How to Keep Your Job as Your Company Grows
Itamar Turner-Trauring latest Software Clown newsletter¹ (#105) was about this. The author wrote about a similar story where a company he worked at changed as it grew and layoffs were made.<p>He concluded with some really good points:<p>| I came away from the experience unable to commit myself to a company. In part this was an ethical stance: who controls the company can change, and change quickly. So loyalty to a company meant committing to follow people who shouldn&#x27;t be followed, not because authority is inherently bad, but because in most companies authority cannot be rescinded by the workers in its power.<p>| But it was also an emotional reaction: I&#x27;d put a lot of myself into my job, only to see my work—and my friends&#x27; work—destroyed in an incompetent power grab. I didn&#x27;t want to go through that again.<p>| The thing about loyalty, though, is that it&#x27;s motivating: you give your loyalty because you want something or someone to succeed. So if you&#x27;re past the point of pure survival, where do you find motivation if not in loyalty?<p>| Eventually I came round to solidarity, a thornier path than loyalty. Loyalty is simple, because it starts with an answer: your country, your cause, your company, your friends—above all. Solidarity is complex, because it starts with a question: beyond yourself, beyond your friends, beyond your cause, beyond your country, what ought you do to help everyone?<p>¹ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codewithoutrules.com&#x2F;softwareclown&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;codewithoutrules.com&#x2F;softwareclown&#x2F;</a>