I was reading a post on LinkedIn today that said, "The dream of 90% of tech companies is to hire a $250k engineer, pay them $100k, and then provide them 0 support."

And I found myself nodding vehemently in agreement, as I liked the post and prepared a comment. (This only matters because I almost never comment or reply on LinkedIn — it's a toxic wasteland of performative nonsense and "buy me I'm so great" posts.) But the message resonated so strongly that I just had to respond.

Once I started typing, I couldn't stop. There's a character limit for LinkedIn comments, ya know. I hit it faster than a CEO hits the ‘layoff’ button after a bad quarter. So here I am writing a post about it.

I've been writing a lot lately about how broken the system is, and this topic obviously fits right in with that. But what really gets me is this: The system hasn't always been this broken.

Turns out, loyalty is a two-way street. And corporate America’s been driving the wrong direction since 1985.

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The Good Old Days...

Corporations haven't always done it this way. The whole “companies are soulless, loyalty-free profit machines” model isn’t some ancient tradition carved into stone tablets. It’s newer than the internet. Like, post-disco-era new.

For those of you who weren't around in the Before Times™ — like, my parents’ (and maybe your grandparents') era — you could start at a company in your 20s, retire from the same company in your 60s, and get a gold watch and a pension for your trouble. At least companies used to pretend loyalty was mutual: the company took care of you, and you stuck around and didn’t job-hop every 18 months.

Then came the great corporate brain fart of the 1980s and 90s. Enter shareholder supremacy, leveraged buyouts, the cult of Jack Welch, and the idea that the only stakeholder that mattered was the one holding stock. Suddenly, people became “cost centers” instead of humans. Loyalty got you nothing but a pink slip in the next round of layoffs. And pensions? LOL, no. Here’s a 401(k) and a pat on the head. (And 3% matching if you're really lucky.)

Why don't people remember this?

It’s like we collectively forgot that the whole “loyalty goes both ways” thing used to be normal. Like a glitch in the capitalist Matrix wiped out that whole era of workplace history.

And now we’ve got a generation of execs who came up during the maximize shareholder value at all costs era and just assume it’s gospel. Even though literally everyone at ground level knows it’s broken AF. They inherited a system that burns through people like printer toner and never questioned if it was the right system.

Worse, they act like we're the problem for not being loyal to companies that would (and do) throw us under the bus to boost the stock price a half point.

<cough>Microsoft 9,000 layoffs<cough>

And it's not just the pay I'm talking about. It’s the total absence of support that’s so galling. No documentation, no mentorship, no clear expectations, no onboarding tools. Combine all that with the attitude that you should be damn grateful just to have a job, and it's hard to feel anything but disdain, resentment or flat-out rage at your employer most days.

The kicker? These same companies still manage to act shocked Pikachu face when people burn out, leave, or make mistakes that tank performance because they're overworked, under-supported, or just flat out pissed.

So yeah, it hasn’t always been this way. But it became this way. And then it calcified. Because enough people in power stopped asking if it was humane, or sustainable, or even smart.

Spoiler: it’s not.

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So what do we do?

The only loyalty left is what we owe to our own damn sanity.
Because you’re not lazy. You’re not entitled. You’re not imagining it.

You’re operating in a system that was designed to burn you out and then blame you for catching fire — because it was built for CAPITAL, not for HUMANITY.

So if you're stuck in one of these burnout factories? My advice is... start plotting your exit strategy now. Your sanity’s worth more than their stock price.

And don’t let anyone shame you for walking away from something that never respected you in the first place.