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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

> That being said, what do you feel is the cause of a drain in motivation on the endemic level?

It's a natural reaction to the fact that opportunities are shrinking in terms of quality and payoff. There are lots of "jobs" but they don't offer long term stability or growth.

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On the flipside, most employees don't feel tied to an employer, even if the employer treats them well. Often many folks are chasing higher pay. I know in the cybersecurity realm quite a few folks are job hoppers, and right now employers are all to anxious to try to pick off talent from competitors. One of my former co-workers is now at their fifth job in five years, and each time they were chasing a higher paycheck. In my field they don't seek a pay raise at their current employer, they get it in writing on an offer from a recruiter at their next employer.

Blaming employers doesn't make sense, both sides are just responding to incentives. The labor regulations and macroeconomic choices our gov't have made are responsible imo, they've optimized for the wrong or incomplete metrics (Three biggest are GDP / unemployment % / stock market returns).

This didn't happen overnight. When I was in my early teens in the 90s I already had a sense, from listening to the news, that employers were out for their own self-interest first and foremost. Massive layoffs, shrinking benefits, and the concept of public companies being primarily responsible to their shareholders all send the same message: "At the end of the day, you are disposable. Loyalty will not be reciprocated."

As an employee, it would be irrational to ignore this and hope that loyalty would be rewarded.

But isn't it doomed to be a self fulfilling prophecy if you approach every new company with these beliefs?

Google is a great example of one that started out very differently, but unfortunately became much like the companies they strived to set themselves apart from. Many startups still foster that culture Google originally had.

I think the gps point is that, in the median, it's the case regardless of how you approach it.

Of course individual situations and be quite different, but you are really bucking the trend in expecting the average company to show loyalty instead of respond to financial incentives.

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