall. Yet, transfering to another department wasn't the kind of work she wanted, getting her resume up to date was too scary, prepping to be out of work was too scary, she just looked the other way and hoped the company would find her another position with the company WITHOUT her lifting a finger to find/get that other position. She, felt like the company 'screwed' her over... I was mildly sympathic - she had 3 years to DO SOMETHING and did nothing and then wondered what happened. I'm all for personal responsibility. I'm 'loyal' to my employer - I won't bad mouth them, I won't complain about the benefits (which are pretty good!), I show up to work and do my job (and sometimes alittle more), I won't steal from my employer (other than the occassional pad of stickies and the occassional pen - oh and internet time!). I'm not about to give every waking moment to my employer. I also have a set standard for what kind of 'abuse' I'm willing to take from my employer before I walk. If that makes me an 'unloyal' or lousy employee so be it. As far as I see it extreme loyalty only leads to abuse (treating a loyal employee like a doormat because they will take it...) or can contribute to a company going under (keeping a loser employee out of 'loyalty' to the employee).
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Elizabeth
Familiar Member
"The inner mechanations of my mind are an enigma."
Joined: Jan 31, 2011 23:46:40 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 17:48:30 GMT -5
Post by Elizabeth on Mar 22, 2011 17:48:30 GMT -5
"Why is the employer who is letting someone go who's got 17 years of service seen as 'kicking them to the curb'? Does the employer 'owe' them a job?"
The reason I said this is because he has only been in his current role for about a year and a half. It's a long line of promotions to get to that level, so he has been successful in every job along the way. He has been in sales since day one, so he has brought in a lot of revenue to the company over that time period. Sales=Revenue=Company stays in business. I would want to think that would have been taken into consideration before showing him the door. Sadly, that's not the case at this company, and probably not many others. It's well known that the San Diego marketplace is always at the bottom of the stack rankings, and his position in this area has been referred to b some as "The Revolving Door." I guess he thought he would be able to turn this area around, but it doesn't look like it's going to any time soon.
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Opti
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 18:36:38 GMT -5
Post by Opti on Mar 22, 2011 18:36:38 GMT -5
i hear alot about switching jobs every 5 years or so . what ever happened to getting a job and keeping it till retirement? The environment has also changed a lot in that businesses seem to do mergers more often and out-sourcing or spinning off part of a company are more common. I've had quite a few jobs since my first one that staying for five years wasn't an option. In fact, I'm beginning to think there is an invisible timer that goes off somewhere between years two and three which will cause me to be laid off from my current employer. When I get laid off I update my contact list of former co-workers and every time there are a few I lose track of because I didn't get to them before they were laid off or changed jobs.
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tskeeter
Junior Associate
Joined: Mar 20, 2011 19:37:45 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 22, 2011 19:44:22 GMT -5
Post by tskeeter on Mar 22, 2011 19:44:22 GMT -5
I see people's tenure with employers getting shorter and shorter. Used to be that the person at the top had years of service to the company, understood the workings, and had long term relationships with many, many colleagues. Now the person at the top is the latest hired gun brought in to deliver the results the last hired gun couldn't. This person has no reason not to slash and burn ala Al "the Slasher" Dunlap. If they don't deliver the numbers, they're out the door anyway. Over time, this attitude percolates down through the organization. As people come to understand that the organization has very little commitment to them, their commitment to the organization moves into alignment with the commitment they expect to receive from the organization. If the organization doesn't think you're providing adequate value, you're gone. By the same token, if the organization isn't providing adequate value to the employee, the employee leaves. The reciprocal value equation has become one that is evaluated over the very short term by both parties involved.
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skubikky
Senior Member
Joined: Dec 20, 2010 7:37:12 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 23, 2011 7:10:45 GMT -5
Post by skubikky on Mar 23, 2011 7:10:45 GMT -5
Loyalty...to oneself I'd say is most important. I entered the work force in 1980 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. Worked in the defense industry for the first seven years between a small defense contractor and a huge defense contractor. I was extremely well paid and had great opportunities to learn and expand my skills. I segued from hardware to firmware development within the first three years. At that point, the types of jobs and where I decided to work was affected by the change in the work I was doing. Unless I was learning, had solid mentorship and could see expanding opportunities, I moved on. I always realized a solid gain in compensation but also and more compelling, an increase in opportunity and the chance to learn more. As the years went on I moved into software testing and development. I actually had more opportunities with the software skills than I would have had with hardware skills based on where I was living at that time.
All of my employers had savings or 401(k) programs in addition to profit sharing and ESOPs. I was even lucky enough to get signing bonuses a few times which I promptly invested. In addition to 401(k) matching, I worked for a huge telecom corporation that gave project team monetary awards, and other incentive monies. Working overseas on a per diem boosted my investments even further. Though I've never worked for a company that provided a pension and didn't stay with the very first company that I went to out of college(they were bought out and closed in the late 90's anyway), what is more important was that I lived below my income and invested(not just saving, but equity investing) over the course of 30 plus years. Being a good steward is the point, not whether or not you stay with one company or have a pension.
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Deleted
Joined: Apr 27, 2024 11:59:21 GMT -5
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loyalty
Mar 23, 2011 8:16:45 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2011 8:16:45 GMT -5
Loyalty itself isn't enough and both sides have responsibilities in the employment relationship. It's the employee's job to make sure they don't get stale and they learn new skills, and it's the employer's job to provide those opportunities and to gently push some employees to take them. When someone who has been doing something the same way for 30 years gets canned, everybody loses. If they wouldn't consider learning new approaches and tools or thinking differently, well, goodbye. I was canned, though, after doing the same thing for 5 or 6 years and having staff who could do it just as well. I was naive not to notice, but why didn't anyone else point it out to me? Instead, I got the old "your position was eliminated". Ummm, yeah, I can see that, but why didn't we start the discussion a year ago about what else I might do in the company and what I needed to do to get there?
Fortunately, my current company is huge and has an open and user-friendly job posting process, which I used 2 years ago. I've been here almost 9 years and at 10 years they pay for retiree health insurance. It's an amount fixed at retirement with no increases, but I'll take it. I'm hoping to stay here through retirement but will probably have to change jobs a couple more times.
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