No, but I work for him. If an agent working for me would also be an antagonistic relationship, then what use is the agent?

A good employer cares about more than just what their employees cost. At the very least, happy employees are productive employees. Employees that don't feel appreciated are not happy employees.

An employer who will only give you a raise after you've found a better offer elsewhere is a bad employer.

Hardly. I can't speak for the original comment I quoted, but I personally view employment as pretty transactional. You pay me this, I give you this. I may or may not have passion, but that should be immaterial to the job at hand.

The employer sets a bar. The employee clears it or does not. That bar may change over time. If the employee does not clear the bar the employer fires the employee. If the employee clears the bar the employer continues paying the employee.

To the extent that passion comes into the conversation, it's an internal issue for the employee to sort out by themselves and not really the business of the employer.

Are you saying something different? Because I don't think we're actually in disagreement, but maybe we are?

Employers are people. Some people are cynical and greedy, others are empathetic.

Yes, they will fire people as is some times necessary and as an employee you should plan for that. They won't make great sacrifices for you like family or very close friends might, but I've definitely had employers who wanted the best for me and made an effort to help me achieve it.

Getting a job and then not doing your work makes you a shitty employee, and being a shitty employee is bad. You're violating the spirit of your employment contract, that your employer gives you money and you do work for them in return.

I agree that you shouldn't get too attached to your employer, but this is way too cynical. Employers are people like everyone else, with individual personalities, and aren't typically soulless profit maximizers.

Given that this is the status quo, employees should adopt the same attitude. When working for an ethical employer, I'll work 48h/day if the situation requires it, but for everyone else, I'll bill them for the "quick question over the phone" outside of my agreed upon working hours; and I'll quit when someone else makes a good offer. Once a (spectacularly unethical) employer tried to pull the "think about the others in your team" stunt only to be amazed when I found them better jobs within a week and everyone else quit, too. I cannot say he learned from that experience, but I equally cannot say I regret my decision.

Well, that may or may not be true. But even if it is, so what? It's not your company.

You have given them work, they are supposed to have given you money. And you have both agreed that that is a fair compensation for your work, at least for as long as you are doing that work for that compensation. And that settles accounts; you're back to a position where you don't owe them any more work and they don't owe you any more money. There's no obligation in that for you to continue to work for them. You don't owe them any loyalty – that's not the sort of thing you can buy. (Phrased another way 'money is a bad retention tool.')

There are things where it makes sense to have a degree of personal loyalty to some of the people you work with in a company (though having a loyalty to the company as a whole is of course nonsense.) There are people who we might choose to continue working for, despite the fact that we might make more money elsewhere, because those people are good at what they do, take care of us, and we generally enjoy working with them. But it doesn't sound like that's the case here.

Most companies are motivated by profit, and will, therefore, gladly pay someone to fill a role that earns them more money than it costs. I don't see severing a non-mutually beneficial relationship as fucking someone over.

If you are in a position that being let go would be horribly detrimental to your personal and financial goals, looking for a company that is very slow to fire may be a good way to go. However, that is for your benefit, not the company's. I was targeting my advice at employers.

That's not similar at all. The employer has all the power and money, not the individual. If the individual did, they wouldn't need to work anymore.

This is the important bit. Don't waste loyalty on someone who isn't loyal back. There's literally nothing in it for you; it will only bring you pain, frustration and health problems.

Sure, I have no problem working for an illoyal employer, and most of us do. I'll do the most skilled work I can, with a professional attitude, as long as I get my negotiated pay. But, they can not expect any loyalty if things go bad.

If my employer refuses to compensate when people run off from the family dinner to help out during emergencies, that is acceptable. The contract only says they are required to pay for my 8 hours per day. But, then they should not expect me to answer the phone outside working hours; I don't care if there's a crisis at Important Customer's site. The contract only says I have to work for 8 hours per day.

If my employer has a tendency to lay off people to meet arbitrary profit goals, that is also acceptable. It's business - they're here to make money. But, I will also not hesitate to jump ship to take better paid jobs when given the opportunity. I don't care if I'm the only person left who knows Technology Foo. It's business - I have kids to feed and loans to pay.

You should not be spiteful, you should just refuse to be exploited. Life's too short to spend in abusive relationships.

Certainly in the US in most states, employment is "at will", meaning the company can fire you for pretty much any reason at any time (ignoring protected classes and so on). Likewise, the employee can leave at any time.

If you accept the offer and then renege you've actually fulfilled your contractual obligation.

If the company wants more than that, they need to pay for it. They can lock you up for a period with a golden handshake. They can keep you with golden handcuffs.

You have a misguided view of ethics here. The employment contract exists to give both parties an out.

This reminds me tangentially of the ethics debate around foreclosure. Some smart people realized would do things like:

- deliberately not pay the mortgage to trigger foreclosure as they were underwater and presumably they lived in a "no recourse" state (meaning the bank could take the house and that was the end of it);

- they might do this simply to force a better rate or get the bank to settle on the owed debt at a level where they were no longer underwater.

Some argued it was your ethical responsibility to pay if you can. I disagree. The contract that exists between the lender and the borrower exists to lay out the rights and responsibilities of both parties, including a mechanism for terminating the contract.

From a purely ethical (and completely irrelevant) point of view I see this as holding banks accountable for shady lending practices. After all, it was banks and the lack of due diligence in lending practices that led to this situation.

You are under no obligation to spend several years working for your second or third choice employer just because you said you would.

Think about it this way. Imagine you said to your spouse "I said I'd marry you but that's because someone else said 'no' so I'm going to stick with it because I said I would". What would happen? Would your spouse thank you? Almost certainly not. Nobody wants to be a second choice.

An employer wants people who are excited to be working for them and enthused about what they're working on. It makes a happier employee and a better place to work. If you feel like you're trapped you'll simply mope around thinking about the other chance you gave up, helping nobody, including the employer.

Oh and as for the idea that you've crossed the employer, in my experience most people don't take this personally and, for those that do, you probably don't want to work for them anyway. Fact is, they'll probably forget who you are in a few days or less.

It might hurt your chances at working for that same company in the future but it probably won't. And if it does, considering you turned them down once, do you really want to work for them?

Maybe this statement should be qualified as being about personal relationships, since the vast majority of employer/employee relationships demand obedience to the demands of the employer. Even high-level executives can't just tell their boss that they don't want to do something they're told to do. They could argue against it, but if they're overruled, they need to obey or be fired.

You are, of course, free to quit your job, but for many people, the loss of income and health benefits that would entail could make that virtually impossible.

Not if it meant violating labor laws, no?

Well because employment is an agreement to which both sides agree voluntarily. Workers can quit unilaterally, why shouldn't management have the same right?

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not opposed to workers protections in general, but I think of them as a pragmatic benefit to the broader society. In general, I don't see it as immoral or unethical for either side to terminate an ongoing voluntary commercial relationship.

Employers who ask their employees to sign immoral and usually illegal non-compete clauses deserve whatever they get, honestly. Employers should expect their employees to go work for competitors when they leave. Where else are they going to go work, but companies with similar operations? An ecology management company fires and ecologist and they clutch their pearls when that ecologist goes and works for another ecology management company, instead of McDonalds!? Gasp! The nerve of that person!

Don't want your employees to go work for a competitor? Don't treat them like shit.

False equivalence. The company is employing (and paying) the employee, not the other way around. This is not a symmetric relationship. This is the thing you seem to have a hard time with.

And no, the company can't do whatever the hell they want either, they are bound by the contract and the appropriate laws. Which at least one of my employers found out to their detriment (they tried to do something illegal and unethical to me and I didn't let them. Lawyers got involved, it ended very nicely for me)

However, had I done what these Googlers have done, I wouldn't have stood a chance, and my lawyer would have just thrown up his hands and exclaimed "you did WHAT??!?"

> any action you please, including one that risks termination.

Absolutely. But if you risk termination, don't be surprised (and cry foul) if you are terminated.

This really isn't that hard.

...and part of it is that if you fire them they lose their visa... not to be cynical but are you sure it’s loyalty and not fear?

(Aside: what is a “loyal” employee anyway? I’ve always hated when companies use terms like “loyalty” or “family” because they really misconstrue the employment relationship. It’s a business arrangement, nothing else. “Loyalty” should not be expected and if it is, it’s an indicator that the company is taking advantage of the employee IMO. Why can’t we just be open about the fact that we work, first and foremost, for money? Anything else is secondary. I wouldn’t expect an employer to show loyalty to me as an employee — they can fire me whenever they want — so I have no interest in showing loyalty to them.)

that you a priori assume this makes me sad. a company has no fundamental right to a power differential over an employee.

an employment agreement is between two equal parties looking for a fair value exchange. with that said, of course power differentials often exist in those situations (unfortunately), but it doesn’t always have to. that’s one of the reasons everyone should always apply to multiple jobs at once, and hopefully get multiple offers, so you have leverage in the employment negotiations.

and the best managed organizations consider managers to be support staff with decision-coalescing responsibilities rather than overlords.

IMO that makes them an asshole.

But, to your point, sure. If I have FU money then depending on a lot of things including what arrangements I could make with an employer, I might well choose not to work for someone else.