The Myth of Company Loyalty

A 10-Year Veteran Got Laid Off

Last year, I got a call from my previous company.

A senior colleague had been let go in a restructuring. Ten years at the company. The kind of person who never refused overtime, who volunteered for midnight incident responses. The only person who understood every line of the company's legacy code.

"When the company's struggling, you tough it out together" -- that was his motto.

Did the company share that sentiment? No. Loyalty was a one-way street.

What You Say in Interviews

Korean workplace culture puts particular weight on "loyalty."

"I plan to stay at this company for a long time" -- saying this in an interview earns bonus points. Frequent job changes get you labeled as "lacking perseverance." Staying at one company for years is considered a virtue.

But what's the return on that virtue?

Salary growth is higher for job-hoppers. Opportunities to learn new tech come more often when switching companies. Your market value actually gets harder to gauge the longer you stay in one place. Companies expect loyalty from employees while deciding restructuring on a quarterly basis.

To a company, an employee is a cost, and costs are subject to reduction. This isn't a story about bad companies -- it's a structural feature of how companies work.

The Asymmetry

What an employee gives the company: time, energy, expertise, loyalty, sometimes health.

What the company gives the employee: salary, benefits, experience. And a contractual relationship that can be terminated at any time.

This relationship is inherently asymmetric. An employee has feelings. A company is a legal entity. An employee develops attachment. A company makes decisions by the numbers.

If you don't recognize this gap, you end up feeling betrayed after pouring in your loyalty. But you weren't betrayed. You were loyal to something that was never designed to receive loyalty. (That sounds cold, I know. But cold is accurate.)

But You Do Get Attached

That's the theory. In practice, you get attached.

The colleagues you see every day, the project you pulled all-nighters for together, the tension of your first service launch. When experiences like these pile up, even an abstract entity like "the company" starts to carry emotional weight.

And there's nothing wrong with that emotion. But you need to be able to separate feeling from judgment. Enduring unfair treatment because you're attached isn't loyalty -- it's self-exploitation.

It's fine to like your company. It's fine to value your colleagues. But the owner of your career should be you, not the company.

I Called the Veteran

I called the 10-year veteran.

He sounded better than I expected. Said he was preparing to job-search. "I built something over ten years -- other places will recognize that too." I hope he's right. But honestly, I'm not sure how well what you build at one place always translates to another.

I updated my resume. Not because I'm planning to leave. I just wanted to objectively assess my own value.

The time you spend being loyal to a company is better spent increasing your own market value. Loyalty to yourself. If your skills grow, you become someone every company needs. If you become someone only one specific company needs, you collapse the moment that company decides it doesn't need you anymore.

Anyway. That's how it is.