Let's face it, many people wake up and go to work each day simply because they have to in order to pay their bills and survive. There are many reasons for this, the primary being the lack of financial understanding by the public because they aren't taught about it in schools. I'm not going into all that in this blog post, though. Many people just simply aren't happy working for these mega-corporations and simply do it out of a need for survival. Why is this, though, and what is the alternative?
Why does corporate work suck? To figure this out, we have to understand the employer-to-employee relationship created in a corporate system. An employer sees you as a number in a list of positions to fill for a specified role. You're viewed as Employee #007 in a company of millions of people most of the time. At this size, the CEO or anyone at the top of the company doesn't care personally who gets hired, as long as the roles he recommends get filled. Typically, a company hiring you uses an HR team that has no knowledge of what positions they're hiring for, or why. They just need to fill a position with people that meet a certain list of criteria. This often excludes people who may be able to learn and perform the work(I'm referring mostly to entry-level positions). For example, in programming there are many languages, but often HR is only looking for specific list of technologies that the developer can work with. They also often want people that have years of experience for an entry level job and even higher requirements for senior level positions in the company. This means that you have to have many years of experience in order to even advance yourself within a company and climb the ladder. Some people may improve their salary by switching jobs, but this doesn't always work, is very high risk, and can lead to future companies wondering why you might be a "job hopper". There's also the chance that you can qualify by getting another degree or certification, but this requires money, effort, and time in order to accomplish. Then, even if you complete another degree or get that coveted certification, the company may not see it as worth more pay, or at least not enough to cover the initial cost that you invested into the program.
Companies in the employer-to-employee relationship typically just want you to be a mindless drone doing what they ask and not improving your pay based on performance or give you any incentive to improve. Why do you think people working corporate jobs for years seem to be performing at the same level they always have? That's because there is no incentive or driving force pushing you to work harder when your pay isn't reflected by your performance. Sure, there are exceptions to this rule, such as car sales people who will get an increase in pay based on the number of cars they sell. This is not something that applies to say, a coder, for instance, because I get paid the same no matter how many lines of code I write per day and I'm not incentivized to put out a high quality product, although that is what is expected by the company. I'm only required to put out a certain product within a certain timeframe, and that's it. Shut up, do the work, have no agency, and take your meager salary. That's the corporate mindset.
These corporations typically have no loyalty, either, while expecting employees to maintain undying loyalty to whatever soulless brand they're supposed to represent. Corporations will literally fill your position tomorrow if you were to pass away, today. Because, at the end of the day, they're concerned about having a position filled and someone working in that position. A corporation will work employees long hours without additional pay(if you're salaried), and they will not give the employee any incentive for doing so. You signed the contract, after all.
Corporations are also typically designed to be inefficient, with them wasting a ton of resources on pointless efforts, such as endless meetings and brainstorming sessions. Why do you have to go to dumb parties, worthless meetings, and other ridiculous activities not included in your job? It's all because they need to get some form of business write-off for tax purposes, so they waste your time and their money in order to get a lower threshold of taxable profits. They have no incentive to improve and become more effective, which is why they just want you to shoulder the brunt of the burden when it comes to laboring for their company. They would rather hire 20 employees instead of 40 to do the job of 40 people and tell the 20 to work twice as hard. Then, they will force the 20 employees to attend a bunch of stupid seminars or other worthless ventures in order to get the rest of their business write-offs. These are just a few ways that businesses, mainly large corporations, are incentivized to be poorly managed and largely inefficient.
Along with inefficiency, there is also the issue of corporate politics, and while I'm not necessarily talking about governmental politics, there may be hints of that as well. Corporations typically want the most sanitized working experience because if you act in any way outside of their preset formula, you can be viewed as a "bad apple". "What do you mean?", you might ask. Well, what I'm referring to is that if you're working for a company, you have to act like Employee #007 instead of behaving like a normal human would. You can't go outside the pre-determined script and do anything of your own volition. For example, most companies in general just hate swearing or any sort of language in the office(I don't swear, by the way, I just think this requirement is ridiculous). I understand why they have these rules in place, because some people complain, but I don't think they're necessary to produce a great product for people to use. This also often potentially excludes some talented workers because they simply hate this sanitized experience. I think it's beneficial to allow more freedom, since most jobs are expected to be occupied by adults, anyway.
What alternatives are there to working in a modern day corporation? The easiest alternative that people understand is entrepreneurship. Now, many more people are now pursuing entrepreneurship. This includes YouTubers, Twitch streamers, among many other forms of content creators. This is a great option for people who are self-driven and can create value from their own knowledge or entertainment. Typically this takes years of building an audience and a personal brand, though, before it's something worth pursuing full time. Another alternative to this would be contract work, where you sign an agreement to perform a certain job within a pre-determined amount of time. Contract work might possibly through another corporation or entity, so they probably are going to still exercise some control over you, so this is also not that great of an option. The only exception might be is if you enter into a private contract with an individual or small business. For instance, if I were to build a website for a local restaurant and they paid me for completing this work, then I would have a private contract to perform the work for them. There's also the idea of creating a product or service, especially that which is very low maintenance, and selling it to people for an established price. This can be writing a book, selling a course on something you're experienced in, or offering a paid subscription to some type of exclusive content. Usually, people who are entrepreneurs also engage with this in order to generate other forms of passive income, but you can start something like this and help it grow into a larger brand. The biggest goal is to just be able to generate income without having to rely on some larger company to employ you, allowing you to choose your employment.
Why did I write this article and what is the point? What I'm simply trying to do here is to illustrate how corporations are not interested in your growth and development as an employee in the work force. They're incentivized to keep you dumb and weak minded to keep you employed at lower rates than you can earn on your own. I am still working on becoming financially free to break out of this corporate cage myself, and I want to spread this message of freedom to others who are willing to listen.