Managers exploit loyal workers over less committed colleagues

https://today.duke.edu/2023/03/managers-exploit-loyal-workers-over-less-committed-colleagues

by geox • 3 years ago

176 168 3 years ago

today.duke.edu

quantified2• 3 years ago

Company loyalty is a double-edged sword, according to a new study.

I'm not sure what the second edge is? When is loyalty meaningfully rewarded?

suoduandao22• 3 years ago

when it's layoff season.

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

How’d that work at Google? Loyalty is zero guarantee of safety during any sort of reduction in force. You’re just a line in a spreadsheet. Also, you can have the best working relationship with your manager and if they don’t have enough juice, you’re still out.

Tips: Robust emergency fund, keep your network warm, work enough to keep your employer reasonably happy, show up every day like it might be your last.

(technologist for 22 years)

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

Layoff season is not about keeping the loyal employees, it’s about keeping the necessary ones.

Loyalty isn’t really valuable to the company when retention isn’t a concern.

willcipriano2• 3 years ago

So you get to stay at a failing company as a reward?

crazygringo• 3 years ago

In theory, with promotions.

In practice, they've decided to bring in an external candidate to fill the role at the higher level. But you're the best person to bring them up to speed because you know so much with all the extra projects you've taken on!

quantified2• 3 years ago

Yes, all the projects that you were hoping to be able to work on as a reward are out of reach because you're too valuable to the ones you're on.

rhtgrg• 3 years ago

These days the expectation around promotions is that you've already been working at the next level for 1-2 years and are due for a correction in title and compensation. Basically, you have to let the company exploit you while crossing your fingers regarding the light at the end of the tunnel, which might just be the ditch light of the layoff train.

roenxi• 3 years ago

In theory maybe promotions and bonuses were being handed out they should tend towards the more loyal workers.

But I would advise against working overtime as a strategy to get rewards, it usually doesn't work in my experience.

Aeolun3• 3 years ago

I think you can work only a little bit of highly visible overtime and get most of the benefits without all the hours.

If you’re known never to work overtime, the few times you do (without complaining) it’ll highlight your efforts.

vlunkr• 3 years ago

I work for a small company, and I do believe loyalty is rewarded here. Raises, bonuses, freedom to move between projects, etc.

I’m sure it’s a different story when you’re working with an army of devs. It’s a numbers game, everyone is easier to replace in that situation.

pgwhalen• 3 years ago

When is loyalty meaningfully rewarded?

At the risk of being overly obvious, a company might do things like increase your compensation (especially backward looking discretionary comp), give you more opportunities suited to your interests, or consider others for layoffs before you.

Of course, none of these things are guarantees, and it's entirely rational to assume they will never happen and go about your professional life accordingly. But that doesn't mean they don't happen at some companies for some people.

karaterobot• 3 years ago

I think the easy take is that companies never reciprocate loyalty, but I have had people go to bat to keep me at a job during a round of layoffs, because they liked working with me and trusted me. I agree that you shouldn't be a company man, but I think the easy take is too simple to describe how people actually work.

yalogin• 3 years ago

Loyalty also makes you earn less compared to their peers. I am exhibit A for that:)

zabzonk11• 3 years ago

it doesn’t mean we should just abandon work commitments or dodge uncompensated overtime.

it's not dodging! if you won't pay me for my work, i'm not going to do the work!

eggsmediumrare• 3 years ago

It's crazy how many people don't understand this

xyzelement6• 3 years ago

It depends on the job and company. I've worked with folks w your mindset who'd bail at 5 when their team stayed till 7.

Then 5 years out, their team mates were making an extra 200k a year because they got bonuses and raises in return.

So in their case it was short term uncompensated overtime , long term well compensated.

happytoexplain4• 3 years ago

Indeed. That the author chose this wording is a signal of how sick and biased the employee/employer relationship is.

zabzonk11• 3 years ago

but only in certain professions - you try getting a builder/electrician/plumber to do unpaid overtime! why programmers are suckers for this is a bit of a mystery.

listenallyall4• 3 years ago

At a basic level, sure. But if you're going to be so literal, you'd agree that a company should withhold any compensation when you're on vacation, or when you're out sick, or if you take a long lunch, right?

happytoexplain4• 3 years ago

I don't understand how you're getting from a simple objection to the semantics of the word "dodging" as a description of "not working overtime for free", all the way to the implication that it's hypocritical to have that objection and also accept the concept of paid vacations, sick leaves, or lunch breaks.

LBJsPNS3• 3 years ago

Vacation, sick leave, and the like are regulated by law in most states/countries.

So is work without compensation. It's somewhat frowned on. Despite your absurd false equivalence.

Daishiman• 3 years ago

A) There's labor rights that give you vacation and PTO, or at the very least contractual obligations B) Hourly workers don't get docked over long lunches?

henry2023• 3 years ago

Be loyal to your wife. People organizations are higher order entities who could not care less about you. Building a relationship of loyalty with them is just not something you should do.

fwsgonzo• 3 years ago

Indeed. It's crazy the amount of stories I've seen on Reddit this past decade from people who are warning others about the dangers of treating a company as family etc., after they themselves were discarded at a whim. It's always the same story, and they sometimes profess how unexpected it was, and how important they were (or how many projects they lead) in the company.

Gigachad• 3 years ago

There is a middle ground. On one side you have working massive unpaid overtime and stressing out, and on the other side you have WFH bludgers who spend 90% of their time on YouTube and reddit knowing they will get away with it.

Then there is actually doing the work you are paid for and putting a good effort in but not letting it extend unreasonably beyond hours and not letting it stress you out. It’s actually far more rewarding to do this where you actually care about the work you do and feel some pride in it vs completely disassociating.

eecc• 3 years ago

If I ever did that, it'd be J2 or some training. YouTube and Reddit have vampired way to much time from my life already.

pigsty• 3 years ago

on the other side you have WFH bludgers who spend 90% of their time on YouTube and reddit knowing they will get away with it.

If they’re getting away with it, that’s a problem with the company not distributing their workloads properly. 90% of work hours wasted should be immediately obvious.

harvey9• 3 years ago

People doing nothing when working on site has happened since before personal computers. They weren't on YouTube of course but they were reading the papers and doing crosswords.

aw9f70gae• 3 years ago

My overwork largely stems from virtue signaling that despite being one of the few wfh devs at my company, that I’m not lazing about.

sebazzz• 3 years ago

I think this advice mainly applies when your country has weak labour legislation.

jeffrallen• 3 years ago

Participants handing out the unpaid work in Stanley’s study were compensated $12 an hour.

Isn't that a kick in the nuts for poor John?

analog31• 3 years ago

My knee jerk impression is that the study could be explained by defining loyalty as willingness to accept unpaid work.

maxk42• 3 years ago

It's not "unpaid work" if you're classified as an exempt employee, which is never explicitly addressed in the article. That's why you get a certain salary regardless of sick leave, holidays, etc - you are being paid to apply your professional skill to a task, not conduct menial labor for a certain number of hours. I would never work unpaid overtime when I was working as a retail clerk. That's why they had a time card system which I had to punch in and punch out of. If a customer kept me late by even 15 minutes, I'd be compensated for all of that time. Now later in my career I'm an exempt professional, and I don't mind crunching when it's crunch time. That's part of why my salary is so much higher now: I understand that I have a job to execute at any cost. If a deadline is in danger of being missed I will put in the extra hours necessary to achieve success regardless of being asked to or not. That's why managers award me crucial projects and that's the kind of employee I would lean on when I have a crucial project of my own to manage. That's also the first employee to be put up for promotion and the last one to be expendable during hard times. This isn't the least bit surprising.

ary• 3 years ago

Did anyone think otherwise and need to have it explained?

Having been on both sides of the employment equation a few times now I can say confidently that people act on their values and respond to incentives without regard to where they sit on an org chart. This too doesn't require a study to confirm. Perhaps I'm naive and the point of publishing this is to drum up engagement from the aggrieved employed.

Be you an employer or employee the hardest thing to be in business is ethical. Convincing (or paying) people to care is incredibly hard, as is convincing (or paying) people to learn. It gets a lot easier when you find a way to tie either of those things to their values, and honestly most people, rationally, value themselves above all else. Is it any wonder people give up and begin exploiting one another?

This article reads like someone found the Gervais Principle [1] and viewed it as full of low-hanging fruit for a study.

[1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

doctor_eval• 3 years ago

So loyalty is treated as a weakness, rather than a strength.

What a shitty world we've built for ourselves.

pessimizer2• 3 years ago

Loyalty has always been treated as a weakness and a strength. Your loyalty is my strength.

alex7734• 3 years ago

The problem is that loyalty is one of those words that is so emotionally charged that doesn't really mean anything concrete anymore.

If you define loyalty as ignoring short term potential self-interest by leaving/betraying/not-doing-overtime in favor of the long term value you will receive from the relationship, then, even if you may be betrayed in return anyway, it's not really weakness - you just made a mistake.

If you know you're getting a bad deal, and you predict it's not going to get better in the long term, and you stay anyway, you're not "loyal", you're weak.

whack• 3 years ago

We value people who are loyal. We think about them in positive terms. They get awarded often. It's not just the negative side

If the managers also award loyal workers in various ways, it would hardly be exploitative. As a manager, if something absolutely needs to get done outside of normal work hours, of course I would lean towards asking the person most likely to say yes. And of course I would also give that person a larger end-of-year salary increase, bonus, or fast-tracked promotion to recognize their efforts and commitment. It seems odd for the study to focus purely on the additional work the loyal workers are doing, and ignore the various ways in which they would be rewarded for it.

klabb3• 3 years ago

Yeah, it’s obvious as a last resort for judging employees. If you know nothing about the work itself, all you can confidently assess is responsiveness and agreeableness. But beware of the incentives this can create.

When managers reward looking busy and sacrificial rituals, you also end up with short-termism. A team can tread water for years, being constantly “rescued” by “heroes” when a fire starts. This may not be the best people to promote. Wanting to be helpful and being helpful are not the same things.

In software and product development, the best performing teams, in my experience, are small. They have a well defined area of responsibility and a strong culture of ownership. It takes time and commitment to build that up, but when it’s in a good state, it runs on its own like a well maintained clockwork. Not only is this much more relaxing and fun to work with, it also performs so much better in the long run, and requires very little hands-on management.

matheusmoreira• 3 years ago

Doesn't seem so obvious to me. The story of the dedicated employee who's often overlooked despite their efforts is as old as humanity.

swagasaurus-rex2• 3 years ago

The prodigal son

m348e9122• 3 years ago

Former manager here, I definitely leaned on the guys/ladies on the team I could count on over "less committed team members". The ones I could count on were eager and willing to step up when needed and I very much appreciated it. In this case, they were salary and worked more hours than some of their counter parts.

I did my best to reward them with promotion opportunities and supporting them as much as I could in their career.

spoonfeeder006• 3 years ago

What about giving them bonuses as well?

m348e9122• 3 years ago

They would be awarded higher bonuses at review time. I had limited ability to do much out of cycle.

adave3• 3 years ago

So all they got was appreciation and measly pay increase, guess you were playing favorites which only human.

WesleyLivesay• 3 years ago

Sucks being dependable.

osigurdson• 3 years ago

It seems pretty obvious. The ones most willing to do the work end up doing it.

Animats• 3 years ago

A more effective cure: pay for overtime.

ssss11• 3 years ago

It’s the path of least resistance for the manager. The easy route.

mesarvagya• 3 years ago

IMO being loyal is like being sweet, which will attract ants of all sort and suck all juices out of you. Sometimes, being bitter (saying NO) is an art.

akomtu• 3 years ago

If you think about it, the kind of corporate loyalty we are talking about is a lot closer to gambling than generosity. Just like gambling, it's the belief that the corporate one-armed bandit remembers your contributions of time and work, and will surely reward you for that.

Nevermark2• 3 years ago

This is why I think companies that have real follow through in terms of taking care of layed off workers exit compensation and next job assistance are doing the”right” thing for everyone.

We all win when loyalty can be counted on to go both ways.

Companies that can count on extra employee efforts win.

Employees that know their employer is not gaming them, and won’t dump them cold, and will advance their responsibilities and compensation as fast as they can, also win.

When there is a strong reputation both ways, everyone becomes a motivated partner for everyone else.

happytoexplain4• 3 years ago

Generally yes, but this specific example is imbalanced, in my opinion. The trade here is employees going above and beyond in return for employers simply behaving in a way that I would expect any decent person to: "not gaming them", "won't dump them cold", "advance their responsibilities and compensation as fast as they can" (that last one I read as "as fast as responsible company management permits").

hanoz• 3 years ago

The willing horse gets the whip.

adave3• 3 years ago

Squeaky wheel get the oil.

grensley• 3 years ago

Just remember, in capitalism: if you aren't exploited you aren't valuable.

Your goal as a worker is to right size that exploitation.

ochronus2• 3 years ago

There's a big divide in (tech) management based on how managers see their roles. On one end of the spectrum are folks who feel their only job is to make things happen, pronto. This is what gets you rewards, pats on the back, promotions etc. On the other end of the spectrum are folks who don't care about delivery and think that the only happy team is where everything is allowed. The truth lies somewhere in between. Sometimes the hardest part of my job as a manager is to stop my engineers from overtime/extra work, even if the project is late. I want to build a healthy, sustainable environment, not only because it's the right thing to do, but also because this is how the whole company becomes sustainable eventually. Anything else simply hides the sub-optimal things in the system (e.g. unrealistic planning culture). I wouldn't be doing a good job if I let messed up planning go unseen and hide it by pushing folks to overwork themselves. My job is not to micro-optimize but think about the system.

kappuchino• 3 years ago

Related: Stop loss behaviour

Imagine two people bidding for a dollar bill. You start at 1 cent. Someone else bids 2 cent, etc. etc. Now apart from who bids the most wins, the investment is gone when you don't win the bid.

Until 99 cents all is sane, since you believe you can make a "win". At one dollar you still break even. After that, you would bid to reduce loss. How fare will you take that?

This example can be transferred to workplace situations(this is why it is related), relationships ... especially wars. Imagine how much was already destroyed and how many were killed ... no, surrender is not an option.

Humans sometimes justify any bid blindly on the one dollar just for minimizing loss.

Yet, most times it is better to get out early. You - as I - will learn that the hard way, because its incredibly difficult to identify in real life when and how you are involved in a stop loss situation.

But once you identify its stop loss: Get out.

ochronus2• 3 years ago

So true! See also: sunk-cost fallacy

precompute• 3 years ago

Most managers don't know shit about management, they're only rewarding people that act like managers, irrespective of the role. There will always be more BS artists than honest, skilled people. A lot of people can afford to be this callous because thanks to the digital realm, in their view, their cap for the maslow's hierarchy pyramid is firmly in their grasp.

This is similar to how practicing cruelty often makes managers more effective. Also similar to how the primary role of an executive is the mismanagement of company funds for personal gains.

swagasaurus-rex2• 3 years ago

Just because a manager can be cruel, it does not make them more effective.

A manager relies on their subordinates to get things done. Breaking trust in this relationship happens often unfortunately and will over time inversely impact the actual getting things done part.

Certain high-profile companies can burn through "expendable" labor. That's because everybody wants to work there for certain reasons.

SergeAx• 3 years ago

It is okay to be loyal to anyone or anything as far as that loyalty is rewarded. Yes, any manager would be more willing to put extra burden to loyal workers, but if at the same time they are equally willing to give those workers a raise or promotion — it seems okay in my book. Also, workers willing to do extra work will be last to laid off.

Managers exploit loyal workers over less committed colleagues

Related Stories