The "We're Like a Family"

Run.

Families don’t do performance reviews. Families don’t have reductions in force. Families don’t eliminate your position and then ask you to train your replacement.

When a company says “we’re like a family,” they mean they want the loyalty and sacrifice of a family relationship with the legal obligations of an employment contract. They want you to stay late like it’s Thanksgiving, but they’ll fire you like it’s a quarterly earnings call.

The family metaphor isn’t warmth. It’s a trap. It makes you feel guilty for having boundaries. It makes leaving feel like betrayal. It makes getting fired feel like abandonment.

Which, I guess, makes it more like a family than they intended.