http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_game
In the golden era we imagine the corporate worker relations was a cooperate cooperate game, producing hard work, good will, and strong meaningful community for everyone.
Then corporations realized they needed workers to cooperate while reserving the right to betray them (layoffs, terminations etc) because as the market grew more cut throat due to everyone's success, a company needed to stay lean and competitive.
Workers are now growing wise to this and we are entering a betray-betray era. Corperations are working to force cooperation while reserving the right to betray (see google/apple/facebook engineering cartel) but workers in high demand fields are becoming savvy as they can use their skills to go anywhere
The problem is the net result of the betray-betray game is assumed to be net lower than the other strategy to play the game, causing the community at large to gain less over multiple games.
To me this is the net result of cynicism: damaging the community in the name of optimization. Capitalism as practiced is a pain-optimization machine and until we choose to risk playing the game as a cooperative endeavor, it will never improve.
The fact is, corporate-labor relations is not a monolith. Although some (or even most) participants in the labor market may be engaged in betray-betray behavior today, that doesn't mean that such relationships are universal or will come to dominate the labor market over time. Given that tit-for-tat is theoretically the most successful strategy, companies that adopt generous performance-based policies with their employees should enjoy long-term competitive advantage against any rivals who have chosen less-friendly employee policies. If this model is predictive, the advantages of a "betray only" strategy for corporations will be relatively short-lived, because the inevitable betray-betray relationships will make such companies less competitive than entities that adopt a "tit-for-tat" strategy.
In other words your argument is circular: you assume that individualism is bad, and you conclude that capitalism (which starts and ends with individualism) is bad.
Furthermore have workers and corporations always competed cf. unionization in the 1920s and so forth; in general this has been considered an overall benefit (working fewer hours --> quality of life and education).
My grandfather retired a millionaire after working as a basic GE accountant for his entire postwar life. So as far as he was concerned, GE treated him well, and it treated his family well enough that my mother still remembers the Christmas parties that the company threw in upstate New York for their genuine human warmth.
When I compare how GE treated my grandfather versus how my father was treated by the companies that he worked for (taking the ambitious, go-getter advice), I am struck by how poorly he was served by both that and the overall cultural structure of the United States. My grandfather survived a Nazi prison camp for the US Government, and his weeks of eating grass soup paid off.
So to people saying that Welch's advice was psychopathic bullshit, I say sucks to you. Grandpa worked 9-5 for Jack, was not a particularly ambitious man, and came out way ahead in return for his loyalty. While surely this did not work for everyone, it did for enough of the people for stories like this to be common.
My perspective is entirely different -- because the US no longer rewards loyalty in either the public or private spheres. It is in fact punished, as this writer notes. How exactly can you build a company that lasts for longer than a relative eyeblink when every person is looking out for #1, and expects to be stabbed in the ass by everyone around them?
LinkedIn is a pain in the ass. Propagandizing for yourself to eke out a good living and career hopping all over the country is a pain in the ass. Both activities are tangential to producing profitable work over a long period of time. Every jackass who wants to get a VP position has to be a hot air spewing 'thought leader' now. This is all wasteful activity that defeats the entire economic purpose of firms.
The modern cynicism is corrosive to our long term prospects as a country, even if it is correct individual advice for the current environment. It will not survive, because this country will not survive as a single entity given such broken incentives and cultural mores.
Exactly, but I believe you have the causal chain reversed. It was the big companies that severed the bond of trust, and the employees who had to adapt to the new free-for-all market.
Neutron Jack eliminated 81,000 jobs in 5 years from GE (1980-1985). This resulted in the remaining employees, quite rationally, being very concerned for their careers. And thus, they began looking for options, and looking out for #1, because they knew they couldn't depend on Jack.
Of course, I agree that it is not productive to constantly be looking for better opportunities, but this is a result of never knowing when a Jack-like CEO is going to lay you off. Big companies started this war, and now they have to live with the consequences.
The startup movement is, for all intents and purposes, a way for talented employees to directly capture some the incredible value they would otherwise have created for big companies. Jack could've given these guys profit-sharing, equity or other incentives to work for him. Instead, he hung the sword of Damocles over their heads.
Elon Musk would've made one hell of an employee for any big corp. Instead, after weighing his options, he realized it would be better to just beat them at their own game.
You reap what you sow, Jack.
Because they had to. The original "bond of trust" was never about actual two-way loyalty; it was about the company bottom line. Companies used "bond of trust" rhetoric to lure employees in; they never actually meant it.
In the period following WWII, most industries in the US were growth industries: companies had to get and keep workers by hook or by crook, even if it meant giving them lavish compensation well beyond what their work would actually be worth in an equilibrium, non-growth market, because the alternative for the company was to lose all the growth business to their competitors, as people bought cars, refrigerators, etc. who had never had them before. (Pg talks about this in one of his essays: basically, companies like GE in the two decades or so after WW II were startups overpaying for labor to capture market share.)
By the 1970s and 1980s, much of that growth had stopped because most of the markets for the big US industries were reasonably saturated. Most people now had cars, refrigerators, etc., so those companies all had to shift from a growth market to a mature market where most business was from repeat customers wanting to upgrade their products, not new customers who had never had the product before. So the companies, in order to stay in business, had to drastically change the way they treated employees, since the costs of those employees were now a significant driver to their bottom line.
I'm not saying the companies were good and sweet and true; of course not. They broke a lot of long-standing employee agreements in the process of downsizing. I'm just saying that any employee who didn't see it coming from a mile away wasn't paying attention, and any employee who actually believed the company rhetoric about the "bond of trust" was living in a fool's paradise from the beginning.
> Jack could've given these guys profit-sharing, equity or other incentives to work for him.
He could have given some of them those incentives, yes. He could never have given all of them those incentives; there wasn't enough to go around. The plain fact was that companies like GE had too many employees for a mature market; there was simply not enough business any more to support all of them.
Again, that doesn't mean the way he did it was good. But if it took what he did then for employees to realize they couldn't depend on him, then again, those employees weren't paying attention; they should have known from the start that they couldn't depend on him, that if push came to shove he was going to do what was best for the company, not best for them. Any employee should always know that; that's what it means to be an employee.
The comfort of 1950s US was an accident of the WW2 windfall resulting from our happy position as the creditor for most of Europe. Pointing to that accident as a model for future progress is childish.
If anything I'd have thought the wage and price controls from WWII were a bigger factor, since in the absence of higher pay, companies had to offer more benefits and cultivate better relationships with their employees to keep them around - and there seems to have been a lot of inertia from those policies.
That no longer is much of an option, as wealthy individuals have not only managed to reduce capital gains to ridiculously low levels, but also diversified their holdings throughout the globe. This makes taxation a poor tactic, as capital will just flow to tax havens as the rate increases.
Turns out that feudalism is the natural state of man, and reprieves from it are quite temporary anomalies.
For those interested in details, Thomas Piketty's Capital is an excellent reference on the subject. Also, the movie Inequality for All is a far more approachable presentation based on the book.
So it's not like the new ruthless environment is a result of budgetary restrictions.
He used "fire 10% management" strategy for years, maybe even started that thing. I find suspect that someone who is not particularly ambitious man working 9-5 survived long in that stab back otherwise you will be one of fired 10% environment. Maybe he retired before or was stable due to connections?
There were bound to be many many people who worked hard, did their best, achieved a lot and then fired cause somebody had to be fired no matter objective absolute performance.
Jack Welch contributed his share to dropping loyalty. Whether the "old high loyalty" was better or not, Jack Welch is among those who destroyed it.
It is easier to say "Jack Welch, big badman, such fat meanie" than it is to track all the myriad complex changes in tax policy, central banking, technology, society, and in other fields.
"I find suspect that someone who is not particularly ambitious man working 9-5 survived long in that stab back otherwise you will be one of fired 10% environment."
You're entitled... to your feelings. I would describe someone who worked for over 30 years without attempting to reach an executive position as 'not particularly ambitious.' I could also be lying. Or paid off by GE. I could even be Jack Welch.
Don't trust what you read on the internet.
(Shrug) The ones who weren't slackers did better somewhere else. The ones who were slackers, Welch was right to fire. What's the problem here, exactly?
I'm not defending stack ranking -- it's stupid and counterproductive. But the notion that GE owes somebody a lifetime career at their shareholders' expense is unsustainable in a world that (rightfully) doesn't work that way anymore.
Loyalty is seen as weakness: "this person can't hack it on their own!" Everything is viewed through the lens of power, which makes for a highly toxic environment.
> Propagandizing for yourself to eke out a good living and career hopping all over the country is a pain in the ass. Both activities are tangential to producing profitable work over a long period of time.
Thank you.
In the absence of believing in institutions (employers), we now just believe in ourselves. To the point where we're actively encouraged to "do things and blog about them." Yes, we need to call attention to the things we've done because...well, everyone else is yelling about what they've done.
I understand the need to talk about what you've done, but it's beyond ridiculous how much self-promotion goes on. Sometimes I feel Twitter and HN is over 50% self-promotional. It's gross.
It's worse if your goal is to work for one company for your entire career, and take whatever that company can offer you, yes. The new system no longer offers that goal as a realistic option.
However, by not offering that goal as a realistic option, the new system at least forces people to take responsibility for their own careers, instead of expecting someone else--"the company" or whoever--to manage their careers for them. I don't think that's a bad tradeoff, all things considered.
I'd have thought your grandfather was retired by the time Welch took over. In any case, Welch changed GE corporate culture away from what your grandfather would have been nostalgic about.
This doesn't mean endless propaganda. It means taking the outside view, writing well, and perhaps sometimes giving presentations that are actually useful. It means earning trust at a distance, not backstabbing like you claim.
Look at it this way: success in life is 1/3 working hard, 1/3 working smart, and 1/3 being lucky.
You might ditch the first two and get really lucky. Or not. Your best bet is to do all three. Even then, guess what, little snowflake? You're not that special, and you may only have bad luck.
So what? If you're doing something you have passion about, or if you ever grow up enough to learn to create your own passion as you go along, you're going to be doing the first two things anyway. So this isn't about some secret formula to get what you want; this is about just doing something more fulfilling in life than taking up space and seeking to self-stimulate. Might be worthwhile. Who knows?
Yep, the old days of "I'll be loyal to the company and the company will be loyal to me" are gone. But that was just a tiny piece of the big picture. Simply because some of the details shift around doesn't mean the basics have changed that much. Good grief.
ADD: The more I think about this article, the more it bugs me. So the advice is don't try to impress your boss because he won't be around long? How about just trying to be a pleasant, hard-working, reliable person that other people find enjoyable to work with, boss or not? Or do we sulk around wondering why we should do anything at all unless there's something directly in it for us?
I understand there's a whole 'open' and 'small' world out there and I can learn lessons from my peers, but if I'm not supposed to be 'working hard for my boss' in the modern corporate world, what am I supposed to be doing to 'get there eventually'?
To get there eventually (sadly?) you have to plan to get out from under others siphoning your productivity like that. Because the modern corporate culture has shifted to taking advantage of the best, rather than empowering them. Mostly because there is a surplus of (skilled) labor in most industries. If there wasn't, your boss would be treating you better because you are a scarce resource they don't want to lose because its either expensive or time consuming to replace.
And like the article says, "working hard" isn't invaluable.
The real answer is there probably isn't a sufficient condition for success, but hard work in pursuit of your own goals (rather a manager's) increases the likelihood of a positive outcome.
Still, I'd have gone a step further. 'Career' is such a false construction. Go do fun shit and get really good at it. Maybe I'm naively optimistic, but if you're really good at something, it's pretty easy to get paid (a lot) for it.
This is only true in technology and because of the current market in tech labor and skills (and powerful people are working hard to change that).
It's not true for the musician, or many other passions where the reward has to be the work itself because it's hard to make any kind of living at it.
"Today, success requires a modern perspective on the industry and actively managing your skills and relationships."
"Your loyalty must lie with your own career in the industry where you've chosen to work."
making friends, finding mentors, teaching others.
I think this is why open source is becoming the new programmer's resume. It is kind of the intersection of all those things.
None of this precludes working hard either, just for who and why you are doing it.
Smashing your shoulder against a heavy metal vault door as hard as you can over and over, hoping someone at the other side will eventually hear you and open the door is a waste of time. It results in burn-out with nearly no hope of progress.
Instead, you should examine the door and try to open it yourself with a very deliberate attempts of sound reasoning based on where the weak points of the door may be. And after awhile, you may even discover that you can walk around it... or maybe that door isn't blocking the path you should be on to begin with.
It's very heavy on the "this guy is old so he couldn't possibly know what we need." And the problem is, that's a message that strongly appeals to the biases we on this site are likely to have.
Readers of this site tend to be young, smart, and highly motivated. Anything that smells like "I don't need lessons from the previous generation; I already have the right instincts because of my youth" will automatically appeal to us because it would be very exciting if it were true.
That alone doesn't make it false. But it means your internal "I better check myself for objectivity" flag should get triggered. Beyond that, though, look at how much of the article's content is devoted to this theme.
Probably half or more of the sentences are spent on this idea. When you're writing for public consumption, you have to learn to be terse and efficient. All those words spent on "geez, just look how old this guy is" are expensive. But the author deemed that the most effective use of words, because he is intentionally trying to play on your biases.
When someone is intentionally playing on your biases, look out. You might be having smoke blown up your ass (which the Surgeon General does not recommend).
One must seriously consider his or her professional trajectory and major milestones. Companies these days don't allow for upward movement unless you're willing to spend a decade playing nice with the right people and consistently over-delivering. On the other hand, changing jobs from company to company likely benefits the employee much more by allowing him or her to enter in to a new role that they are fully qualified for. The same goes for pay, even if its a similar role. The primary goal of a Company is to pay the employee as little as possible in order to get the most out of them fulfilling their duties in the role that they were hired to fill. Having the boat rocked by folks changing roles (upward movement) or increasing salaries is something that each Company tries hard to avoid.
The problem with Welch's advice is that it's what successful people say, not what they do. You should pay attention to what unsuccessful people say and know (they're the ones who know the organization's true character) but what the successful people do. Take knowledge from the losers, but copy the actions (often unknowingly competent actions) of the winners.
I'm not a VC, haven't completed an exit, nor am I an executive or technical architect at a brand-name company. At age 30 and an IQ over 150, not being in a decision making role is failure. While I'm OK by objective standards, you should count me as unsuccessful, because I should be leading with my talent and I'm not, because I've picked some terrible startups. You should take advice from someone like me in terms of what I say. You shouldn't do what I do, because it obviously hasn't worked. Cognitively, I understand how to play politics; in the field, I'm bad at it.
Likewise, you should ignore what Jack Welch says but watch what he does. You should listen to what I say, but not copy my footwork. That's counterintuitive, for sure, but unknowing competence is superior to learned, analytical insight when you're in the field.
Basic point: what successful people say about the career game is the socially acceptable bullshit (work hard, over-deliver, never lie, be a team player) that has nothing to do with how it actually works. If they were the type who'd talk about how the career game actually works, they wouldn't be successful. They'd be pissing too many people off (like I do) by telling too many ugly truths.
Welch says: Don't panic. Just get in there and start thinking big. If your boss asks you for a report on the outlook for one of your company's products for the next year, you can be sure she already has a solid sense of the answer. So go beyond being the grunt assigned to confirm her hunch. Do the extra legwork and data-crunching to give her something that really expands her thinking -- an analysis, for instance, of how the entire industry might play out over the next three years.
Terrible fucking idea. Executives don't see a young grunt trying to work on the big picture as "initiative". (I learned this at Google when I pointed to a superior G+ Games strategy.) They see it as a challenge to their turf. They hit back hard, and they have all the power. It doesn't end well.
In reality, overperformance is a lot more dangerous than underperformance. Underperformance gives you about a 30% chance of being fired within 12 months, usually in the context of a layoff that affords severance. If you underperform smartly (and focus on building contacts and skills for your next gig) you'll have plenty of time and energy in reserve to tackle any consequences. Overperformance gives you a 5% chance of being tapped as protege of someone important and a 95% chance of being fired (usually with a dishonest but humiliating "performance" case being manufactured; if you're a star, your job duties will be rearranged so you can't perform) inside of 4 months. Not fucking worth it.
In general, this is even more true of VC-funded startups than large companies, so I don't want to hear the "startups are the antidote" retort. The median VC-funded startup is way more dysfunctional and political than, say, a large investment bank.
You obviously believe you're telling people things that work, and the attempt to help is something I'm sure people appreciate. But based on what you're saying here, either you don't follow that advice, you don't understand it well enough to apply it correctly, or you do apply it correctly it's actually bad advice. So unless you're learning from what successful people have done (not just said), you're offering unproven advice, and even if you are, you're offering advice you don't seem to understand.
I suppose I'm lucky insofar as I had my bad luck in my 20s, when it was easier to recover than in one's 50s.
Much knowledge can only be gained through misery and suffering. Since humans are mostly defective, it's rare that a person who hasn't suffered, been betrayed, etc. knows how people actually work.
Additionally, understanding how human organizations work is no substitute for real-time footwork. Ideally, one wants both. I have a wealth of the first (and, unlike Welch, I'm willing to share what I know) but (unlike your garden variety corporate psychopath) I'm not good enough at reading people to develop that "snake sense" for others' weaknesses. In the field, that's also very valuable, and it's something I never developed.
1. Have rich, preferably white parents who can get you into Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc.
2. Found a company that does whatever (it doesn't really matter as long as it involves whatever's hot in technology in some way), and use your family/school connections to get funding.
3. IPO or get acquired by SuperUltraMegaCorp.
OR
4. Luck into being employee 2-10 at such a company.
Notice, there's nothing about working hard, impressing your boss, company loyalty, etc. You can find exceptions, but I don't think you can argue against this being a common, almost default formula these days.
The consequence: every software job requires 5 years experience in $TRENDY_FRAMEWORK rather than 10 years of generalist experience. But, hey, we'll quiz you on hash table implementation to pretend we're on the cutting edge!
We're making our day-to-day jobs worse. Stop it.
You really need to know your manager. Some are very turf conscious like your G+ games person, but many aren't.
Also there is a difference between a new employee going above and beyond on an assignment and a new employee thinking they already know enough to radically change a product's strategy. There are a lot of super smart new employees who think smarts alone makes them qualified to jump into a new job and instantly know better than the people who have been working it for years.
And often they do. I've found a fresh perspective really helps as I am sometimes too close and invested in the existing process. Doesn't make it easy to stomach though...
I think generally people are not seeing the problem correctly.
There is nothing wrong itself with over-delivering or being a team player. "Meritocracy" is easily adopted as a concept (especially by smart technical people I would say), because its entirely logical and also happens to appear the "moral" thing. It is. But, it gets distorted quite often and that distortion is called company politics.
Your goal is not to over-deliver in itself or kiss your boss' ass, or emulate powerful people. Those powerful people may have gotten powerful by stabbing backs all over the place - do you really want to emulate that? I would argue maybe money and prestige ranks higher for people then the tranquility in the belief that they themselves are moral people - but tranquility is high up on the list - if you really put it to people.
Don't even listen to career advice by CEOs or your best friend. Your goal is nothing more - than to make yourself valuable.
Your value may or may not get recognized, it depends on your company environment, but I strongly believe this, it will and MUST eventually - even if you have to quit and go find it at another company or start your own, where you will be rightly compensated by the general public.
This is a good point. While I believe the "system", in general, works to get people where they need to go and build the right products and services, the internal politics on a person-to-person basis are essentially random; you never know what you're going to get when you step foot in an enterprise. And the associated costs of having a "bad" manager are high.
