Hacker News Reader

Comment by pacbard | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much the loyalty of the "good old days" was due to a smaller local labor market for skilled jobs.

Let's say that you are a doctor and you live in a town of 20,000 people with one hospital. You are stuck being "loyal" to that hospital unless you move. Now let's say that you live in a metropolis of 2 million people and multiple hospitals. That gives you the option to move between jobs if they become available.

My impression is that cities and towns used to be smaller in the past and commuter culture wasn't as popular as it is now.

I'm ok looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses, but context is also needed to understand the decisions that people made back then.

View on HN

> Let's say that you are a doctor and you live in a town of 20,000 people with one hospital. You are stuck being "loyal" to that hospital unless you move.

It’s tangential to the main point of your hypothetical, but: in many states that small town doctor’s salary is a multiple of what it would be in an urban or suburban area, and he’s chosen to live there because he’s making a ton of money.

Even of he's only paid the same, the cost of living is lower in the small town than in the big city. Even doctors get priced out of expensive areas.

That’s not what I’m talking about. In my state, experienced specialists make millions working at hospitals in rural areas. Think between three and five times what they’d make doing the same work in a city.

Perhaps a bit of a digression…

By the same hand on the employer side. If the doctor employee is good then you want to keep them if they are the only good doctor in town. Even if they're not great if they are consistent you want to reward them because the replacement would have to be convincing someone out of town to move. But if you live in a large city with tens or hundreds of possible doctors you know your doctors will likely be poached but there are also more where they came from so why bother rewarding loyalty when you don't need to be loyal to your employees?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com