I worked for a company for six months. It took two and a half minutes to erase me from their records.
After six months of being told how important I was, I guess I began to believe it a bit. This was one of the biggest things holding me back from making the move earlier to leave. I held out longer while I knew that I was eventually going to be leaving the company solely because I did not want to let everyone down. I was sucked in by the corporate culture. If I had known how the detachment would have actually played out, I would have left upon the first inclination of doubt.
For all the feelings running through my mind in the week and a half after quitting my job, the biggest shock was just how meaningless I really was to my previous employer. I do not live in a fantasy world in which I expected any sort of celebratory party held as my farewell, what I had expected was a slight bit of friction as the ax was brought down on my career. The resistance never came. Quitting was as simple and cold as ordering a new couch from IKEA. Actually, it was substantially easier, as I didn't have to figure out what a duktig, oslo, billy or kassett was. What is the Swedish word for 'quit'? Hmmm.
My employer had made claims almost weekly about the quality of their training regiment. Tops in the industry. This I do not debate, they clearly put time, money and other resources into training. At one point, a home office employee threw out a figure (Something like $75,000) which the company attached to each new trainee. Get through the entire program and that will be the price tag to the company. Wow! They must truly believe in my abilities, I am empowered. New trainees were given equipment, provided with extensive industry training and nurtured at the corporate headquarters for two weeks. I was part of the next generation of financial professionals. I was believed in. I was an investment.
After six months of being told how important I was, I guess I began to believe it a bit. This was one of the biggest things holding me back from making the move earlier to leave. I held out longer while I knew that I was eventually going to be leaving the company solely because I did not want to let everyone down. I was sucked in by the corporate culture. If I had known how the detachment would have actually played out, I would have left upon the first inclination of doubt.
Let me make this clear: Your company does not care about you. Do not listen to what they tell you. You are only as important as the office equipment, the network technology or the air conditioning system. Employees (Especially those at the lowest level) are not people. They are cogs in the system. The plan is generally for a small percentage of these plebes to become "valued employees". Most will fall by the wayside at one point of another and nobody will bat an eye.
My generation gets a poor reputation for not being loyal to a company. The days of working for the same institution for an entire career are over. Generation X killed that idea and my generation is piling the cement on its grave site. But are we really to be blamed? Have young employees become less loyal based on inherent personality traits or do we understand the cold nature of business more thoroughly? Sports often times acts as a barometer for society, many times these comparisons are inane. In this case, however, I think it is a proper comparison. Athletes of past decades were drafted by a team and would go on to play their entire careers for that team. Free agency, powerful sports agents and a less barriers between the boardroom and the locker room have led to new generations of athletes who are loyal to one thing only: themselves. I doubt anyone who is entering the workforce today or tomorrow or in the next few years has the intention of staying at the same company which hires them. This just will not happen. At some point, the company will need to cut back on employee costs and the relationship will end. On the other end of the possibility spectrum, there will come a point when a better position opens at a different company and the relationship will end. Whether the company ends it or the employee ends it is beside the point.
The sooner that both sides of the worker-employee relationship realize that there is no loyalty, the sooner everyone can go about working and living their lives as they should. Workers should not view their role at a company as their entire lives. They are people first, employees second. Employers will continue to treat their workers as numbers, but this shouldn't bring with it any hard feelings. Let's keep this relationship casual, no one needs to get married to their jobs.
GRM
I agree 100%. I think this is going to be one of the biggest dividing factors between our generation and our parents'. It's sad to see all these people from that generation being laid off in the current economic climate and feeling betrayed by their company. That won't happen again in history because the people graduating from college now will never know that feeling of intense loyalty to one company. That relationship always seemed very one-way to me and I'm glad to see it on its way out.
ReplyDelete