When i was just 11 or 12, i remember my dad telling me that having loyalty to a company was detrimental to my success because companies have no loyalty to people. It goes against their very goal.

This made sense as i watched him change jobs and watched companies fall and new ones rise all throughout the 80’s.

His theory was that the large and mid-sized company was something of the past and going forward it would be small companies that set the pace for innovation and success.

Look around now : small outfits join forces with other small outfits on a project-by-project basis to create something and then disband when the goal has been reached, then form new companies again in order to create a new product and on and on and on…

Large and even medium-sized companies are too big and muddled with their own logic to adjust to anything new. They are what they are. They were set up to do this one thing and that one thing is all they can do. They have only a singular set of tools that they try again and again to ply to a new way of thinking. They’re open to new ways of thinking but are far too calcified to actually move in any such direction. People are creatures of habit and, for most of the people in big business, the habits don’t change much.

By keeping their infrastructures and overheads light, limber and easily maneuvered as markets change and technologies become more efficient and affordable, these small shops are also able to be loyal to their employees in ways big companies never could be or were never interested in. Offering extended periods of leave as workers become more and more diversified in their own lives adds even more appeal to these types of companies in the eyes of workers as the “contractor model” continues to evolve and give both sides added value – as my friend Dave has said time and time again : flexible employers make for flexible employees.

Certainly, no one likes to see previously successful [ read: rich people] suffer through a recession, but there is something poetically just about watching these old dogs get a taste of their own medicine and have to change whether they like it or not. Besides, it’s not like they’re LOSING money. They’re just not making as much of it as they’re accustomed to.

Like beauty, selfishness too is in the eye of the beholder.

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c