What The Past Evolution in Employment Has Taught Us: Only You Care About You

A consistent gripe against young workers is that they have no loyalty to the company.  This gripe is based on an idea that young workers feel entitled.  However, there is another reason for the lack of loyalty. 

In college, one of my favorite professors gave me some great advice: no one cares about your career but you. While companies will claim that this isn't true, that loyalty is repaid, after analyzing the career progression of an attorney who is loyal to the company, I would beg to differ. 

In the law industry, young associates begin their journey in their mid to late twenties, and work hard to impress the people around them. Some of these associates work their way up the ranks, growing in skill and developing books of business, and progress to partners.  The really lucky ones who stick with it get to become equity partners, and make the big bucks.  These lawyers have arrived. Or have they?

A few years ago, several partners at different firms launched massive law suits. They had been de-equitized with a vote. To be an equity partner, you have to put a significant amount of money into the partnership, and "buy" a piece, if you will.  However, being de-equitized is evidently as simple as a vote from some unimpressed colleagues, who are just waiting for you to slip up and reveal your reference at some company for whom you get the credit for the business brought in.  Evidently, arriving as an equity partner is not the end of the story.  Because at some point, you will become "old" in the eyes of the attorneys around you, your great book of business will be scavengered and picked through.  You will be de-equitized, and lose your position in the partnership. You will be over the hill, and no one will listen to you. 

When the traditional model of the worker bee meets the corporate structure,  you will get used up by the system. Young employees have a very clear view of this model, from watching their parents get used, and see with the baby boomers who struggle for recognition in their fields as their contemporaries increasingly try to push them out.  Young employees see how difficult it is to stay relevant, and fend off the competition.  If this is loyalty, loyalty is an ugly thing.

The Good, The Bad, The Overworked

Recently, I have been working all day on random projects at work, and working all night on reviewing documents.  But I am not complaining. I have a job.

This week, I felt like chicken little when I talk about the economy in general or the current state of the job economy. Our clients are laying off. They are moving jobs overseas. They are worsening the panic.

The thing is, why not? Why not save money? Here is my theory on why, and why this will ultimately backfire.

A. The Why

Many things have contributed to the demise of the old way that the economy worked. It's rise began with the labor movement at the turn of the century. People were tired of losing their arms and legs because of faulty factory equipment, only to be turned out into the street because they were now unable to work.  Little children slaved away for nothing, just to be able to eat a crust of bread. The environment was there to destroy. 

Labor unions were a good thing to begin with. They provided worker stability, doing what labor laws are doing in China right now.  Collective bargaining agreements functioned like contracts with employees, protecting them from the whims of employers, protecting them from the old policies that would take an arm or limb and leave them to the poor house. 

But, like everything else, approaches must evolve, but the entrenched it slow to change. Which makes it die. And the old methods and conventions are starting to die.  An example of this is the American auto industry.  Because they were so resistant to change, there might just be one brand left standing by the beginning of the year.  

The response to the development of pressure to "behave" from both employers and the federal government is to go elsewhere, where the pressure doesn't exist.  Many countries, desperate for the influx of money that having a multi-national corporation can bring, eagerly offer themselves as homes to these companies, proud of their lack of regulations.  Then investors, in position of power, encourage trade agreements that allow companies to bring back in their goods.

B. The results and repercussions

The great thing that happened with Ford cars when they invented the assembly line: worker's brought cars.   It really makes sense. If you have these wonderful projects, and you are able to produce them for much cheaper out of the country, the question then becomes who will buy them when they return? If all of your traditional customers are unemployed, because everyone is doing what you are doing, who will buy your product? 

Right now, with the crash on wall street, with the massive layoffs and job exportation, who will buy the products that people abroad make? 

The additional issue is without the environmental concerns and restrictions abroad, will companies in the pursuit of profit be destroying the environment even faster. 

When I was 16, I went to Honduras for a mission trip. Aside from the extreme hypocrisy that this trip revealed, I remember a surreal moment where I watched a man going into a factory wearing a pair of jeans that in a department store would have cost $50 or $60 dollars.  He was walking into a clothing sweat shop that was making Tommy Hillfigure Jeans. 

The Bail Out: A good thing for lawyers; a bad thing for everyone else?

The truth is, no one really knows what the bailout will do. There isn't an administrative infrastructure in place to dole out money, like say with federal grants and the FAFSA. There isn't any history. It reminds me of the danger of taking a class from a new teacher who has never taught the class and for whom there is no notes; who knows how things will turn out!

But already, it seems that the bailout is good for lawyers. At my law firm, clients are asking questions. And, partners with regulatory experience (we have an office in DC) are ready to lead. A new practice group, it seems, is developing all over this bailout, and the cost, after generating this kind of buzz, is likely to not stay at 700billion. Not when there is so much need by the legal industry to generate fees!

But is it good for everyone else? I have no idea. It doesn't purport to buy up mortgages and reset interest rates.  It "possibly" gives the federal government the power to do that. Considering what the priorities have been in the past, oh, 50 or so years, this is highly unlikely as a priority in the context of this piece of legislation. Not when wall street is sinking faster than the Titanic. 

It doesn't generate jobs, or penalize companies who are cutting jobs and taking them outside of the US. That would be a true "new Deal"-like legislative move, but I guess the politicians don't have the balls of  FDR. Or didn't agree with him. Hindsight does tend to be 20/20.

Right now, it doesn't do anything to help with inflation. Right now, the very idea of it is sending the markets into a tailspin, on fears that to pay for the program the federal government is just printing 700billion plus more US dollars, to be placed in auspicious suitcases and handed out to the most needy wall street millionaire. 

Now, I am just providing conjecture, and elaborating based on grape vine law firm information. But I do hope that this deal ends up doing more for the American people who are funding it than it seems to say on paper. 

And in case my sarcacism isn't clear, I do not support the bailout, as is. I think it is a piece of legislation that is disrespectful to the millions of Americans who pay taxes every day and are struggling from high gas prices without relief, high food prices, or even worrying they will lose their houses.  

When Religious/Personal Convictions Become a Liability

Personal and religious convictions can be a liability when others do not subscribe to the same convictions. It is infinitely difficult to "turn the other cheek," a Christian principle,  when you know the next blow will come. In fact, in business, when the entire goal is to make a profit, such behavior is suicidal and against the profit mantra. Here is what I mean:

1. Truly altruistic kindness kills. You and your career/business.

Being kind to others sounds nice. It looks nice on paper, and resounds well with general religious principles. And not just Christian.  But being kind would mean NOT making a drug that you know kills people, even though you will still make billions of dollars after the law suit dust settles. Being kind would mean NOT using products you know are dangerous to the people near your plants, because it will kill them, even though you know the rewards greatly outweigh the gains. And being kind would mean NOT getting ahead on the work of your subordinate, but rather allowing them their time to shine, and not badmouthing a co-worker because you and she are competing for work. Even if it means you will make your career.  Kindness is not easy. Or necessarily profitable. 

2. Giving things away to those in need does not make business sense.

The idea of charity, for the feel-good-ness of it, does not work within a valid business model. Charity is only done for a tax break. And to improve your brand image. And only when both happen at the same time. Nothing is ever really for free. Same with one's work mantra; helping people who won't be able to benefit you isn't a sound idea.  It doesn't give you anything back but an intangible good feeling. 

3. Stealing is not bad. If you want to get ahead.

People steal. Ideas. Clients. Money. And they get ahead. Whether the meek will inherit the earth is up for grabs, but the people who literally stole land, resources, and other people sure are running things right now. So this idea about theft is an interesting one. The game plan seems to be that stealing is ok when what you are stealing is not a crime. Like stealing ideas that aren't patented/copyrighted. Or stealing ideas because of proprietary agreements (a la Matel v. Bratz litigation).  

4. Life is not fair. Be fair at your own risk.

Corporations get sued every day because they were trying to be fair. They didn't fire an underperforming employee because they wanted to give them a second chance (after all, it's only fair). The employee sues.  Individuals believing in fairness enter verbal agreements. And get screwed. A verbal contract is invalid for anything over $1000, or a host of other reasons. Life is truly not fair, so looking for fairness in an unfair world can put you out. Out of work. 

I am having problems at work. And I know a huge part of it is that I subscribe heavily to the Christian mantras of kindness, fairness, and general civility, that sometimes bites you in the you-know-where. I haven't figured out how to handle it. I do know how to drop these principles and fight dirty. But I don't like that version of myself. Regardless of what is valuable to success at a random corporation, I have to look at myself in the mirror.  I am still that person who will give her last to someone she loves, and gladly go hungry. I don't want to lose her to a pursuit of money. So, I am constantly in search of a community that values civility and hard, competent, work as much as I do. This must mean I haven't found such a place at work.  It doesn't mean I will stop trying. If Chik-Fil-A can close on Sundays because of religious piety (though I don't agree with the day, I admire the principle) and still make a profit, maybe there is a place for the kind people of the world after all.  Perhaps, when the dust really settles, the meek, kind, and genuinely benevolent, will inherit the earth.