Congratulations You’ve Been Fired
For the record, I&#x27;m one of the co-authors of &quot;The Alliance,&quot; which Dan Lyons refers to in his op ed.  Dan refers to our book and quotes a single sentence fragment: &quot;Your company is not your family.&quot;  Everything else he writes in that section of the piece has nothing to do with the content of the book.<p>1) &quot;You’re serving a “tour of duty” that might last a year or two&quot;  Actually, the book makes it clear that the duration of a tour of duty depends on the mission the employee has agreed to tackle--tours of duty can be 6 months long, but then can also last for a decade (think of NASA scientists working on a deep space probe).<p>2) &quot;Companies burn you out and churn you out when someone better, or cheaper, becomes available.&quot;  This is purely Dan Lyons; the point we make in the book is that few employees expect or want lifetime employment at a single company; what people really want is lifetime employability and career progress.  We would consider companies that behaved like Lyons described as &quot;breaking the Alliance,&quot; which would harm their reputation as an employer.<p>3) &quot;In this new model of work, employees are expected to feel complete devotion and loyalty to their companies, even while the boss feels no such obligation in return.&quot;  Once again, this is the exact opposite of what our book says.  We believe that employers and employees need to recognize that employment is a voluntary, mutually beneficial alliance, and that managers should be explicit about how an employee&#x27;s job assignment is going to help develop his or her career.<p>Dan Lyons certainly has right to his opinions, but he shouldn&#x27;t have a right to misrepresent our ideas.