It's Friday and you got paid so we're even.

Jack Welch
former GE CEO, talking about corporate loyalty
on a General Electric Motivational Video

I was working for GE back then. That was actually an excerpt from a company motivational video, if you can imagine that.

Welch took over as CEO in the early 80s and he set about trying to change the company personality which was more crusty and stodgy than anything you could imagine. His first act was to cut the staff at corporate HQ by about 1/3. Then he turned to his VPs and told them to do the same starting at the top and working their way down. Boy, did they ever.

One thing he started for all the rest of us was a process called Work-Out. The idea was to break out into small teams to study some aspect of the work environment like paperwork for purchasing or stocking stationary supplies. But that wasn't all. We were told to question everything, and during one of these sessions the employee team could ask any question and management had to answer without the typical evasion dance.

There were things like three levels of parking privileges, which was a caste system that had existed for almost a century. We got that eliminated by challenging managers to answer why they thought they were more in need of closer parking spaces. Soon afterwards the senior VP and I were parking in the same lot. There were tons of things like that.

So at many of the Work-Out sessions Jack Welch himself would show up and he always had a video crew to tape his comments, which were distributed throughout the company for all see, to prove the process was working. One guy, a machinist or plumber or whatever, in a city where blue collar jobs were being cut drastically, challenged Jack Welch on why he didn't think the company owed the community and the employees for their long standing loyalty and dedication.

That's when he dropped into truth-teller mode and said there was no loyalty owed by the company or by you. You were free to go at any time because if you had been paid on Friday, you and the company were even. Easy for him to say.

old_timer, Tuesday, August 10, 2004
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It's Friday and you got paid so we're even.
Jack Welch, GE Motivational Video, Thursday, August 21, 2008
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Jack Welch, the CEO of General Electric, said something along the lines of, You work two weeks, you get paid on Friday, and then we're even.
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Jack Welch once said If it's Friday and you got paid, you and the company are even.
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Jack Welch of GE, when asked about corporate loyalty, replied It's Friday, you got paid, we're even.
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Jack Welch was the CEO who publicly said: It's Friday, you got paid, we're even when asked about company loyalty. That attitude cuts both ways, and companies are not happy that the sheeple have woken up.
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Why do programmers job-hop so often?
You can thank Jack Welch for that one. He proclaimed It's Friday, you got paid, so we're even and every manager since then has parroted that when convenient. Jack is legendary among (wannabe) CEOs and his books and sayings are studied by the managerial class.
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Jack Welch Wikipedia page

I think it was Jack Welch who said (something like) It's Friday and you got paid so we're even.
Also works for the employee - It's Friday and I got paid so we're even.
MT Heart, Tuesday, August 10, 2004
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