It is personal; and that's an area where I'm not so good. I mean, I've always thought like a contractor, even when I was an employee. I see my interests as separate from (but hopefully largely coinciding with) the interests of my employer, and I work for that employer because of what they can give me; they are paying me because of what I can give them. Hopefully, it's a mutually beneficial exchange of value, but if I can get a significantly better deal elsewhere? yeah, I'm going to take it, and I expect the same from my employer.

But people who are wired the way I am don't stay employees. Or at least, we don't stay good employees. Employees seem to genuinely love the company. They have loyalty, and expect loyalty. Hearing someone say that about my company actually makes me feel a little uncomfortable. It's one thing to be engaging in mutually beneficial exchange of value; it's another entirely to manipulate someone into producing value for you because of how they feel about the company. (Of course, I'm not trying to manipulate anyone's emotions, and I don't imagine I'd have the skill to pull it off even if I was.)

Paradoxically, as far as I can tell, most employees like to feel that they are working out of a sense of duty or love towards the company; they can feel offended when I approach employment as the mutually beneficial exchange of value; like I'm accusing them of being greedy sellouts or something. It's foreign to me, because I always scoffed when the companies I worked for talked about loyalty. I felt like they were treating me like a child. The boss I thought respected me the most would give me my performance review and then say something like "But that's just talk. Your raise this year is X%" - meaning he understood, as I did, that while there were non-monetary aspects to our relationship, it was primarily about the money.

But yeah, If I'm going to continue managing other people, this is something I'm going to have to come to understand.