[spaetzleesser]

“ Qualities like duty, loyalty, initiative and industriousness are deemed weaknesses.”

Wherever you look, loyalty is for suckers. Be it as employee, car insurance or cell phone plans. Only the new guy gets respect.

[badpun]

Everybody is hoping to acquire lazy and complacent suckers, who won't switch to another employer or cell phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some exceptional developers working for really meh salaries. They don't think about leaving, too.

[Frost1x]

>who won't switch to another employer or cell phone/insurance provider even though the terms they're getting are no longer on par with what the market offers. This strategy largely works too, as I've worked with some.

Acquiring competitive market rates and competing in market rates isn't always easy or even reasonable. Sometimes it takes significant effort due to barriers and some of these barriers were erected by companies. Take the modern interview process. Weeks of evening prep time, lots of applications/artificial networking/cold calling/recruiter responding, the time/emotional/ mental energy to step through several hoops, etc. and all this for a chance to compete at a position that probably isn't all that great anyways beyond TC.

[theteapot]

Do you have friends?

[nonrandomstring]

That sounds a little rude as a bare question. But it's a good one. Because friends (real ones that would drive to to the hospital) are where we start to rebuild this mess.

[_jal]

Not the OP, but mixing employment with friendship can be difficult to navigate.

I know from personal experience that is is possible for a friendship to survive adverse shocks involving money. But it is difficult, it does change things permanently, and it seems rare that it survives at all.