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there is more struggle over their allocation. Studies of budget allocations in universities found that when money was tighter, the relationship between departmental power and the amount of the budget obtained was stronger.7 As one venture capital partner told me, “When the money was rolling in and times were great, I could more readily tolerate some of the partners behaving like jerks. If they weren’t making me a lot of money and we had to shrink the firm, my tolerance for their behavior went way down.” An article on the venture capital industry in the summer of 2009 listed the numerous partners leaving the industry as the number of principals shrank from 8,892 to 7,497 in one year.8 So the turmoil at Venrock was occurring elsewhere in the industry as well, as capital flows decreased, limited partners complained about poor returns, and the number and size of firms declined. The lesson is clear: you should always watch your back, but be particularly wary and sensitive to what is occurring during times of economic stress. That is when political turmoil and the use of power are likely to be at their peak.

You may be thinking, “What does this have to do with me?” When senior-level people get thrown out or lose a power struggle, they leave with more money than most of us ever dreamed of, and power struggles at the upper ranks are common enough to be almost predictable. But these events aren’t confined to the senior executive ranks: people can find themselves caught off guard and out of a job, even if they have done what was expected of them. Ray was brought into Unisys, the computer company, to build a leadership development effort. He did so with great success, putting a large number of senior executives through a very highly rated program and earning the approval of the CEO at the time. But when that CEO retired, Ray faced a layoff or reduction in force—of precisely one person, himself. He did not have the support of the staff in the human resources department, which actually resented his independent success and executive access, and they eliminated him as soon as they could.

Nor is it the case that this sort of infighting and political behavior is confined just to men or to male-dominated organizations. In a nonprofit organization in the San Francisco area, when the leader stepped down and some other senior people left their positions for other opportunities at around the same time, a senior woman moved quickly to try to take over control of additional functions and positions and also to eliminate people she perceived as being in the way of increasing her power.

If organizations aren’t worrying about you and you can lose your job in a political struggle or on a whim, why should you worry about them? Reciprocity works both ways. This is not a book about broken promises, but the list of companies that have shown little concern for their employees is enormous. Defined-benefit pension plans have been terminated or changed, with retirement risks shifted to employees and benefits cut. Health insurance has been abandoned or premiums and copayments have been dramatically increased. Meanwhile, people who may have retired thinking they were going to get health insurance find that companies are going through bankruptcy to shed these obligations or, in other cases where they are not contractually guaranteed, simply changing the deal.9 Not only have layoffs, the offshoring of work, outsourcing, and other forms of “restructuring” (a terrible euphemism) increased over past decades; they are sometimes instigated not in response to financial stress but simply to increase profits or copy what other companies are doing.

The employer-employee relationship has profoundly changed over the past several decades, not just in the United States but in many countries. In ways big and small, both implicitly and explicitly, employers and their leaders have told their employees that they themselves are responsible for their own careers and, in many instances, their own health care and retirement. If people have to fend for themselves on the job, never