Office politics. I was a 4.0 student who was given an award by the faculty as best computer science student two years in a row. Despite being talented, extra hard working and driven, I had no idea how to play the game and my career stalled almost immediately. I watched others with weaker skills get promotions and raises because they knew the right people and served on the right committees. Being slightly autistic, I never realized the rules of the game. I quit after 8 years and started my own business, went back as a contractor getting 4x the pay, and it was awesome. There should be a class for people called “sucking up to management and gaming performance reviews.”
Yep, it is mostly apparent in big companies I would say. I could go on and on, but basically your work is so disconnected from the final output that what end up actually “mattering” is a bunch of made-up bullshit. Putting in quality work and improving your product/service does not benefit most of the people you interact with directly, unless of course you’re working on the popular thing that will get people promoted.
Anyways, I also left the corporate world to start my own business. Life is so much easier when all you need to care about is the quality of your work and not political points. I like my hard work to rewards me, and not just some guy spending his days in meetings claiming credit for “his” “initiatives”. Some of those folks would never survive a job that isn’t a mega corp paying them to improv all day in meetings.
Office politics. I was a 4.0 student who was given an award by the faculty as best computer science student two years in a row. Despite being talented, extra hard working and driven, I had no idea how to play the game and my career stalled almost immediately. I watched others with weaker skills get promotions and raises because they knew the right people and served on the right committees. Being slightly autistic, I never realized the rules of the game. I quit after 8 years and started my own business, went back as a contractor getting 4x the pay, and it was awesome. There should be a class for people called “sucking up to management and gaming performance reviews.”
Yep, it is mostly apparent in big companies I would say. I could go on and on, but basically your work is so disconnected from the final output that what end up actually “mattering” is a bunch of made-up bullshit. Putting in quality work and improving your product/service does not benefit most of the people you interact with directly, unless of course you’re working on the popular thing that will get people promoted.
Anyways, I also left the corporate world to start my own business. Life is so much easier when all you need to care about is the quality of your work and not political points. I like my hard work to rewards me, and not just some guy spending his days in meetings claiming credit for “his” “initiatives”. Some of those folks would never survive a job that isn’t a mega corp paying them to improv all day in meetings.