Yes, it is a problem of their own making.

i’m referring to engineering

Unfortunatly, loyalty doesn't give any selective advantage in the workplace

This is completely incentivized by the company itself. Once hired, the companies rarely compensate their employees fairly. It’s much more profitable to switch jobs every two years.

Companies have no loyalty either. So how can this be fixed?

So about a hundred times the loyalty the companies have to us?

Controversial take, as I have worked in both environments. The traditional “boys club” tech environment demanded much more loyalty, and was much more loyal. Today’s whatever this non-human disinfected super fake, backstabbing environment leaves 0 room for both

There was a time when CEOs made just five times their average employee's pay and their goal was not pumping up stock prices to maximize bonuses. Companies had pension funds, and employees knew that if they stayed and worked hard they would retire from the same company with a respectable retirement fund. All of those are gone now. We decided that moving money around and speculation rather than building is the only way to perpetual growth, and here we are, reaping what we've sown.

Corporate loyalty is my favour oxymoron. Corporations can & will notify you of termination at 11am on Friday and have you leave the building, with no opportunity to say goodbye to long time colleagues. I literally saw happen this. So yeah a problem of their own creation.

Yeah that's primarily because people at the head of those companies started, prior to this trend, treating employess like stray cats that sneak into their kitchen, eat their salmon, and jump out the window to go check out a better house down the street

thats basically what "at-will employment" (blue) means for both sides.

True, but the corporations treat their knowledge workers much worse now. Just look at Oracle, Microsoft and other profitable companies laying off so many employees just to boost their stock price and burn money on GPUs and AI models.

That's not a big problem, it's Newton's 1st and 2nd law in action. No growing in the position, I'm not getting any better there, then I'm going to look for other options. If pay doesn't rise with the cost of living, loyalty reacts to that since leaving en masse isn't really a practical option, instead we just leave when it becomes too much for the amount of money we're paid. You shouldn't blame folks for jumping out the window if the house down the street is better... make your house nicer to work in, and they'll stay longer. It's not rocket science, just F = ma

Gutsy to post this without discussing some of the reasons why this might be the case...

Definitely a bad equilibrium when this happens And it works both ways unfortunately A silver lining the companies who can give a fair deal on both sides (and they exist) have a superpower

"now" implies it was ever different. It's never been any different.

One would think companies offering tiny salary increases, slow promotions, and layoffs on a whim are the main cause of the problem.

Nobody owes any corporation any loyalty. It isn't as if corporations are loyal these days either.

That's how capitalism is supposed to be

Loyalty goes both way, and corporate loyalty to its employers has been on all time lows.

So they behave a tiny bit like classic MBAs wall street managers?

The risk isn’t that you invest in great colleagues and they leave. It’s that you don’t, and they stay.

Loyalty is a subscription, and companies have to keep up with it. I think in particular, Google has downgraded to the free tier in recent years.

Loyalty is a two way street. Companies kick employees to the curb with 0 notice when they please but expect employees to stay loyal as a dog.

What if the good employees were, all along, loyal just to the colleagues they respected, their families they provided for, and the ideas they believed in. And never actually the corporations.

This is the consequence of always paying more for new hires + treating engineering like a churnable farm with layoffs + making promotions opaque and politics driven. What we sow, we reap.

"corporate" and "loyalty" do not belong in the same sentence

Cats are so cool