>That all being said, you are basically a fair weather friend and, to be perfectly honest, you'll never see the rewards that only come from sticking through the hard times, which is actually your loss (IMHO).

Can you really be "Friends" with an entity who has a legal responsibility to "increase shareholder value?" I mean, sure, I have a relationship with the corporation, and there is trust involved (well, mostly they are trusting me. I'm just trusting them to deliver up my paycheck, and while they are usually late, I almost always get paid in the end, so they are trusting me a lot more than I am trusting them.) but yeah, I don't think I can say I'm friends with a legal fiction.

I think that if google falls upon hard times, you will see that they are also "fair weather friends" - It's possible that google employees, after being shown such kindness and loyalty during the good times, will feel very betrayed.

And rewards? What rewards? It's very rare that employees get substantial rewards when the business does well. It happened with google, yes, but that's the exception, not the rule.

But then, really, I don't actually want to be an employee. Right now, I'm not. (I mean, technically I'm an employee of prgmr.com, but I'm also the majority shareholder, so I don't think that counts.) But, sometimes I need more money than I can earn on my own (I'm not a very good business person) and in those cases, I usually look for short-term work.

The thing is, short-term work is pretty miserable for people who actually want to be part of the family (or, as you said, the standing army. An apt description; The thing that scares me the most about enlisting would be the fact that you can't quit.) They feel like they are being used and abused. And sometimes, companies need short-term work. It's hard, really, to go tell someone who is the type that expects loyalty "Hey, you- help us evaluate these outsourcing companies that will do your job after we fire you." or "go write an automation system that will mean we can fire 4/5ths of the people on your team" But a mercenary? sure, why not. I want to be here forever even less than you want me to be here forever.

When I do work for other people, the best case, I think, both for me and the employer is if the employer needs someone short-term; One of my more recent consulting gigs, the client was trying to outsource their linux SysAdmin stuff, and they were kissing a lot of frogs. They needed someone in-house to help meanwhile, but it was clear they were going to drop that position as soon as they found the right foreign contracting company. It was win-win for me, 'cause I wanted some cash to spend on my own projects, and I didn't harbor bad feelings towards the people who they were trying to get to replace me. The job lasted longer than expected (oh man, so many frogs!) but they eventually found a company out of mexico that was pretty good, and told me thanks.

I mean, there is certainly room for both in the marketplace. for some roles, you really want someone who will stick with your company through thick and thin. But those same people generally do badly in roles like the above where you are essentially asking someone to help you fire them, or where it's glaringly obvious that the job will end shortly.

>1]: http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/

Personally, I disagree with Cdixon there; I think a loyal employee is far more likely to sue an employer if things go south than a mercenary. I just want to get paid; There's rarely more than a months worth of compensation on the table, and that's not a lot of lawyer time. By becoming a contractor, we give up almost all the rights normal employees have. Contractors, especially direct contractors are often in a better position to cause legal trouble than employees; the IRS is very liberal in what it defines as an employee, and very conservative in what it defines as a contractor. As a contractor, you don't threaten to sue just like you don't threaten to bring a gun to work and start shooting.

But employees? It seems like one out of five employees who expected loyalty seem to think they have some sort of discrimination lawsuit even when they get the sweet, sweet first round of layoffs; the one with the nice severance packages.

Mercenaries also operate on trust. How do you think I'd get my next gig if I sued the last guy? Trust and reputation are essential to getting new gigs. If you want to be literal about the mercenary bit, you aren't going to hire me if you think that I'm going to come back and sack your city after I've done the bit you've hired me for.

I'd argue that a reputation for being litigious is almost a 'never work again' thing for a contractor, and we know it, while most employees seem to think they have "rights" they can assert without consequence.

And really, helping people after the layoffs, I think, is largely a "how do you want to be perceived" thing; I know once I was stepping down my own company and had to get rid of someone. I ended up switching jobs myself, and recommending my employee to the old employer. He got the job (and a massive raise over what I paid him) and the old employer was really happy. They gave me several other gigs down the line, and the guy who worked for me has recommended other employees to me since then. Trust and honesty are important on both sides, and when you do need to fire someone, if you can soften the blow, do so. At smaller companies, it really does make sense to help employees get other jobs; it usually makes the employee feel better than severance, it's usually cheaper than severance, and you get goodwill from the new employer on top of all that.

At larger companies, it seems, giving people some cash and maybe some retraining is probably the best you are going to do, but that's still important. The people who continue working there don't magically stop talking to the people you fired after the layoffs; and you are expecting the remaining people to work harder than they were before, so if you don't want your best people to jump ship, you want to make them think that they will be taken care of if they are caught in the next round. Of course, the deceptive bit of this is that usually by the second or third round, when you are letting your better people go, there isn't enough cash left to give good severance pay.

But yeah. I dono. It is possible that my attitude makes me a worse leader. A more honest leader, but maybe worse. I don't understand it when people give me loyalty. My employee has worked for me far longer than I expected. He is currently interviewing at google, and he tells me he feels like he is betraying me. (google approached him, not the other way around.) From my point of view, this is just the way things work. I hire less experienced people, give them some training, and then as they gain experience, they move on to bigger and better things. At this point, the guy is better than I am in a few areas; I would have expected him to leave more than a year ago. Getting mad about someone leaving me for a substantial raise would be about as rational as getting mad at the rain for making my roof leak. Rain happens; If the roof leaks, that's on me.