Love Your Work, but Remember—It Won’t Love You Back

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Many personal relationship dynamics have corporate equivalents: mutually beneficial, abusive, controlling, boring, volatile. We can often spot those. What can be harder to spot is the one-sided relationship, where one person is more into the other, but it’s not reciprocated by the other party. Those in such a romantic relationship often have a sense of it because the actions are not equally mirrored by their partner. They stay because they feel their partner is so amazing that they discount the lack of reciprocation (e.g., “It will be very hard to find someone as wonderful / attractive / rich as my current partner”).

With a company-employee relationship it’s much harder to spot because there are different, asymmetric dynamics in each direction of the relationship. Here, too, though, we see people discounting some negative signals because the company has such a great reputation, even if that reputation is for the product or brand, and very much not for the work culture (e.g., “The job / manager / culture is terrible, but everyone is very impressed when I tell them who I work for.”). It’s important to know how to recognize when you’re overly infatuated with your company and what to do about it.

First the good news. You love your company, your job, and/or your boss. Not everyone does. In fact, surveys tend to show most people are unhappy (See this report from BambooHR). [Disclaimer: I’ve worked with BambooHR in the past and am a fan of the company; I referenced this report after finding it in a web search and have no affiliation or benefit from promoting it.] If you show up to work happy and excited, congratulations. This is much better than most of the other options.

You probably feel very committed to the company. And why shouldn’t you be? In addition to being a great place to work, and a job you love, the company is treating you well. It could be good compensation, a fun workplace, exciting opportunities, and/or a supportive culture. Often, we see this with companies that have gone the extra mile for you, like giving you extra flexibility when there was a family emergency or being emotionally supportive.

I’m kidding, of course. No company is actually there for you for you nor is a company emotionally supportive (although their chatbots will try). It’s the people at the company, your managers, coworkers, and HR who are the emotionally supportive ones. The company may have a policy of flexibility but it’s specific people who created and implemented the policy. It’s your boss who says, “The company gives you X personal days to take your child to the doctor, but how about I just give you extra unofficial flexibility beyond that; letting you work weekends instead if you need time off during the week for appointments.”

Now here’s the risk for an employee. People change; companies change faster.

We’ve all seen, maybe even been in, relationships where people change over time. The problem is when the change becomes divergent. Two people can fall in love in their twenties but years later when one wants kids and the other doesn’t (whether or not they talked about it before) there’s a divergence in interests and that’s a problem. It’s not that either person is bad, but now they want different things. Other times it could be that one person shifts gears, say becomes more selfish, especially once they think they’ve landed you as a significant other.

People usually don’t change overnight (outside of a traumatic event such as an accident or sudden loss). But often there are warning signs and many conversations.

Companies do change overnight. Your boss will change, with two weeks’ notice if she’s leaving, less if she gets fired. You may not even have a voice in selecting your new boss. While your manager may have the biggest direct impact, she’s not the only source of impact. Her boss and everyone in the chain up to the CEO can impact your role, team culture, or company policies. Things can literally change overnight.

Changes in HR leadership can lead to a change in policy. Even industry changes or macroeconomic changes can impact how your company treats you. IBM had a no-layoff policy that lasted for seven decades. This was the value of Thomas Watson who ran IBM for years; the policy continued after he retired. But when IBM’s mainframe business faced competition from personal computers new CEO Louis Gerstner did an about face and laid off 60,000 people in 1993.

Those employees had been fiercely loyal to IBM. They took care of IBM and IBM took care of them—until one day it didn’t. That’s how quickly things can change. Gerstner wasn’t necessarily trying to be a jerk to them, but he felt that was the best option for the company (which included the investors and other employees).

In sales there’s a saying that you’re only as good as your last quarter. It doesn’t matter if you made lots of money prior years, if you’re not bringing in sales today, that’s a problem. One bad quarter may not kill you, but two or three will. The same is true for people in finance. You could be making lots of money for your company or clients for years but as soon as you start to underperform, the clients leave, and the company fires you.

Even if you’re not in sales and finance, you are in sales and finance. You might be in marketing, technology, operations or some other department, but at the end of the day the company is selling products or services and making money. If you’re not delivering, your team underperforms, which causes your department to underperform, which causes your company to underperform. That’s less money for the company and they’re going to trace it back to you. Maybe not literally, but they will ask for changes and the people they change will be those not performing. Of course, even if you do perform, but other departments don’t, you or your team can still get the ax.

Now to be clear I don’t fire people the moment they make a mistake, nor do most companies. But you are hired / continue to be employed based on future potential, not past performance. Willy Lowman in Death of a Salesman was a great salesman who missed that the world was changing, and his sales techniques weren’t keeping up with the times. As he’s being fired, he objects, “There were promises made across this desk! You mustn't tell me you've got people to see – I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can't pay my insurance! You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!” But to his new boss Howard, Willy is no longer bringing in sales and therefore no longer of value.

We often think candidates get hired because of their track record, that’s wrong. They get hired because the company is betting on what the employee can do in the future. A strong track record boosts confidence in that prediction certainly, but it is the future, not the part, the company is hiring for.

This is important, because with your friends and romantic partner it’s the opposite. You’re not with them because of what they can do for you in the future (other than maybe raising kids in the case of the latter), but because of who they are and what they’ve done in the past, i.e. friendship, caring, support, fun, on which the relationship was built. You may get into a big fight with a friend but then patch it up because decades of friendship do matter.

This is not true with a company. The past is over; the company is only looking at the future. It doesn’t matter if you love the company. It doesn’t matter if the company used to love you. It doesn’t matter if you did a great job in the past. What matters is if the company thinks you’ll do a great job in the future. Love has nothing to do with it. Unlike your friendships and significant others, your job is a transaction, not a relationship. Love your company if you want but be very clear that the company will never truly love you back in a way that protects your job.

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