These days, loyalty no longer has its meaning.
I like to think of the job as a relationship. There is the trial period to find out if the job is compatible with your interests, goals in life. And much like in a jungle when you eye a prey, you put on your hunter instinct and do everything you can to catch it- let's face it, you are hungry and you need to eat. In a life cycle of a love relationship, you care, compromise, and tolerate, then stability comes in. Suddenly, you grow bored and lose the thrill of challenge and mysteriousness - towards the end of the relationship you even know what color of underwear he likes to wear to a certain occasion. You question yourself: am I ready to commit in this relationship for the rest of my life? What if there are better men out there? What if by plunging into the vow, I am about to give up the entire forest? But before we break it off we stick our head out to look for the next best thing. Sure, there will be hits and misses but that won't stop us from peeking. We weigh our options: does he also play the piano because my current one does? We compare each of them side by side. After all, who wouldn't want to leave for better?
Okay, here's my main point. Perhaps this applies more so to the younger generation (I belong to it so I probably know the best). I am not about to generalize this generation entirely because like it or not there is always going to be exceptions. We plunge into our first job; maybe it's love at the first sight or maybe not, whatever it is we took the job and have stayed in it for a while. We know time is on our side and that a few years in a "ok" job relationship will only pay off in the long run, right? The moment we get into the job we begin to look for better opportunity. Let's say we do have one falling onto our lap, just as so in a love relationship, we can't let go the current one just yet. We begin to do a comparison of available options; we expect a certain quality/benefit in the new relationship as in the old one. We want something more on top of everything we already have now, not a penny less. The average period of time one stays in the company is about less than 5 years now and that is considered a stagnation in a sense. Five years and you are still there? Loyalty is overrated. Even while interviewing for the new position feels like that I am cheating on my current job. I am hiding it until I make up my mind that it's a good time to dump it or... if it fails through, I'd just keep the job until another better one comes along.
At which point do we stop looking around? We can care less about being loyal perhaps. Nowadays the trend is dubbed as "professional growth". But isn't that the same as in a marriage? And since when divorce becomes a common excuse to find something better (at least in a love relationship)? I understand that we didn't take a "vow" when accepting a job but even vows are growing to be meaningless. I am beginning to see the correlation if not the similarity between a job and love relationship. We are merely being selfish and because who would look after us except ourselves?
