Loyalty vs. Growth
Does anyone else ever feel that some companies are doing it wrong—the way they go about presenting employees with the best avenue for career growth/promotions? Often times, the best way to get ahead (for salary and/or job level) is to jump to another group or company, which can suck if you like your current job and responsibilities. I feel it can also foster a future environment where there are few “area experts” since there’s several jack-of-all-trades from job jumping.
Under post-Laffer capitalism, companies view any spend above what is necessary to keep you around as “waste”. There might be lip service given to how your happiness affects WLB affects productivity, but attempts at increasing your happiness tend to manifest as boondoggle office decorations or one-time purchases “to share” that nobody voted on and only a few people wanted, rather than comp for laborers. This means your pay tightly follows their estimate of the lowest pay you’ll put up with, which has next to nothing to do with the actual value of your labor. The value that *is* tied to the value of your labor is the upper bound of what another company might pay to get you to work for them instead. It is plain from this that you approach parity between your value and your comp only when you change jobs, and that is exactly the result you’ve identified as well. There is no meritocracy, and the market bears far too much unfairness to be trusted with decisions affecting peoples quality of life. The only concession we might give is that it is certainly an improvement over feudalism.
I wish someone told me this right after I graduated from college.
How do you think Lockheed handles this?
Experience > salary
Loyalty is rewarded with layoffs and pension cuts. Get with the program.