Loyalty to a company: real or just a myth?

Years ago I was a young engineer and was hired by Company A. Company A is a new engineering firm and started to aggressively hire people from architects, civil, structural, and sub systems (electrical, plumbing) as well as a few niche engineers, including myself as I was brought on board to engineer security systems.

I had a lead security manager who I’d report to and things started out well but only after 6 months, my manager quit. I soon found myself without anyone to report to so I shopped myself around to the other project managers and one was nice enough to take me under his wing but soon, it became apparent that security was not a trade they were focusing on. This went on for nearly two years and I had nearly no projects to work on.

Towards the end, I was finally given a project and happily started designing it only to be called into my regional managers office and was let go suddenly.

About two years after that, I was hired by Company B who also has a working relationship with Company A. I told me new project manager about my time with Company A and told me we were taking over a project that they were starting. This turns out to be the last project I was working on before they let me go.

We held a kick off meeting, which was a meeting with Company A was to brief us about the building and give us notes as Company B took over. I jumped into the Teams meeting and saw my old regional manager there but he didn’t recognize me at first. He begins to go over the building information, budge and project status. When he gets to the security sections, he says

“Now unfortunately the security systems for this building is not finished. The last guy we hired to engineer this part unfortunately decided to move on to a different job and it honestly left us in a tough spot. We have a sub contractor we can use to engineer this part for you but we’d hav to charge a higher fee.” My old manager says.

“Actually. That won’t be necessary.” My new manager says realizing who he’s referring to. “We have a security engineer working for us now and he actually knows a little bit about this project.”

My old managers face turned pale as he realized I was in the meeting. He just simply smiled and said “oh hi (my name) good to see you again.”

I just smiled back and said “likewise. Hope you’re well.”

The meeting soon ended but I was shocked to hear my old manager straight up lie about my exit from Company A. The fact that they let me go then tried to say it was me who quit made me lose a lot of faith in brand loyalty.

I used to be very big on loyalty, working long hours and giving up free time because I thought the company would appreciate it. I’ve since set boundaries and prioritized my own well being over any company since I learned that they won’t hesitate to throw you under the bus to save face.