It’s highly dependent on the company and role, but I disagree that “you don’t have to give that much of yourself your work”. There’s some roles where you simply can’t switch off after hours (certainly not every day), and where regular out of hours work is expected.
Of course it’s not physically demanding, but it can take a LOT out of you mentally, to the point of creating or exacerbating mental health problems,
agreed, I did Architecture for 2 years and I had to face the fact that i'm not all that smart, I was so mentally exhausted all the time, I changed to a more creative role now, I still make the same money and my mental health is a lot better
Im in a high pressure job at the moment. Not physically exhausted but mentally. Almost every week. The politics in corporate world. The work that follows you at home, after work hours and many other things. My husband gets physically exhausted because of his job but when he clocks out, he's done. I take calls on weekends when i need to close deals. I have no proper holiday. It just never stops. Fortunately, i learned 5 years ago how to manage it as I had a very rough situation 5 years ago where the mental exgaustion resulted in me getting sick to the point it affected my body so bad, they told me I will have a hard time having kids. So yeah. Lucky if someone is just sitting around in a corpirate job. But some of us dont.
I was lucky to be hired as a podcast manager, I write, edit, post it to different platforms, do equipment management, etc. I've had to learn a lot but I love it
Honestly the physical exhaustion of a hard days work on a construction site working as a laborer (so doing ALL the heavy lifting) actually feels nice. Sleep like a baby every night, it's impossible for work to follow you home, start early so knock off is around 3-4 so you still have a bit of time in the arvo and It was easily the healthiest and fittest I have ever been.
Compare this to the mental exhaustion of working my corporate software dev job which nearly killed me. The general stress and constantly having tomorrows work problems buzzing around my head outside of work hours was brutal and really fucked up my mental wellbeing, caused issues in my relationships and left me in therapy.
Physical work becomes less viable as you get older, but the mental exhaustion from a desk job can be absolutely as bad if not worse.
My husband said the same thing. If hes tired, he can sleep it off. Its his body thats tired. But when im mentally tired, i cannot sleep. I operate like a robot the following day. Its so bad.
Eh it’s not the same for everyone. I worked in construction for 5 years before moving to corporate. Doing physically demanding work whilst your brain sits idle can be pretty exhausting
You are right, some people will thrive in one but not the other - as our differing experiences clearly highlight.
My point is more that what OP was viewing as 'easy' and 'hard' isn't true for everyone. It's always going to depend on the individual.
Not to mention that because you're not doing regular exercise at work (and let's be honest, not at home either due to mental exhaustion), you get less and less fit.
It can be hard to build that up again, especially if you get sick or have overtime, unusually significant work stress etc.
I have had problems in the past where I just dream of work, cant sleep so say fuck it I might as well get it done now and gone back to work I. The middle of the night
This happens to me when I have intense deadlines or projects and I’ve figured out that copious amounts of low impact gaming replaces the stress dreams with game dreams. Right now it’s RDR2 - I’m completely ignoring the plot and just wandering around the open world taming horses.
I have worked both physically demanding jobs and those that require consistent mental attention.
They are both exhausting. The difference is that corporate life is mentally fatiguing. The lack of mental fortitude after a long day completely depletes your desire to do anything other than go home, do what needs to be done, and go to sleep.
When I was working in a physically demanding job, for example, I could still socialise, go to the gym etc... the same shift in my current career would drain any will to do these activities.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them the efforts I go to to automate as much of my work with scripts as I can. Like dude I have a long process of shit to do in a short amount of time, and correctly, and neatly, I want to offload as much of the mental burden as possible because my margins are fucking thin. My performance definitely drops the more of a mental load I'm under.
Totally! My body has certainly taken a toll as a result of all the stress. I get weekly stress and tension headaches, just cracked my first tooth from stress grinding and when I get extremely stressed I get sick.
Every time I see my doctor he ask if I’ve given anymore consideration to leaving this job.
But yeah it pays pretty good, so I stay.
I feel you! I started getting such bad headaches almost daily, which started causing me to actually vomit a couple of times. Also like you started grinding my teeth (luckily no cracks!), and on top of that I started developing stomach/gut problems which resulted in multiple hospital trips and specialist appointments… (I didn’t realise at the time that it was due to stress.) I’m extremely lucky tho that I was in the position to be able to take a career break, which I’m in the middle of now, and basically all those health problems have gone now (maybe except for the teeth grinding 😂).
Almost every single corporate job I've had has ended up with me having a mental breakdown. Most recently, I ended up carting myself off to a hospital in the middle of a work day because I just couldn't take it anymore. Corporate isn't for everyone.
> Of course it’s not physically demanding, but it can take a LOT out of you mentally, to the point of creating or exacerbating mental health problems,
I've worked about 100 different jobs now, and the only ones where I felt truly exhausted at the end of the day were desk jobs.
Same. The days at work I unbox and rack 20 servers I'll go home and be keen for a workout. The days I go home after racking 5 but configuring different types of systems for 5 hrs straight in a hostile environment, I'm absolutely depleted and can barely get off the couch lol
Welcome to IT! Imagine doing system maintenance during business hours and having 5000 unproductive users. There would be total uproar.
Then imagine having the audacity to ask for weekend overtime while "you're giving yourself for work."
Corporate can get fucked.
Def this.
I'm in IT projects and have the need to do additional work most nights during the week. Mentally it drags on you eventually just like excessive physicality.
There are definitely roles where you just clock on, do some stuff, clock off though.
Culture makes or breaks a place. You can work in the best “stats” company - in terms of product, output, share price etc, but if the culture is rancid that will break it.
Also, just because something isn’t physical work doesn’t mean people are not being harassed, bullied, gaslit, oppressed and treated like shit just because it’s a corporate setting. Corporate doesn’t mean better behaved/morals/ethics.
Yeah the corporate world is disgusting and everything is couched in friendly passive aggressive banter as well. Not to mention you're always expected to jump when asked, but it's because of poor management.
I have worked in more physical work and it's also degrading, but I did manage to clock out.
Both suck for different reasons.
>physical work doesn’t mean people are not being harassed, bullied, gaslit, oppressed and treated like shit just because it’s a corporate setting. Corporate doesn’t mean better behaved/morals/ethics.
Of course not; but all of those things can occur on on-site manual labour roles as well so they bear that burden on top of risk of injuries that occur from incidences (fractures etc) or degenerative conditions on top of being exposed to weather and industrial noise.
In the office you only really deal with lower back pain, postural problems and carpal tunnel
You’re also spending the majority of your life in a very artificial and sterile environment where you cannot be yourself. Overtime that chips away at you.
Also you’re undervaluing the toll that the incredibly long hours, sedentary lifestyle and stress place on your physical and mental health.
This comment 🙌🏻 The part about not being able to be yourself, or having to be a very repressed, restrained version of yourself, does indeed chip away at you slowly… I’m quite reserved in the workplace but pretty outgoing outside of it. It kills me a lot that I can’t be my true self, but maybe we all have a “work” self.
I love my corporate career. I get paid a metric fuck-ton. I go into the office once in a while, and when I do there is free coffee. Because I have a select skillset my boss is all about making me "happy". Tomorrow, I will stop working around 4ish and I don't need permission or notify someone.
All I need to do in return is Deliver, constantly! Put up with HR/Corp bullshit And be on call 24/7/365.
I am very happy with the deal I have.
I’ve been white collar my whole life. Every so often I take on a large-ish project around the house and that’s enough of a reminder for me why I love my corporate white collar job. I’m painting my house at the moment and it’s a pain in the ass even when I only choose to pain on cooler days and stop when I feel like it.
I have a friend who is a Diesel Mechanic/Fabricator/other crazy stuff I do not understand. He can't fix his computer (I do that for him), but if you give him something mechanical or to build something, he is a bloody genius. I have seen him spend a minute looking at a custom trailer and reproduce it over the weekend.
I am in awe of what he does.
But, I still love my corporate job and I do not have the skills he has, at all.
I'm an IT architect. I get paid north of 300. I just finished building a 2 story house solo, without power tools (I used a battery drill I guess). On balance I like both equally but... When I'm out there hanging gutters or building a crane to hoist home made trusses I don't think about work. When I'm at work I think about building.
Building a whole 2 story house was a lot easier than I expected. The only part as hard as I expected it to be was doing the mathematics on stairwells and harder than I expected was getting doors to close properly in all weather conditions.
I think building a house is a better challenge (for me) than relocating a whole datacentre while doing opportunistic cloud upgrades.
Is your statement still true if you're on call 24-7 but only get called once a quarter or something? Or you get a call every couple of days but the issue can be resolved within 2min on the phone?
I presume the OP works for a company called “Corporate” and thinks all companies are part of it.
I’ve experienced good, bad and in-between companies but they are certainly not all good (let alone great). Of course, it does come down to people and companies may also go through phases as the people and their degree of influence changes.
I’ve worked on both sides of blue and white collar and I’d never return to corporate ever.
Sure I’m doing physical work now, but I stay fit, I’m outside and don’t have to deal with random office bullshit.
When I want to slow down, I can always transition to semi office work in supervision and save my body. Or I can branch out on my own.
Sure if I work mining and work 7:7, I’m still doing the same amount of hours but I get that whole week at home as full days to just do whatever I want, I prefer that lifestyle than an hour or two to myself each day after commute.
The best part? When my day ends, it ends. No texts, no emails, no team building at a bowling alley. I fully clock off and have proper work life balance.
you say that now till your been doing physical work for nearly a decade with busted up ligaments.
im not concreter or labourer by any stretch and even i have a cooked up shoulder from my work.
id love a nice 9-5 office job
It really depends on what you’re doing though as blue collar work and the work culture.
but also, if you’ve been doing it a decade plus, there’s so many roles you can transition to quite easily. WHS, Trainer & Assessor, supervisor.
If you want the change, it’s a simple Cert IV and you’re away
100%. I left the finance world about 7 years ago, retrained as an exploration geologist and have zero regrets beyond not doing it sooner. My commute is 2 minutes, I get free food and drink, utilities + vehicle + fuel paid for 6-8 months of the year, the work doesn’t feel like work and never follows me home, always refreshed and ready to go back to work after 7 or 14 days off.
Yours sounds exceptionally rare. In all my white collar work across different industries and companies, you could never fully clock off at 5:30.
Someone would contact you, you’d get an email, you’d get pressured for unpaid overtime.
I think you’ve got a really good gig and would stick with it if you enjoy it and actually do get that balance
I went on holiday overseas once, many years back, and my work were insisting on a phone number I could be contacted on in case of an emergency. My Aussie mobile wasn't going to work there. Roaming would've been too expensive so screw that. So I just gave them the number of a family member who doesn't speak English lol. They never did have to call because there wasn't going to be any emergency, but it would have been funny if they did.
This is very true. In my experience you need to be in a select few subsections of tech, in an org big enough to champion work life balance, then be in a team with managers who champion work life balance.
The conditional probability of this across most corporate companies would be quite low
>Someone would contact you, you’d get an email, you’d get pressured for unpaid overtime.
It's called wage theft, and it's a crime
If only there was a judicial system to enforce it, and to put the criminals behind bars.
It is not that simple.
If i was paid under an hourly rate determined by a federal award, i might make 30-35 dollars an hour and get overtime for every hour worked.
Instead, I'm paid an annualised salary that is the equivalent of more than $100 an hour and that compensates me for additional work that may be required from time to time. (not counting a bonus of more than $30K each year.
This extra work usually equates to around 1.5 hours a day, max 2. I also do not work a solid 8 hour day, i have plenty of down time from 9am to 5pm when ever i choose and can go for a long lunch or an appointment in office hours whenever i want.
I feel it all evens out much more to my advantage and as such, I dont think working 2 extra hours from 9pm to 11pm is wage theft... it is doing mny job.
> Someone would contact you
Why are you answering work calls past 5:30? Let them go to voice-mail
> you’d get an email
Why are you looking at your work email past 5:30?
Ok so we have someone who’s chugging the HR kool-aid.
No one SHOULD be calling me past 5:30, or blowing up my phone with texts.
No one SHOULD be spamming me with emails.
You say “ignore it” but completely gloss over those same people and leadership putting that pressure on you to respond and be a “team player”, other pressures in the workplace and attitudes against you for doing that. It’s easy to say ignore it, but just remember if times get tough, you’re first to get the sack and the first to be looked over for any sort of promotion or kick back.
I know a lady who worked in HR and would answer emails as late as 11pm because she felt like she had to. She burned herself out after a few years so she decided to just turn the notifications off at 5:30 every day expecting that the company will fall apart. You know what happened? Absolutely nothing. No one noticed, not even her direct supervisor. People overestimate how important they are and put themselves under pressure that only exists in their head.
Depends what role you’re in. I had one that was great pay for not much work. Then I got offered a ‘better’ role for more money and better benefits. Unfortunately, I traded in my soul. I no longer have any time for myself and there’s no clocking out at 5 if the work isn’t done. Plot twist, the work is never done. I’m so exhausted by the end of the day that all I can do is maybe microwave some dinner, watch an hour of TV before taking myself to bed only for it all to begin again.
I’ve lost my friends because I was no longer interested in seeing them. I have no time to take care of my household chores. Nothing brings me joy as I’m stuck in this corporate prison. “Just quit” people say… but in this economy to give up $90k a year isn’t easy to do, when a lot of ‘easier’ jobs are barely paying half that. There is so much pressure and I can’t just leave, even though the job is destroying my well-being.
You’ve found a great company and a role that fits you. Congratulations. This is not everyone’s experience.
Keep it. For the love of all things good, KEEP IT! Genuinely lol unless you’re offered a monumental raise for not that much more effort, hold on to that balance. It doesn’t get any better than what you have.
I appreciate the tempered perspective. While corporate gigs do have their perks and the pay can indeed be comfortable, there's a subtle trade happening – it's not just time for money, but often, potential for security. This is the siren song of the corporate world: it quietly seduces one into a velvet-lined rut. The longer you're in, the more golden the handcuffs, and the harder it is to leave for fear of the unknown and the financial lifestyle shift.
There’s a philosophical cost, too. It’s not that ‘fake work’ doesn't still need to be done (pixels on screen make money move, no matter how artificial either concept is) or that it doesn’t require skill (after all, we often dedicate great time to learning these skillsets) – it’s that in the endless cycle of meetings and memos, one might miss the richness of life’s tapestry and the natural presence that comes with grounding oneself and actually touching grass. The corporate grind can lead to a kind of waking sleep, where days blend into one another, and the societal push for enlightenment and self-realisation is dulled to a background hum. It's a Faustian bargain where the comfort of the present may cloud the promise of what could be.
There is a great deal of polarity occurring in the corporate sphere, meaning one oft finds themselves forcing alignment with egos not akin to their own and thus adopting a life path seemingly thrust upon them. This is only amplified where time for independent meditative practice is restricted due to the demands of work prevailing. While the corporate world continues to operate under a veil of fakery and extracting energy for profit, it is unlikely that many will find alignment with these roles and, therefore, these kinds of complaints will continue.
Thank you. It has taken me a long time to find the path to truth, and it remains a constant effort to catch myself slipping back into the ego.
It is also apparent, yet immensely difficult to accept, that one can not simply espouse or explain the esoteric - that is a journey each must conduct of their own accord. This is quite challenging to accept in a world where we shroud the simplicity of presence with constant distraction, meaning less accept the role of the observer due to a constant need for presence of mind.
Well written. That veil of fakery is what irks many of us from the moment that the 'original owners' speech is uttered. Anyone who cares about truth has a little stomach churn or revulsion when our brethren are so easily cowed in to willful obedience and acquiescence. What's extraordinary in my eyes is how people defend these types of activities willfully and without and form of rational thought. Defensive mental reflexes to protect the job you hate.
The philosophical cost however is only born by those who have developed intrinsic values. Those who receive their values extrinsically can only get a detached sense that something is off as they lack the objective ethics. For these people everything is relativism. It's hard to push back when you stand on mud and have no direction.
Your observation is a constant source of frustration for me because most of the 'problems' are manageable by having the force of character to limit the impact of others thoughts on your own mind. So few people push back. Their problems are a grid, hey build up personal debts, need salaries to pay the debt 'feel' they can't get elsewhere, put up with crap because they 'cant' leave, enable psychopathic managers with acquiescing to unfair conditions and never break out of the grinding situations. Even if they change jobs, the same issue is back at hand again.
Reaching a point of self actualization is virtually impossible given the constraints most employees put on themselves. People like me who say "no" are selfish and just make more work they will take on.
People, don't take on debt. Do the shadow work and learn to find enjoyment in the most trivial of tasks, and from time to time step back and consider yourself from the outside. Analyze the self. If you feel lost just remember none of this matters anyway. Enjoy yourself, and learn to enjoy all the parts.
Yep this is it, a slow realisation that nothing you are doing aligns to your values and who you want to be as a person but finding yourself stuck with no way out. Not just a corporate problem but a capitalism problem more broadly. Is this office work that has no real impact on anything and keeps us hunched over screens all day really what we’ve fought to become? I feel like my job continually stops me from living the life I want but there is also no alternative given cost of living, lack of safety net etc etc.
You’re in auscorp, so you’re gonna see complaints about corporate life. Guess what you’d see in r/plumbing, r/chefs, r/construction, r/healthcare, etc.
Seeing complaints is not a function of the type of role, it’s a function of having a job - whatever industry it’s in.
Complaint validity is a relative thing. Does anyone care about your selection of cost codes for you timesheet not being sufficient to cover the team meeting? Nope.
The kid I sat next to in high school was a Cambodian refugee. Be was used as an ashtray and footstool after trying to escape the country at 7yo following his whole family getting murdered. They were killed because they had bad eyesight. They look like "intellectuals" and the Khmer Rouche killed them all. IN reality his dad was a taxi driver and needed classes to drive a car. When the 'ashtray\\stool' unit moved out they discarded the furniture by tying a plastic bag over his head, and hogtied him with electrical wire and tossed him on an ant nest. Eventually he made it in to Thailand where the refugee came was shelled with artillery.
Whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself over something stupid I remember that he dealt all this as a 7yo and I'm an adult. Whatever it is, I can handle it if I can still stand.
Corporate life is the cruisiest, best remunerated work I've done in my life. It doesn't have the same personal satisfaction that my previous work had, but it has allowed me to gain other things external to work that DO give me great amounts of satisfaction such as paying off our home faster due to the higher wage.
Any time I'm inclined to have a little bit of an internal sook about something that I'm mildly irritated by I remind myself of the actual hardships of my previous job and ask myself one simple question. "Did you die though?" lmao.
Yeah I agree. I don’t really need or want my job to be the type of job that changes the world. I want my job to have very little impact on my life tbh. I just want to hang with my family and take nice holidays. Everybody is having strong opinions on that POV though it seems so seems like my approach is far from universal
Some people need to touch grass and work a labour job for a week.
For most complaining, theyve worked corporate their whole life snd dont know anything else.
That being said, corporate stress is 100% mental and sometimes that fatigue can eat away at people that dont know how to switch off.
I used to be a tradie and now have a corporate job. It honestly baffles me when people complain at my current job. I almost feel guilty getting paid for this job, it is so freaking easy.
I have an account management job with a supplier in my industry. I’m not going more in depth as it’s quite a niche industry. It honestly doesn’t feel like work, I just chat to people and help them with various issues and it isn’t hard to sell as the product sells itself. I realise corporate can be a lot more difficult than this but it’s pretty sweet, there are so many freebies and perks too.
I having worked both, I would say some people need to touch grass and try my corporate job for a week. They’d be running back to labouring…
Both can have their challenges.
>Some people need to touch grass and work a labour job for a week.
I've done both. Both can be shit for different reasons. The corporate jargon is like a needle in my ears, which makes that option particularly unpleasant.
I’ve worked for a small family owned company and currently work for an ASX listed company and truth be told - there’s notable differences but working for an ASX company has so much more advantages to it IF you know how to differentiate life from work. I.e get in, get out.
A lot of people on here have zero grip over their emotions, awful stress management and a categorical lack of ability to draw lines.
Or, you’re in IB/ consulting in which case, you (knowingly) signed away your life to be harvesting dosh at your future buyside job.
Seriously, @ the people doing this to themselves for 100k/ year at some gooby team at a B4, reevaluate.
You do you. I hate corporate and would sooner sleep under a bridge than circle back (talk) to fake fucks all day long. I don't even look at corporate jobs as real or options 😂
My wife and I both work in corporates. It got worse than what you said with all the He\\Him's and acknowledgements to country, My wifes company has male trans dudes who still pee standing up in the womens toilets and she has to be 'accepting' when he gets a boner in a tight mini skirt that even for a 22yo girls would be not appropriate office attire.
...but... together we're closing in on a 600k yearly income. and mostly work form home Whatever you do now you can have. For this price I can take a lot of pointless BS.
Because corp-cunts are for the most part so far away from reality that they would forget to shit if the coke didnt force them too.
Fake, entitled leeches that would take a selfie with your burning house, paste #blessed on it and go have a meltdown because someone was smoking on the street.
I day dream about the end of the world because they are the fuckers I would hunt and eat first and its one of the only times they bring me happiness.
True but. It can get toxic, political and extremely inefficient plus a lot of sociopaths make it to senior management by being as I described which makes a lot of your life not so fun. I think that’s where a lot of the negativity comes from.
I agree with you, but I see TONS of people that have managed to build toxic relationships with their careers. Most of them REALLY don't want to take responsibility for being like this however. Some example I have see in the past few years:
4 \* Instances of project managers working themselves to the point of failure. One had a heart attack mid project... THEN RETURNED TO WORK. Another had his wife tell him he would get divorced if he didn't scale back. At no point did any of them consider that they needed help. The worst one was a guy I worked with at Macquarie. He sat across from me, before he just stopped coming in to work. Yeah, he died due to a brain bleed.
3 \* instances of Junior staff (mixed roles) trying to get noticed doing everything that was asked of them, then pitching between depression anxiety and elation. hey worked 12 hour days, made up reasons for why they 'had to'. They all could have moderated their workloads but had a really messed up ability to speak up for themselves, estimate effort better based on their skills and experience
1 \* Instance of a Senior network engineer doing Architecture level design work and ALSO doing changes and ALSO handling all the incidents and ALSO PM'ing all the vendor engagements. He was a one man network team. I'm frankly surprised this guys body didn't shut down. I managed to have a chat with him about this and he resigned on my advice to take on a role doing pure Network Architecture.
\*\*\*
In contrast
* I stop work at right around 5pm 99% f the time and don't log on after hours. I also don't start till 9am 99% of he time.
* I go to the gym at lunchtime. You have no idea how calm the afternoon is when you hit a PR at lunch.
* I talk to my stakeholders a lot. I propose deadlines that are 200% my anticipated effort, sometimes 400% if I had never done it before. A kind manager in the 90's taught me to do this and his rule of thumb has been spot on. Since I 'know' (estimate) my effort expenditure is 25%, I go in to each task calm.
* I focus on process improvement a lot, automation, assistance tools.
* When I have problems that blow up my 200/400% estimate it's gotta be a big problem. That'll be easily articulated to stakeholders and hence understandable. Then I just reset expectation. If that doesn't work for them not it's on them to assign more people. 90% of the time they accept the new date.
* If an employment situation gets toxic I have a motto. "I don't try to change the company, I just pick a new one".
I've worked as an Systems Engineer, Software Developer, departmental manager and right across the IT Architecture space. My very unpopular opinion is that the people with toxic work life balance are bringing it on themselves. The #1 cause is the inability to speak to managers\\stakeholders and represent yourself. How do you get more confidence? Hit the gym and hit seek for other options and learn how to say no.
Power gives options.
I don’t think you understand the toll that stress and mental pressure takes on people, including on the body.
“Office people don’t work hard” is the dumbest logic.
It’s all just so inefficient! The meeting Les that could be an email. Then all the emails and stupid workflow processes. The running circles. The tick a box approach to everything. Honestly if we lost half of that we should all be working a 3-4 day week.
True but then they’d want to pay us less. I’m pretty happy to just push meaningless emails around if that’s what my boss wants provided I’m paid well for the privilege lol.
Exactly. I find it annoying when I have to redo something because my manager didn't give me the full details the first time around but at the end of the day who cares, as long as they pay me I'll redo it 15 times if they want.
>Most of the time there’s flexibility compared to most other roles and it enables you to spend time with your family.
I wish.
I would murder (not literally) if I could get a job closer to home... or at least be allowed to WFH 2 days a week. I would even prefer to be part time and have Wed's off.
4 hours travel a day does not give me a lot of time with the family.
because we have to work to make a living. 99.999999% of people in corporate life would retire tomorrow if they win the lotto.
everyone would retire....from the junior intern to the ceo.
if I win the lotto, im buying a one way ticket to Fiji, Maldives and Hawaii! I'll chase the sunshine.
happy Easter!
I have such contempt for corporate for a number of reasons. #1 being they think they know my job having never done a single minute of it but because they have a little bit of fucking paper they can tell me who had been doing it for nearly 20 years how to do it.
#2 the vast majority arw cancerous people who think nothing of stepping on others to further their own careers. Yes there are some on bluecollar work. But I ersonallt notice more white collar people will think nothing of it.
#3 bonuses to screw others out of pay raises. If you participate in this. The biggest f**k you on earth.
#4 under the desk deals, kickbacks and all that.. the ones in the higher up positions of power always seem to have some side angle dodgy bros dealings going on
I've done both physical and corporate and the mental load of corporate is so much worse. Physical jobs yes they are physically demanding but once your fit if you sit down for an hour your usually recovered and ready to go, but you can't just... put down the mental load of corporate.
I've been unable to sleep before thinking about how to solve the current problem im working on. And projects don't just go away, they pop up months later for fixes or updates. Ugh im so over it. Plus we are majorly understaffed right now. Half the team is burning out.
Because it can be psychologically abusive and the laws don't really protect against it. Narc boss? Psycho team mate with daddy issues? Your only defense is leaving.
I think you're missing the point.
Most corporate jobs are generally fine. It's not the job we hate. It's the PEOPLE. The Management etc. These people are insanely mentally exhausting. And will bad managers it can utterly destroy your mental health completely.
Corps can do a lot more for you, they just don't. If you're fine with the bare minimum then thats on you, the rest of us are not.
While you may have a comfortable position at your company, which pays the bills and doesn’t cause a lot of stress, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a secretary barely scrapping by, or even a direct peer who has to do a nearly 3 hour commute both ways.
The corporate work life works for less people then it does work in favour for. It being “easier” then labour work (which I do personally) is hardly a reason for people not to complain about the hardships of their work. Also, intelligence is not a marker of how successful you will be in a corporate setting, surely most of you have had experiences with frankly dumb managers and upper company staff. It also implies that labour driven work is for unintelligent people, which I hope you don’t think. I’m sure electricians would surely disagree.
People saying stuff like “it’s not that bad” or “there’s no reason to complain” are akin to the people saying the same thing prior to the establishment of the eight hour work day or maternity leave. There is no good reason to put down fellow workers for complaining when their complaints may win you further rights that will undoubtedly make your life better as well, even if the issue is not even close to a priority for you.
Totally agree. Sometimes I feel worn down by it and then I remember when I worked 10 hours shifts in retail with a 30min lunch break.
I think its useful to ground your perspective once in a while
Corporate is the fucking best. After years in retail, hospo and trades, I still can't believe how lucky I am to be working in corporate now. The shit people complain about is wild. Oh no, this 30 minute meeting could have been an email?! Poor you! ;_; You brave corporate soldier!
It's some weird anti-work vibe as well. "I'm not valuable as a person to my company." Like, no shit. You're a tiny cog in a huge company most likely. None of us are valuable. It's like they want their bosses to pat their head and rub their tummy and tell them how special and wonderful they are.
I'm just happy making money doing work that isn't breaking my body or dealing with customers.
I can understand this because my father was an immigrant that worked like a dog and seeing him grow up working as a labourer really turned me off physical work.
Any Aussie that comes from an immigrant background loves the corporate gig because as stated in your post they appreciate the perks and flexibility. Most other Aussies are whingy lazy fucks.
>Most other Aussies are whingy lazy fucks.
Depends on the place they work really... as someone else said.. culture makes or breaks a place.
I am Gen X... I spend 4 hours a day travel. 1 bad night sleep and I am rekt for the entire week. I still turn up and get my work done.
There are people here that are >23 that live 30mins away and complain that they cannot WFH 5 days a week :|
They talk about quitting, which is entirely an option, but I let them know that it is pretty relaxed here in the office for the most part and they could definitely end up at an entirely worse place to work.
Do not think they believe me.
Absolutely. I'd like to think I've made my immigrant parents proud working in corporate when they've had to work hard their whole life in various roles over the years.
Australia is the lucky country but most Aussies wouldn't know it.
Not just in Oz, everywhere the noose is getting a bit tighter to get by day by day for the lucky, yet shrinking, middle class.
Rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer, and average are getting poorer.
Really depends on where you work and who you work with. Sounds like you're at a good place.
Maybe try and find some understanding that some people are in very toxic environments, listen to other people's experiences rather than deciding because yours is good they have nothing to complain about.
So much also depends on luck and timing. You might be the lucky one who ended up in a good team with a good leader and team balance. More often than not, people end up on teams that are poorly configured with substandard managers and end up on a downward trajectory and that has a snowball effect in a career. I’ve seen so many teams that are in engagements that are just destined to fail because someone has to do the work to bring in the $$.
Lol.
Every career corporate in senior roles I've ever met battles:
-Hypertension
-Cardiac issues
- Posture issues
- Fatigue/burnout
You might thing the posture issues isn't serious, but trust me, having hip and joint issues isn't fun.
People in manual services rail against corporates as living a life of luxury and low productivity, but the truth is we all work out guts out. Have to out up with mostly shitty behaviour from low mid tier employees, and stupid ideas from directors.
I don't know anyone who works in corporate offices that isn't completely overworked.
The thing is that both sides are right. It depends on the job, the person and their own experiences. I totally get why people hate corporate jobs, but I can see why people like them as well. I don't necessarily agree with your thread invalidating their experiences though.
I would have agreed until recently. I worked with someone who triggered my repressed (and very much forgotten) childhood trauma and I ended up with anxiety disorder and PTSD. Feels kinda snowflakey for a Gen Xer, but apparently it’s a thing. Some people are immensely vulnerable to other people’s BS without even knowing it, and that’s why I think there’s just as much risk of injury in corporate as trades - just more likely to be psychological than physical.
There are people in my industry who make double what I do, but they only work and sleep, no social or family life.
I don't want to work that hard at my age, been there done that in the past, not anymore. A smaller company suits me fine now.
I work for a large corporation in a technical role which is an aussie household name. My company worked me 60+ hours a week for 3 months on a 37.5 plus "reasonable extra hours". I developed a serious, then chronic back injury. It destroyed me, I tried to "work through it" at their advice, eventually got the right help both physically, mentally and legally, put in work cover claim. They contested it tooth and nail and made many false and misleading legal representstions to me. In the end I was lucky to have friends in the right type of legal who helped. Eventually took them to court and got fully paid out. They argued the whole time it was that id hurt myself running".
Fuck Corp. The chew you up and spit you out. Treat it like it is, the mercenary part of your careerxgood money, but you owe them nothing. Take care of yourself.
Maybe we aren't naturally meant to sit at a desk all day not using our brains in the real world and not getting any physical movement. Maybe when you do this for 10+ hours a day and then go to the gym and eat poorly and have 6 hours sleep you only get 3 hours to yourself and that's barely time to do anything for YOU that is meaningful.
Nobody disagrees that corporate isn't lucrative and easy and low impact on our bodies. But that doesn't make it good.
I love my job. Id do it for free if I was loaded, although only a few days a week. Ive worked manual labor for years growing up on a block and there's no words to describe how much better this is.
Culture is where it is all! I have worked in corporate for 23 years now across the globe and though my work intensity varied as per roles…but most times , work got done in usual office hours. In some places, it was considered being a great employee if you stayed back and worked extra hours. So people would waste time during the day and work long hours later coz they knew that is what the organisation promoted. In other places, it was considered inefficient if you worked long hours ..no one did it so everyone was logged off by 5pm. Currently I’m lucky to be in a place which has this culture. I’m working 9-5 with barely a break but tbh I prefer this as long as I am back home after 5pm. I worked at 2 of the big 4 and it was non stop 24x7 work hours - weekends included. The culture always flows down from seniors and since they never switched off, neither did anyone else. I left both places as quick as I can and never want to work with them again.
I have been in white collar large corporates 95% of my working life (as opposed to public service) and agree that the mental stress can kill you. I used to de-stress with a glass of wine, which became a bottle... then stopped when I had to buy bigger pants. Switched to going to the gym every weekday morning, which completely de-stresses me (as well as helping me get back into the smaller pants). Without the daily endorphins release, I would have been a basket case. I would add that I had one stint in public service and freaking HATED it compared to Corporate. Corporate politics is a breeze in comparison.
I worked in a place with great culture, but it has slipped over the past two years. It is not a great feeling to come to work. We have grown too big and don't have the support.
We have grads and others coming in with very little support from leadership. You either need to give them support yourself or have to redo their work.
At the end of the day, you feel like you haven't achieved much and just feel so frustrated.
As someone who done both corporate job under a terrible manager is the worst thing ever and corporate job under a good manager is the worst.
It all comes down to management, the job itself is fine. Problem is in corporate you can have a lot more incompetent managers since technical skills is not what gets you up unlike most trades.
> not that bad
This is something you could only possibly say if you do not understand how much better a job can actually be.
I make probably about 10% less than I would at corporate but set my own hours and direct my own projects. I’m a contractor so my clients kinda suck up to me rather than there being any pressure for me to do that to some manager or boss. I keep a very irregular, flexible schedule, start at about 1030 every day, am pretty autonomous and work a 3.5 day week.
The idea of going back to some uptight corporate environment is just insane to me. Nothing in the world could convince me to go back to that dystopian shit, never gonna happen.
I had a job once (white collar). I was called on Sunday night at 10.30pm .. the day before I started that job from my new boss who was also the owner of the company . I didn’t answer because it was completely unreasonable that I should and didn’t want to lose sleep. He then used that against me the next day and claimed I already had a bad attitude because I was “unreliable”. I enjoyed quitting that role within probation . He loved doing psychology tests like that on everyone. Fuck that cunt. Turned out nearly everyone else there was on a visa and just had to accept this crap (including pay decreases!)
Different jobs are challenging in different ways.. Someone who's putting their body on the line in another job might find the idea of meetings and presentations in a corporate environment terrifying, whereas you might not mind that but would find their job unbearable.
I do agree to an extent though, some of the "problems" people have in corporate environments or what I see on ausfinance kind of make roll my eyes
Yeah I’m with you, like who cares if it’s fulfilling or whatever I get paid to talk shit and write some emails and presos. Sure, I complain about it like everyone else, sometimes I’ll even daydream about quitting and opening a fish n chip shop. But then I remember working 8hr hospo shifts standing all day long, compared to lying on my couch attending meetings
I spent the first 7 or 8 years of my working life as an electrician in construction. Yes, it is physically taxing, but it keeps you fit. Mentally, it is not comparable to my corporate life. Being a sparky I had basically zero stress. I got paid by hour, paid overtime, the only responsibility I had to was to do my work well. Come knock off time, I was able to entirely forget about work and go home. You just don't get to do that in most corporate jobs.
It depends so much on your seniority and role and the organisation. Want to do accounts payable, earning $60k. Sure.. Life’s grand. Want to be the head of People during a major restructure with mass layoffs? Life’s not so grand.
Work from home 4 days a week, start at 6am, finish at 2:30. Subsidised food in the office cafe when I go in and under an EBA so all sorts of pay rises a year.
Idk it’s not for everyone, some people are too hyperactive for desk work and find corporate environments very stifling and unstimulating. If I could have made my corporate job work I would have cause on paper it’s such an easy lifestyle but my brain doesn’t work that way
Toxic corporate cultures are the killer.
If you can't perform your role due to lack of leadership and poor decisions that impact delivery or lack of management support then your corporate life is the worst.
Many corporate organisations have people in managing roles that can't or don't manage effectively.
I feel like a lot of people on reddit have carved out their niche at work as the guy who never logs off, is always contactable, never goes to drinks, has no friends at work, etc...
They have basically carved out a niche as the person who gets shafted...and then they complain that they hate corporate.
It's not that bad.
But...
When managers are paid to extract as much productivity out of every resource possible, that behaviour gets rewarded very, very well.
It incentivizes dubious behaviour.
Don’t underestimate how much stress impacts your health.
Some people in corporate don’t GAF and others take the stresses and unreasonable demands home with them and don’t sleep well at night.
I totally agree that someone working a physical job works very hard, but they can click off and sleep like a baby.
Corporate in boutique management consultancy, many areas of banking/finance, certain IT projects...yes, money is amazing.
And you will need it for the medical bills related to stress, heart conditions in middle age, anxiety etc. Sure, this is not everyone's experience, but there are many people who leave the sectors early, burned out mentally and in some case physically.
End of the day 'not working hard' unless your managing to sneak under the radar, the revenue you are creating is paying for several levels of management, offices etc before your share is allocated to you as salary.... sure job security, alright pay so the same job for yourself, probably get double the income, and have complete flexibility not the sudo flexibility corporate pretends to give you 🤷♂️
Because there is always someone getting offended under the guise of cultural diversity and outright weaponising the 'R' word to take down someone they don't like. Yeah sure it's like every other company but the idealist wants to push /force this sort of F\* BS then expect the backlash and hate. Oh some "coloured" female/male tries to flirt, they don't reciprocate oh target him/her. F\* disgraceful.
I like how the only alternative you've posed is body destroying work, like there's no other options out there...
You also make it out that there's no risk involved in corp roles - Across my closest friends in corp roles and myself, 3 in 10 have been made redundant at some point in their career. The risks of corporate exponentially increases as you age, people seem to just ignore that.
I'm guessing you also haven't hit the heights where a corp role becomes life sucking, I'm yet to find a GM at a large corp that doesn't work every evening and weekend
Culture can be a make or break for the majority for sure, it becomes irrelevant when you start earning $300k+, at that point it defaults to life = work.
My friends who spent their early years pursuing small business are the ones now with the greatest time balance and highest earnings per hour worked out of any of the people I know. One of my closest works 12-15 hours a week and pulls more than $1m a year - he runs a highly successful service business, he hasn't delivered the service himself for years, just leads the team, schedules etc. I'm at far greater risk of losing my income than he is, despite me sitting in the what people think is a 'safe' corp exec role - couple of bad outcomes and my neck will be chopped!
That friend definitely has it (life) figured out, anyone thinking they have something anywhere near similar in corp is delusional in my books!
Couple of things it doesn’t have that are kind of high on the hierarchy of needs
Connection to purpose: many Corp workers never see their contribution connect to the companies progress. A lot of us are in “bullshit jobs” which sounds like a dream but after a month you realise you’re following rules for no outcome
Bureaucracy: often we realise there is a “better way” for us to achieve of actually make an impact but because Megan in finance says no we can’t… fuck you megan
Exploitation: not saying this doesn’t happen in other places but some industries in corporate thrive on taking advantage of the good willed nature of the people who work there. Healthcare corp and NFP are rife with it. No pay, 2 jobs for every staff member no paid overtime and “guys seriously please don’t burn out we care about you”
Corporate is bullshit for a good segment and I totally understand their complaints
Climb that ladder,
You better hold your tongue,
Turn a blind eye…or they’ll take the other one ,
Kneel and bow !!!!
( lyrics from Made to Parade from Queens of The Stone Age, an incredible song about corporate bullshit )
I just hate working, no matter what it is. I don’t want to be told what to do every day, I don’t want to keep up appearances or be a mature adult. I wanna be free. But I wanna live and eat and not be destitute when I retire so I have to shut up and work. I’ll whinge about it every now and then though cos it helps me to survive it.
I have the type of corporate job that pays high and has the potential to be really stressful. I never take my work outside and clock off at 5 on the dot. I've learnt to simply not care and visibly show it. It pisses the old workers off so much because they think that you have to suffer at work to be successful in the role. Honestly though, turning your emails off at 5, ignoring the pushy clients and declaring openly that you will not work past 5 has worked so well for me.
I guess if a person is amoral it's a non issue so lets say the legal department theres so much moral disengagment anyway then who cares but going against most human values for most people will burn them out .
I’ve worked corporate my whole career and OP doesn’t know the half of it. The main reason there is so much hate for corporate jobs, is that corporations are largely soul sucking vampires that enrich those at the top and fuck everyone else over.
The sooner we organise an armed revolt and put all the managers against the wall the better we’ll all be off.
It’s highly dependent on the company and role, but I disagree that “you don’t have to give that much of yourself your work”. There’s some roles where you simply can’t switch off after hours (certainly not every day), and where regular out of hours work is expected. Of course it’s not physically demanding, but it can take a LOT out of you mentally, to the point of creating or exacerbating mental health problems,
This. Some people think because youre not physically exhausted meant youre not mentally exhausted.
agreed, I did Architecture for 2 years and I had to face the fact that i'm not all that smart, I was so mentally exhausted all the time, I changed to a more creative role now, I still make the same money and my mental health is a lot better
Architecture is brutal, low salaries and a horrible culture of working incredibly hard/long with huge responsibility.
But Ted Moseby made it look so cool
Did he though 🤔
Im in a high pressure job at the moment. Not physically exhausted but mentally. Almost every week. The politics in corporate world. The work that follows you at home, after work hours and many other things. My husband gets physically exhausted because of his job but when he clocks out, he's done. I take calls on weekends when i need to close deals. I have no proper holiday. It just never stops. Fortunately, i learned 5 years ago how to manage it as I had a very rough situation 5 years ago where the mental exgaustion resulted in me getting sick to the point it affected my body so bad, they told me I will have a hard time having kids. So yeah. Lucky if someone is just sitting around in a corpirate job. But some of us dont.
Well done figuring that out after two years, it took me four 😬
Out of curiosity, what did you move to after architecture?
What did you charge to? Fellow dressed out architect
I was lucky to be hired as a podcast manager, I write, edit, post it to different platforms, do equipment management, etc. I've had to learn a lot but I love it
Honestly the physical exhaustion of a hard days work on a construction site working as a laborer (so doing ALL the heavy lifting) actually feels nice. Sleep like a baby every night, it's impossible for work to follow you home, start early so knock off is around 3-4 so you still have a bit of time in the arvo and It was easily the healthiest and fittest I have ever been. Compare this to the mental exhaustion of working my corporate software dev job which nearly killed me. The general stress and constantly having tomorrows work problems buzzing around my head outside of work hours was brutal and really fucked up my mental wellbeing, caused issues in my relationships and left me in therapy. Physical work becomes less viable as you get older, but the mental exhaustion from a desk job can be absolutely as bad if not worse.
My husband said the same thing. If hes tired, he can sleep it off. Its his body thats tired. But when im mentally tired, i cannot sleep. I operate like a robot the following day. Its so bad.
Eh it’s not the same for everyone. I worked in construction for 5 years before moving to corporate. Doing physically demanding work whilst your brain sits idle can be pretty exhausting
You are right, some people will thrive in one but not the other - as our differing experiences clearly highlight. My point is more that what OP was viewing as 'easy' and 'hard' isn't true for everyone. It's always going to depend on the individual.
Not to mention that because you're not doing regular exercise at work (and let's be honest, not at home either due to mental exhaustion), you get less and less fit. It can be hard to build that up again, especially if you get sick or have overtime, unusually significant work stress etc.
I have had problems in the past where I just dream of work, cant sleep so say fuck it I might as well get it done now and gone back to work I. The middle of the night
This happens to me when I have intense deadlines or projects and I’ve figured out that copious amounts of low impact gaming replaces the stress dreams with game dreams. Right now it’s RDR2 - I’m completely ignoring the plot and just wandering around the open world taming horses.
I have worked both physically demanding jobs and those that require consistent mental attention. They are both exhausting. The difference is that corporate life is mentally fatiguing. The lack of mental fortitude after a long day completely depletes your desire to do anything other than go home, do what needs to be done, and go to sleep. When I was working in a physically demanding job, for example, I could still socialise, go to the gym etc... the same shift in my current career would drain any will to do these activities.
People look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them the efforts I go to to automate as much of my work with scripts as I can. Like dude I have a long process of shit to do in a short amount of time, and correctly, and neatly, I want to offload as much of the mental burden as possible because my margins are fucking thin. My performance definitely drops the more of a mental load I'm under.
Totally! My body has certainly taken a toll as a result of all the stress. I get weekly stress and tension headaches, just cracked my first tooth from stress grinding and when I get extremely stressed I get sick. Every time I see my doctor he ask if I’ve given anymore consideration to leaving this job. But yeah it pays pretty good, so I stay.
I feel you! I started getting such bad headaches almost daily, which started causing me to actually vomit a couple of times. Also like you started grinding my teeth (luckily no cracks!), and on top of that I started developing stomach/gut problems which resulted in multiple hospital trips and specialist appointments… (I didn’t realise at the time that it was due to stress.) I’m extremely lucky tho that I was in the position to be able to take a career break, which I’m in the middle of now, and basically all those health problems have gone now (maybe except for the teeth grinding 😂).
Yeh I grind my my teeth as well from stress and dentist ask me if I want a mouth guard… 😂
Thankfully i’m not involved but the politics in one of our departments at work is literally breaking the people in that department.
Almost every single corporate job I've had has ended up with me having a mental breakdown. Most recently, I ended up carting myself off to a hospital in the middle of a work day because I just couldn't take it anymore. Corporate isn't for everyone.
> Of course it’s not physically demanding, but it can take a LOT out of you mentally, to the point of creating or exacerbating mental health problems, I've worked about 100 different jobs now, and the only ones where I felt truly exhausted at the end of the day were desk jobs.
Same. The days at work I unbox and rack 20 servers I'll go home and be keen for a workout. The days I go home after racking 5 but configuring different types of systems for 5 hrs straight in a hostile environment, I'm absolutely depleted and can barely get off the couch lol
Welcome to IT! Imagine doing system maintenance during business hours and having 5000 unproductive users. There would be total uproar. Then imagine having the audacity to ask for weekend overtime while "you're giving yourself for work." Corporate can get fucked.
Def this. I'm in IT projects and have the need to do additional work most nights during the week. Mentally it drags on you eventually just like excessive physicality. There are definitely roles where you just clock on, do some stuff, clock off though.
Culture makes or breaks a place. You can work in the best “stats” company - in terms of product, output, share price etc, but if the culture is rancid that will break it. Also, just because something isn’t physical work doesn’t mean people are not being harassed, bullied, gaslit, oppressed and treated like shit just because it’s a corporate setting. Corporate doesn’t mean better behaved/morals/ethics.
Yeah the corporate world is disgusting and everything is couched in friendly passive aggressive banter as well. Not to mention you're always expected to jump when asked, but it's because of poor management. I have worked in more physical work and it's also degrading, but I did manage to clock out. Both suck for different reasons.
Agreed. If you’re lucky to find a place where the culture is good then that often makes it much easier to deal with other drama.
>physical work doesn’t mean people are not being harassed, bullied, gaslit, oppressed and treated like shit just because it’s a corporate setting. Corporate doesn’t mean better behaved/morals/ethics. Of course not; but all of those things can occur on on-site manual labour roles as well so they bear that burden on top of risk of injuries that occur from incidences (fractures etc) or degenerative conditions on top of being exposed to weather and industrial noise. In the office you only really deal with lower back pain, postural problems and carpal tunnel
and backstabbers. it happened to me.
You’re also spending the majority of your life in a very artificial and sterile environment where you cannot be yourself. Overtime that chips away at you. Also you’re undervaluing the toll that the incredibly long hours, sedentary lifestyle and stress place on your physical and mental health.
This comment 🙌🏻 The part about not being able to be yourself, or having to be a very repressed, restrained version of yourself, does indeed chip away at you slowly… I’m quite reserved in the workplace but pretty outgoing outside of it. It kills me a lot that I can’t be my true self, but maybe we all have a “work” self.
I love my corporate career. I get paid a metric fuck-ton. I go into the office once in a while, and when I do there is free coffee. Because I have a select skillset my boss is all about making me "happy". Tomorrow, I will stop working around 4ish and I don't need permission or notify someone. All I need to do in return is Deliver, constantly! Put up with HR/Corp bullshit And be on call 24/7/365. I am very happy with the deal I have.
I’ve been white collar my whole life. Every so often I take on a large-ish project around the house and that’s enough of a reminder for me why I love my corporate white collar job. I’m painting my house at the moment and it’s a pain in the ass even when I only choose to pain on cooler days and stop when I feel like it.
I have a friend who is a Diesel Mechanic/Fabricator/other crazy stuff I do not understand. He can't fix his computer (I do that for him), but if you give him something mechanical or to build something, he is a bloody genius. I have seen him spend a minute looking at a custom trailer and reproduce it over the weekend. I am in awe of what he does. But, I still love my corporate job and I do not have the skills he has, at all.
Yea I’m not at all shitting on the skills or motivations of blue collar workers, I’m simply stating it’s not for me.
I'm an IT architect. I get paid north of 300. I just finished building a 2 story house solo, without power tools (I used a battery drill I guess). On balance I like both equally but... When I'm out there hanging gutters or building a crane to hoist home made trusses I don't think about work. When I'm at work I think about building. Building a whole 2 story house was a lot easier than I expected. The only part as hard as I expected it to be was doing the mathematics on stairwells and harder than I expected was getting doors to close properly in all weather conditions. I think building a house is a better challenge (for me) than relocating a whole datacentre while doing opportunistic cloud upgrades.
Yeah I’m not cut out for it
I just don’t enjoy it.
Care to elaborate on what is that select skill set is?
>Care to elaborate on what is that select skill set is? Have you seen the movie Taken?
Have you seen the movie Dodgeball?
Have you seen the movie Tooth Fairy?
Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
I wish. But I will never be that awesome.
I mean it's probably on Stan. You don't have to be awesome to see it.
You ain't leaving at 4pm if you have to be on call 24-7
Is your statement still true if you're on call 24-7 but only get called once a quarter or something? Or you get a call every couple of days but the issue can be resolved within 2min on the phone?
I presume the OP works for a company called “Corporate” and thinks all companies are part of it. I’ve experienced good, bad and in-between companies but they are certainly not all good (let alone great). Of course, it does come down to people and companies may also go through phases as the people and their degree of influence changes.
I’ve worked on both sides of blue and white collar and I’d never return to corporate ever. Sure I’m doing physical work now, but I stay fit, I’m outside and don’t have to deal with random office bullshit. When I want to slow down, I can always transition to semi office work in supervision and save my body. Or I can branch out on my own. Sure if I work mining and work 7:7, I’m still doing the same amount of hours but I get that whole week at home as full days to just do whatever I want, I prefer that lifestyle than an hour or two to myself each day after commute. The best part? When my day ends, it ends. No texts, no emails, no team building at a bowling alley. I fully clock off and have proper work life balance.
you say that now till your been doing physical work for nearly a decade with busted up ligaments. im not concreter or labourer by any stretch and even i have a cooked up shoulder from my work. id love a nice 9-5 office job
It really depends on what you’re doing though as blue collar work and the work culture. but also, if you’ve been doing it a decade plus, there’s so many roles you can transition to quite easily. WHS, Trainer & Assessor, supervisor. If you want the change, it’s a simple Cert IV and you’re away
Literally just did team building at a bowling alley, FML.
100%. I left the finance world about 7 years ago, retrained as an exploration geologist and have zero regrets beyond not doing it sooner. My commute is 2 minutes, I get free food and drink, utilities + vehicle + fuel paid for 6-8 months of the year, the work doesn’t feel like work and never follows me home, always refreshed and ready to go back to work after 7 or 14 days off.
My day also ends when I log off, but seems like it’s not the case for everybody
Yours sounds exceptionally rare. In all my white collar work across different industries and companies, you could never fully clock off at 5:30. Someone would contact you, you’d get an email, you’d get pressured for unpaid overtime. I think you’ve got a really good gig and would stick with it if you enjoy it and actually do get that balance
I went on holiday overseas once, many years back, and my work were insisting on a phone number I could be contacted on in case of an emergency. My Aussie mobile wasn't going to work there. Roaming would've been too expensive so screw that. So I just gave them the number of a family member who doesn't speak English lol. They never did have to call because there wasn't going to be any emergency, but it would have been funny if they did.
This is very true. In my experience you need to be in a select few subsections of tech, in an org big enough to champion work life balance, then be in a team with managers who champion work life balance. The conditional probability of this across most corporate companies would be quite low
>Someone would contact you, you’d get an email, you’d get pressured for unpaid overtime. It's called wage theft, and it's a crime If only there was a judicial system to enforce it, and to put the criminals behind bars.
It is not that simple. If i was paid under an hourly rate determined by a federal award, i might make 30-35 dollars an hour and get overtime for every hour worked. Instead, I'm paid an annualised salary that is the equivalent of more than $100 an hour and that compensates me for additional work that may be required from time to time. (not counting a bonus of more than $30K each year. This extra work usually equates to around 1.5 hours a day, max 2. I also do not work a solid 8 hour day, i have plenty of down time from 9am to 5pm when ever i choose and can go for a long lunch or an appointment in office hours whenever i want. I feel it all evens out much more to my advantage and as such, I dont think working 2 extra hours from 9pm to 11pm is wage theft... it is doing mny job.
Hopefully the Right to Disconnect laws will at least change the culture of expecting to be available 24/7...
> Someone would contact you Why are you answering work calls past 5:30? Let them go to voice-mail > you’d get an email Why are you looking at your work email past 5:30?
Ok so we have someone who’s chugging the HR kool-aid. No one SHOULD be calling me past 5:30, or blowing up my phone with texts. No one SHOULD be spamming me with emails. You say “ignore it” but completely gloss over those same people and leadership putting that pressure on you to respond and be a “team player”, other pressures in the workplace and attitudes against you for doing that. It’s easy to say ignore it, but just remember if times get tough, you’re first to get the sack and the first to be looked over for any sort of promotion or kick back.
How old and how far into your career are you?
40ish and 12 years
I know a lady who worked in HR and would answer emails as late as 11pm because she felt like she had to. She burned herself out after a few years so she decided to just turn the notifications off at 5:30 every day expecting that the company will fall apart. You know what happened? Absolutely nothing. No one noticed, not even her direct supervisor. People overestimate how important they are and put themselves under pressure that only exists in their head.
Depends what role you’re in. I had one that was great pay for not much work. Then I got offered a ‘better’ role for more money and better benefits. Unfortunately, I traded in my soul. I no longer have any time for myself and there’s no clocking out at 5 if the work isn’t done. Plot twist, the work is never done. I’m so exhausted by the end of the day that all I can do is maybe microwave some dinner, watch an hour of TV before taking myself to bed only for it all to begin again. I’ve lost my friends because I was no longer interested in seeing them. I have no time to take care of my household chores. Nothing brings me joy as I’m stuck in this corporate prison. “Just quit” people say… but in this economy to give up $90k a year isn’t easy to do, when a lot of ‘easier’ jobs are barely paying half that. There is so much pressure and I can’t just leave, even though the job is destroying my well-being. You’ve found a great company and a role that fits you. Congratulations. This is not everyone’s experience.
True, I’m currently actively avoiding “taking the next step” right now because I like my current balance
Keep it. For the love of all things good, KEEP IT! Genuinely lol unless you’re offered a monumental raise for not that much more effort, hold on to that balance. It doesn’t get any better than what you have.
Thank you. I hope you can figure out a way to make your current situation work better for you!
I appreciate the tempered perspective. While corporate gigs do have their perks and the pay can indeed be comfortable, there's a subtle trade happening – it's not just time for money, but often, potential for security. This is the siren song of the corporate world: it quietly seduces one into a velvet-lined rut. The longer you're in, the more golden the handcuffs, and the harder it is to leave for fear of the unknown and the financial lifestyle shift. There’s a philosophical cost, too. It’s not that ‘fake work’ doesn't still need to be done (pixels on screen make money move, no matter how artificial either concept is) or that it doesn’t require skill (after all, we often dedicate great time to learning these skillsets) – it’s that in the endless cycle of meetings and memos, one might miss the richness of life’s tapestry and the natural presence that comes with grounding oneself and actually touching grass. The corporate grind can lead to a kind of waking sleep, where days blend into one another, and the societal push for enlightenment and self-realisation is dulled to a background hum. It's a Faustian bargain where the comfort of the present may cloud the promise of what could be. There is a great deal of polarity occurring in the corporate sphere, meaning one oft finds themselves forcing alignment with egos not akin to their own and thus adopting a life path seemingly thrust upon them. This is only amplified where time for independent meditative practice is restricted due to the demands of work prevailing. While the corporate world continues to operate under a veil of fakery and extracting energy for profit, it is unlikely that many will find alignment with these roles and, therefore, these kinds of complaints will continue.
This describes it perfectly and is so eloquently written.
Thank you. It has taken me a long time to find the path to truth, and it remains a constant effort to catch myself slipping back into the ego. It is also apparent, yet immensely difficult to accept, that one can not simply espouse or explain the esoteric - that is a journey each must conduct of their own accord. This is quite challenging to accept in a world where we shroud the simplicity of presence with constant distraction, meaning less accept the role of the observer due to a constant need for presence of mind.
Well written. That veil of fakery is what irks many of us from the moment that the 'original owners' speech is uttered. Anyone who cares about truth has a little stomach churn or revulsion when our brethren are so easily cowed in to willful obedience and acquiescence. What's extraordinary in my eyes is how people defend these types of activities willfully and without and form of rational thought. Defensive mental reflexes to protect the job you hate. The philosophical cost however is only born by those who have developed intrinsic values. Those who receive their values extrinsically can only get a detached sense that something is off as they lack the objective ethics. For these people everything is relativism. It's hard to push back when you stand on mud and have no direction. Your observation is a constant source of frustration for me because most of the 'problems' are manageable by having the force of character to limit the impact of others thoughts on your own mind. So few people push back. Their problems are a grid, hey build up personal debts, need salaries to pay the debt 'feel' they can't get elsewhere, put up with crap because they 'cant' leave, enable psychopathic managers with acquiescing to unfair conditions and never break out of the grinding situations. Even if they change jobs, the same issue is back at hand again. Reaching a point of self actualization is virtually impossible given the constraints most employees put on themselves. People like me who say "no" are selfish and just make more work they will take on. People, don't take on debt. Do the shadow work and learn to find enjoyment in the most trivial of tasks, and from time to time step back and consider yourself from the outside. Analyze the self. If you feel lost just remember none of this matters anyway. Enjoy yourself, and learn to enjoy all the parts.
Yep this is it, a slow realisation that nothing you are doing aligns to your values and who you want to be as a person but finding yourself stuck with no way out. Not just a corporate problem but a capitalism problem more broadly. Is this office work that has no real impact on anything and keeps us hunched over screens all day really what we’ve fought to become? I feel like my job continually stops me from living the life I want but there is also no alternative given cost of living, lack of safety net etc etc.
This is beautifully written - it sounds similar to the anti corporate tik tok Australian guy
Wow. Do you write in your day job? Love your writing style.
You’re in auscorp, so you’re gonna see complaints about corporate life. Guess what you’d see in r/plumbing, r/chefs, r/construction, r/healthcare, etc. Seeing complaints is not a function of the type of role, it’s a function of having a job - whatever industry it’s in.
Very good point
Ahh the ole never complain because someone else has it worse mentality.
Complaint validity is a relative thing. Does anyone care about your selection of cost codes for you timesheet not being sufficient to cover the team meeting? Nope. The kid I sat next to in high school was a Cambodian refugee. Be was used as an ashtray and footstool after trying to escape the country at 7yo following his whole family getting murdered. They were killed because they had bad eyesight. They look like "intellectuals" and the Khmer Rouche killed them all. IN reality his dad was a taxi driver and needed classes to drive a car. When the 'ashtray\\stool' unit moved out they discarded the furniture by tying a plastic bag over his head, and hogtied him with electrical wire and tossed him on an ant nest. Eventually he made it in to Thailand where the refugee came was shelled with artillery. Whenever I'm feeling sorry for myself over something stupid I remember that he dealt all this as a 7yo and I'm an adult. Whatever it is, I can handle it if I can still stand.
Corporate life is the cruisiest, best remunerated work I've done in my life. It doesn't have the same personal satisfaction that my previous work had, but it has allowed me to gain other things external to work that DO give me great amounts of satisfaction such as paying off our home faster due to the higher wage. Any time I'm inclined to have a little bit of an internal sook about something that I'm mildly irritated by I remind myself of the actual hardships of my previous job and ask myself one simple question. "Did you die though?" lmao.
Yeah I agree. I don’t really need or want my job to be the type of job that changes the world. I want my job to have very little impact on my life tbh. I just want to hang with my family and take nice holidays. Everybody is having strong opinions on that POV though it seems so seems like my approach is far from universal
Some people need to touch grass and work a labour job for a week. For most complaining, theyve worked corporate their whole life snd dont know anything else. That being said, corporate stress is 100% mental and sometimes that fatigue can eat away at people that dont know how to switch off.
I used to be a tradie and now have a corporate job. It honestly baffles me when people complain at my current job. I almost feel guilty getting paid for this job, it is so freaking easy.
Would you mind sharing some details about what you’re doing now? Did you get a corporate job in the trade field?
I have an account management job with a supplier in my industry. I’m not going more in depth as it’s quite a niche industry. It honestly doesn’t feel like work, I just chat to people and help them with various issues and it isn’t hard to sell as the product sells itself. I realise corporate can be a lot more difficult than this but it’s pretty sweet, there are so many freebies and perks too.
Done both. Labour is easier, but I know it isn't physically sustainable, and it caps out quicker.
I having worked both, I would say some people need to touch grass and try my corporate job for a week. They’d be running back to labouring… Both can have their challenges.
>Some people need to touch grass and work a labour job for a week. I've done both. Both can be shit for different reasons. The corporate jargon is like a needle in my ears, which makes that option particularly unpleasant.
I feel you can only have a balanced opinion on it if you have worked both sides
I have and trades are soft AF.
I’ve worked for a small family owned company and currently work for an ASX listed company and truth be told - there’s notable differences but working for an ASX company has so much more advantages to it IF you know how to differentiate life from work. I.e get in, get out.
Also increased my pay by 30-40% whilst the scope of work is arguably the same.
A lot of people on here have zero grip over their emotions, awful stress management and a categorical lack of ability to draw lines. Or, you’re in IB/ consulting in which case, you (knowingly) signed away your life to be harvesting dosh at your future buyside job. Seriously, @ the people doing this to themselves for 100k/ year at some gooby team at a B4, reevaluate.
You do you. I hate corporate and would sooner sleep under a bridge than circle back (talk) to fake fucks all day long. I don't even look at corporate jobs as real or options 😂
So are you are saying you are unemployed by choice.?
I am serving the Australian people and assisting with the control of inflation.
My wife and I both work in corporates. It got worse than what you said with all the He\\Him's and acknowledgements to country, My wifes company has male trans dudes who still pee standing up in the womens toilets and she has to be 'accepting' when he gets a boner in a tight mini skirt that even for a 22yo girls would be not appropriate office attire. ...but... together we're closing in on a 600k yearly income. and mostly work form home Whatever you do now you can have. For this price I can take a lot of pointless BS.
Because corp-cunts are for the most part so far away from reality that they would forget to shit if the coke didnt force them too. Fake, entitled leeches that would take a selfie with your burning house, paste #blessed on it and go have a meltdown because someone was smoking on the street. I day dream about the end of the world because they are the fuckers I would hunt and eat first and its one of the only times they bring me happiness.
Lol, I see you feel strongly. Hope I don’t cross your path in the apocalypse
Why? Im nice, im a little unhinged but im nice enough. Just ditch the suit when the bombs drop and we can be friends and eat people together.
Oh I just thought you might hunt and eat me because I’m corporate which I wasn’t keen for. But I’m happy to ditch the suit asap ha
I don't hate it, but offshoring some roles and return to office pissed me off.
Fair
True but. It can get toxic, political and extremely inefficient plus a lot of sociopaths make it to senior management by being as I described which makes a lot of your life not so fun. I think that’s where a lot of the negativity comes from.
Read *Bullshit Jobs* by the late/great David Graeber.
I have, my job is very much a bullshit job in certain respects. I find that quite freeing, but seems it can be a source of negative feeling for some.
I agree with you, but I see TONS of people that have managed to build toxic relationships with their careers. Most of them REALLY don't want to take responsibility for being like this however. Some example I have see in the past few years: 4 \* Instances of project managers working themselves to the point of failure. One had a heart attack mid project... THEN RETURNED TO WORK. Another had his wife tell him he would get divorced if he didn't scale back. At no point did any of them consider that they needed help. The worst one was a guy I worked with at Macquarie. He sat across from me, before he just stopped coming in to work. Yeah, he died due to a brain bleed. 3 \* instances of Junior staff (mixed roles) trying to get noticed doing everything that was asked of them, then pitching between depression anxiety and elation. hey worked 12 hour days, made up reasons for why they 'had to'. They all could have moderated their workloads but had a really messed up ability to speak up for themselves, estimate effort better based on their skills and experience 1 \* Instance of a Senior network engineer doing Architecture level design work and ALSO doing changes and ALSO handling all the incidents and ALSO PM'ing all the vendor engagements. He was a one man network team. I'm frankly surprised this guys body didn't shut down. I managed to have a chat with him about this and he resigned on my advice to take on a role doing pure Network Architecture. \*\*\* In contrast * I stop work at right around 5pm 99% f the time and don't log on after hours. I also don't start till 9am 99% of he time. * I go to the gym at lunchtime. You have no idea how calm the afternoon is when you hit a PR at lunch. * I talk to my stakeholders a lot. I propose deadlines that are 200% my anticipated effort, sometimes 400% if I had never done it before. A kind manager in the 90's taught me to do this and his rule of thumb has been spot on. Since I 'know' (estimate) my effort expenditure is 25%, I go in to each task calm. * I focus on process improvement a lot, automation, assistance tools. * When I have problems that blow up my 200/400% estimate it's gotta be a big problem. That'll be easily articulated to stakeholders and hence understandable. Then I just reset expectation. If that doesn't work for them not it's on them to assign more people. 90% of the time they accept the new date. * If an employment situation gets toxic I have a motto. "I don't try to change the company, I just pick a new one". I've worked as an Systems Engineer, Software Developer, departmental manager and right across the IT Architecture space. My very unpopular opinion is that the people with toxic work life balance are bringing it on themselves. The #1 cause is the inability to speak to managers\\stakeholders and represent yourself. How do you get more confidence? Hit the gym and hit seek for other options and learn how to say no. Power gives options.
Good for you mate, my company put 6am and 10pm meetings in my calendar.
I don’t think you understand the toll that stress and mental pressure takes on people, including on the body. “Office people don’t work hard” is the dumbest logic.
It’s all just so inefficient! The meeting Les that could be an email. Then all the emails and stupid workflow processes. The running circles. The tick a box approach to everything. Honestly if we lost half of that we should all be working a 3-4 day week.
True but then they’d want to pay us less. I’m pretty happy to just push meaningless emails around if that’s what my boss wants provided I’m paid well for the privilege lol.
Exactly. I find it annoying when I have to redo something because my manager didn't give me the full details the first time around but at the end of the day who cares, as long as they pay me I'll redo it 15 times if they want.
>Most of the time there’s flexibility compared to most other roles and it enables you to spend time with your family. I wish. I would murder (not literally) if I could get a job closer to home... or at least be allowed to WFH 2 days a week. I would even prefer to be part time and have Wed's off. 4 hours travel a day does not give me a lot of time with the family.
Dude I hope you can find a role like that soon, it is a great life
because we have to work to make a living. 99.999999% of people in corporate life would retire tomorrow if they win the lotto. everyone would retire....from the junior intern to the ceo. if I win the lotto, im buying a one way ticket to Fiji, Maldives and Hawaii! I'll chase the sunshine. happy Easter!
Maybe because most of your life is spent at work, getting ready for work, or commuting to work?
I have such contempt for corporate for a number of reasons. #1 being they think they know my job having never done a single minute of it but because they have a little bit of fucking paper they can tell me who had been doing it for nearly 20 years how to do it. #2 the vast majority arw cancerous people who think nothing of stepping on others to further their own careers. Yes there are some on bluecollar work. But I ersonallt notice more white collar people will think nothing of it. #3 bonuses to screw others out of pay raises. If you participate in this. The biggest f**k you on earth. #4 under the desk deals, kickbacks and all that.. the ones in the higher up positions of power always seem to have some side angle dodgy bros dealings going on
I've done both physical and corporate and the mental load of corporate is so much worse. Physical jobs yes they are physically demanding but once your fit if you sit down for an hour your usually recovered and ready to go, but you can't just... put down the mental load of corporate. I've been unable to sleep before thinking about how to solve the current problem im working on. And projects don't just go away, they pop up months later for fixes or updates. Ugh im so over it. Plus we are majorly understaffed right now. Half the team is burning out.
Because it can be psychologically abusive and the laws don't really protect against it. Narc boss? Psycho team mate with daddy issues? Your only defense is leaving.
Unable to understand how privileged you are to have a tolerable employer huh?
what's the name of that company? perhaps we can all go to work there.
I think you're missing the point. Most corporate jobs are generally fine. It's not the job we hate. It's the PEOPLE. The Management etc. These people are insanely mentally exhausting. And will bad managers it can utterly destroy your mental health completely. Corps can do a lot more for you, they just don't. If you're fine with the bare minimum then thats on you, the rest of us are not.
While you may have a comfortable position at your company, which pays the bills and doesn’t cause a lot of stress, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a secretary barely scrapping by, or even a direct peer who has to do a nearly 3 hour commute both ways. The corporate work life works for less people then it does work in favour for. It being “easier” then labour work (which I do personally) is hardly a reason for people not to complain about the hardships of their work. Also, intelligence is not a marker of how successful you will be in a corporate setting, surely most of you have had experiences with frankly dumb managers and upper company staff. It also implies that labour driven work is for unintelligent people, which I hope you don’t think. I’m sure electricians would surely disagree. People saying stuff like “it’s not that bad” or “there’s no reason to complain” are akin to the people saying the same thing prior to the establishment of the eight hour work day or maternity leave. There is no good reason to put down fellow workers for complaining when their complaints may win you further rights that will undoubtedly make your life better as well, even if the issue is not even close to a priority for you.
Totally agree. Sometimes I feel worn down by it and then I remember when I worked 10 hours shifts in retail with a 30min lunch break. I think its useful to ground your perspective once in a while
Corporate is the fucking best. After years in retail, hospo and trades, I still can't believe how lucky I am to be working in corporate now. The shit people complain about is wild. Oh no, this 30 minute meeting could have been an email?! Poor you! ;_; You brave corporate soldier! It's some weird anti-work vibe as well. "I'm not valuable as a person to my company." Like, no shit. You're a tiny cog in a huge company most likely. None of us are valuable. It's like they want their bosses to pat their head and rub their tummy and tell them how special and wonderful they are. I'm just happy making money doing work that isn't breaking my body or dealing with customers.
I can understand this because my father was an immigrant that worked like a dog and seeing him grow up working as a labourer really turned me off physical work. Any Aussie that comes from an immigrant background loves the corporate gig because as stated in your post they appreciate the perks and flexibility. Most other Aussies are whingy lazy fucks.
>Most other Aussies are whingy lazy fucks. Depends on the place they work really... as someone else said.. culture makes or breaks a place. I am Gen X... I spend 4 hours a day travel. 1 bad night sleep and I am rekt for the entire week. I still turn up and get my work done. There are people here that are >23 that live 30mins away and complain that they cannot WFH 5 days a week :| They talk about quitting, which is entirely an option, but I let them know that it is pretty relaxed here in the office for the most part and they could definitely end up at an entirely worse place to work. Do not think they believe me.
Absolutely. I'd like to think I've made my immigrant parents proud working in corporate when they've had to work hard their whole life in various roles over the years. Australia is the lucky country but most Aussies wouldn't know it.
We were the lucky country, our living standards are in a decline now
Not just in Oz, everywhere the noose is getting a bit tighter to get by day by day for the lucky, yet shrinking, middle class. Rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer, and average are getting poorer.
Really depends on where you work and who you work with. Sounds like you're at a good place. Maybe try and find some understanding that some people are in very toxic environments, listen to other people's experiences rather than deciding because yours is good they have nothing to complain about.
So much also depends on luck and timing. You might be the lucky one who ended up in a good team with a good leader and team balance. More often than not, people end up on teams that are poorly configured with substandard managers and end up on a downward trajectory and that has a snowball effect in a career. I’ve seen so many teams that are in engagements that are just destined to fail because someone has to do the work to bring in the $$.
If you think it is easier in corporate when expectations are 50 hours a week minimum plus overtime, I think we have different views on easier
Lol. Every career corporate in senior roles I've ever met battles: -Hypertension -Cardiac issues - Posture issues - Fatigue/burnout You might thing the posture issues isn't serious, but trust me, having hip and joint issues isn't fun. People in manual services rail against corporates as living a life of luxury and low productivity, but the truth is we all work out guts out. Have to out up with mostly shitty behaviour from low mid tier employees, and stupid ideas from directors. I don't know anyone who works in corporate offices that isn't completely overworked.
The thing is that both sides are right. It depends on the job, the person and their own experiences. I totally get why people hate corporate jobs, but I can see why people like them as well. I don't necessarily agree with your thread invalidating their experiences though.
I see you’ve never worked in IT before
I would have agreed until recently. I worked with someone who triggered my repressed (and very much forgotten) childhood trauma and I ended up with anxiety disorder and PTSD. Feels kinda snowflakey for a Gen Xer, but apparently it’s a thing. Some people are immensely vulnerable to other people’s BS without even knowing it, and that’s why I think there’s just as much risk of injury in corporate as trades - just more likely to be psychological than physical.
There are people in my industry who make double what I do, but they only work and sleep, no social or family life. I don't want to work that hard at my age, been there done that in the past, not anymore. A smaller company suits me fine now.
I work for a large corporation in a technical role which is an aussie household name. My company worked me 60+ hours a week for 3 months on a 37.5 plus "reasonable extra hours". I developed a serious, then chronic back injury. It destroyed me, I tried to "work through it" at their advice, eventually got the right help both physically, mentally and legally, put in work cover claim. They contested it tooth and nail and made many false and misleading legal representstions to me. In the end I was lucky to have friends in the right type of legal who helped. Eventually took them to court and got fully paid out. They argued the whole time it was that id hurt myself running". Fuck Corp. The chew you up and spit you out. Treat it like it is, the mercenary part of your careerxgood money, but you owe them nothing. Take care of yourself.
dear everyone, look up the song my friends by groove armada on YouTube. happy Easter!
Um, ok? I also work corporate & it’s good for me but i’m not about to be telling randos what’s good for them.
Maybe we aren't naturally meant to sit at a desk all day not using our brains in the real world and not getting any physical movement. Maybe when you do this for 10+ hours a day and then go to the gym and eat poorly and have 6 hours sleep you only get 3 hours to yourself and that's barely time to do anything for YOU that is meaningful. Nobody disagrees that corporate isn't lucrative and easy and low impact on our bodies. But that doesn't make it good.
I love my job. Id do it for free if I was loaded, although only a few days a week. Ive worked manual labor for years growing up on a block and there's no words to describe how much better this is.
Culture is where it is all! I have worked in corporate for 23 years now across the globe and though my work intensity varied as per roles…but most times , work got done in usual office hours. In some places, it was considered being a great employee if you stayed back and worked extra hours. So people would waste time during the day and work long hours later coz they knew that is what the organisation promoted. In other places, it was considered inefficient if you worked long hours ..no one did it so everyone was logged off by 5pm. Currently I’m lucky to be in a place which has this culture. I’m working 9-5 with barely a break but tbh I prefer this as long as I am back home after 5pm. I worked at 2 of the big 4 and it was non stop 24x7 work hours - weekends included. The culture always flows down from seniors and since they never switched off, neither did anyone else. I left both places as quick as I can and never want to work with them again.
I have been in white collar large corporates 95% of my working life (as opposed to public service) and agree that the mental stress can kill you. I used to de-stress with a glass of wine, which became a bottle... then stopped when I had to buy bigger pants. Switched to going to the gym every weekday morning, which completely de-stresses me (as well as helping me get back into the smaller pants). Without the daily endorphins release, I would have been a basket case. I would add that I had one stint in public service and freaking HATED it compared to Corporate. Corporate politics is a breeze in comparison.
Theres low hate for corporate only jealously for corporate
I worked in a place with great culture, but it has slipped over the past two years. It is not a great feeling to come to work. We have grown too big and don't have the support. We have grads and others coming in with very little support from leadership. You either need to give them support yourself or have to redo their work. At the end of the day, you feel like you haven't achieved much and just feel so frustrated.
As someone who done both corporate job under a terrible manager is the worst thing ever and corporate job under a good manager is the worst. It all comes down to management, the job itself is fine. Problem is in corporate you can have a lot more incompetent managers since technical skills is not what gets you up unlike most trades.
> not that bad This is something you could only possibly say if you do not understand how much better a job can actually be. I make probably about 10% less than I would at corporate but set my own hours and direct my own projects. I’m a contractor so my clients kinda suck up to me rather than there being any pressure for me to do that to some manager or boss. I keep a very irregular, flexible schedule, start at about 1030 every day, am pretty autonomous and work a 3.5 day week. The idea of going back to some uptight corporate environment is just insane to me. Nothing in the world could convince me to go back to that dystopian shit, never gonna happen.
I had a job once (white collar). I was called on Sunday night at 10.30pm .. the day before I started that job from my new boss who was also the owner of the company . I didn’t answer because it was completely unreasonable that I should and didn’t want to lose sleep. He then used that against me the next day and claimed I already had a bad attitude because I was “unreliable”. I enjoyed quitting that role within probation . He loved doing psychology tests like that on everyone. Fuck that cunt. Turned out nearly everyone else there was on a visa and just had to accept this crap (including pay decreases!)
Corp jobs can change worlds!
Different jobs are challenging in different ways.. Someone who's putting their body on the line in another job might find the idea of meetings and presentations in a corporate environment terrifying, whereas you might not mind that but would find their job unbearable. I do agree to an extent though, some of the "problems" people have in corporate environments or what I see on ausfinance kind of make roll my eyes
No one really hates it. Its just people complaining about anything because thats just what people do.
Yeah I’m with you, like who cares if it’s fulfilling or whatever I get paid to talk shit and write some emails and presos. Sure, I complain about it like everyone else, sometimes I’ll even daydream about quitting and opening a fish n chip shop. But then I remember working 8hr hospo shifts standing all day long, compared to lying on my couch attending meetings
I spent the first 7 or 8 years of my working life as an electrician in construction. Yes, it is physically taxing, but it keeps you fit. Mentally, it is not comparable to my corporate life. Being a sparky I had basically zero stress. I got paid by hour, paid overtime, the only responsibility I had to was to do my work well. Come knock off time, I was able to entirely forget about work and go home. You just don't get to do that in most corporate jobs.
It depends so much on your seniority and role and the organisation. Want to do accounts payable, earning $60k. Sure.. Life’s grand. Want to be the head of People during a major restructure with mass layoffs? Life’s not so grand.
Work from home 4 days a week, start at 6am, finish at 2:30. Subsidised food in the office cafe when I go in and under an EBA so all sorts of pay rises a year.
Clearly you don’t work in audit 🥱
Idk it’s not for everyone, some people are too hyperactive for desk work and find corporate environments very stifling and unstimulating. If I could have made my corporate job work I would have cause on paper it’s such an easy lifestyle but my brain doesn’t work that way
Toxic corporate cultures are the killer. If you can't perform your role due to lack of leadership and poor decisions that impact delivery or lack of management support then your corporate life is the worst. Many corporate organisations have people in managing roles that can't or don't manage effectively.
Well reddit attracts a higher percentage of losers. So lots more bitching about life and work.
I feel like a lot of people on reddit have carved out their niche at work as the guy who never logs off, is always contactable, never goes to drinks, has no friends at work, etc... They have basically carved out a niche as the person who gets shafted...and then they complain that they hate corporate.
Yeah good point everyone should do corporate jobs
Lol you're one of the lucky ones. Congratulations, I suffered a lot working corporate at one of the big company supporting C-Suites.
It's not that bad. But... When managers are paid to extract as much productivity out of every resource possible, that behaviour gets rewarded very, very well. It incentivizes dubious behaviour.
You must work in marketing or sustainability or similar
>If you are intelligent, your skills will be valued Oh, you sweet summer child
nah i'd rather whinge
Don’t underestimate how much stress impacts your health. Some people in corporate don’t GAF and others take the stresses and unreasonable demands home with them and don’t sleep well at night. I totally agree that someone working a physical job works very hard, but they can click off and sleep like a baby.
I suppose I am one of the people who don’t GAF. I used to take it all on, but I don’t anymore. I suspect some of that comes with experience maybe
Thanks for this. We should put this over here in the parking lot, build some ideas and circle back to it later.
Ive watched office space too many times.
Corporate in boutique management consultancy, many areas of banking/finance, certain IT projects...yes, money is amazing. And you will need it for the medical bills related to stress, heart conditions in middle age, anxiety etc. Sure, this is not everyone's experience, but there are many people who leave the sectors early, burned out mentally and in some case physically.
End of the day 'not working hard' unless your managing to sneak under the radar, the revenue you are creating is paying for several levels of management, offices etc before your share is allocated to you as salary.... sure job security, alright pay so the same job for yourself, probably get double the income, and have complete flexibility not the sudo flexibility corporate pretends to give you 🤷♂️
Its mentally toxic.if you haven't been in it, you won't ever understand how much damage it can do.
Because there is always someone getting offended under the guise of cultural diversity and outright weaponising the 'R' word to take down someone they don't like. Yeah sure it's like every other company but the idealist wants to push /force this sort of F\* BS then expect the backlash and hate. Oh some "coloured" female/male tries to flirt, they don't reciprocate oh target him/her. F\* disgraceful.
I like how the only alternative you've posed is body destroying work, like there's no other options out there... You also make it out that there's no risk involved in corp roles - Across my closest friends in corp roles and myself, 3 in 10 have been made redundant at some point in their career. The risks of corporate exponentially increases as you age, people seem to just ignore that. I'm guessing you also haven't hit the heights where a corp role becomes life sucking, I'm yet to find a GM at a large corp that doesn't work every evening and weekend Culture can be a make or break for the majority for sure, it becomes irrelevant when you start earning $300k+, at that point it defaults to life = work. My friends who spent their early years pursuing small business are the ones now with the greatest time balance and highest earnings per hour worked out of any of the people I know. One of my closest works 12-15 hours a week and pulls more than $1m a year - he runs a highly successful service business, he hasn't delivered the service himself for years, just leads the team, schedules etc. I'm at far greater risk of losing my income than he is, despite me sitting in the what people think is a 'safe' corp exec role - couple of bad outcomes and my neck will be chopped! That friend definitely has it (life) figured out, anyone thinking they have something anywhere near similar in corp is delusional in my books!
Work for my boss at one the big4 and you will change your tune before you can say 'corporate'
Stale and promotes a cookie cutter type of person. I think I’m special and want to be Tyler Durden.
To be fair, all of those people on mine sites change the world on a daily basis. But not for the better.
What do you mean by ‘corporate’?
Couple of things it doesn’t have that are kind of high on the hierarchy of needs Connection to purpose: many Corp workers never see their contribution connect to the companies progress. A lot of us are in “bullshit jobs” which sounds like a dream but after a month you realise you’re following rules for no outcome Bureaucracy: often we realise there is a “better way” for us to achieve of actually make an impact but because Megan in finance says no we can’t… fuck you megan Exploitation: not saying this doesn’t happen in other places but some industries in corporate thrive on taking advantage of the good willed nature of the people who work there. Healthcare corp and NFP are rife with it. No pay, 2 jobs for every staff member no paid overtime and “guys seriously please don’t burn out we care about you” Corporate is bullshit for a good segment and I totally understand their complaints
Climb that ladder, You better hold your tongue, Turn a blind eye…or they’ll take the other one , Kneel and bow !!!! ( lyrics from Made to Parade from Queens of The Stone Age, an incredible song about corporate bullshit )
I just hate working, no matter what it is. I don’t want to be told what to do every day, I don’t want to keep up appearances or be a mature adult. I wanna be free. But I wanna live and eat and not be destitute when I retire so I have to shut up and work. I’ll whinge about it every now and then though cos it helps me to survive it.
I have the type of corporate job that pays high and has the potential to be really stressful. I never take my work outside and clock off at 5 on the dot. I've learnt to simply not care and visibly show it. It pisses the old workers off so much because they think that you have to suffer at work to be successful in the role. Honestly though, turning your emails off at 5, ignoring the pushy clients and declaring openly that you will not work past 5 has worked so well for me.
I guess if a person is amoral it's a non issue so lets say the legal department theres so much moral disengagment anyway then who cares but going against most human values for most people will burn them out .
I’ve worked corporate my whole career and OP doesn’t know the half of it. The main reason there is so much hate for corporate jobs, is that corporations are largely soul sucking vampires that enrich those at the top and fuck everyone else over. The sooner we organise an armed revolt and put all the managers against the wall the better we’ll all be off.