I was a corporate employee and certainly had issues with the politics and the obsession with the latest new management "thing". But on the whole the good experiences far outweigh the bad and those salaries did get my kids through college and fund a comfortable retirement. Now in retirement and just managing my investments I must say that life is even better as an owner - those periodic layoff announcements tend to inflate the stock prices.

Nailed it!

I enjoyed my time climbing the ladder... Stirred to pot the whole way up... Made a lot of friends and a few enemies... Been out 2+ years and still keep in contact with quite a few of my collogues... Dan

Have never worked in a corporate environment in my adult years and feel very blessed for that. Y'all can have it! My now ex best friend of 45 yrs has slaved to that corporate teat and will never get out of middle management. I've watched over the years how it's destroyed his thinking and ability to process info. A couple of years ago, he started wearing skinny jeans and doing bizarre stuff. He also met and married an illegal alien to help her get citizenship. A few weeks ago, he sent me some political propaganda supporting the anti American wave that is taking over and that was that. Haven't talked to him since. It weighs heavy on my mind, yes, but it needs to be. I've worked for my self pretty much all my life and have zero corporate influence as far as work life goes. I've struggled, I've prospered, but at least I haven't sold my soul to a corporate conglomerate. Guess I'm old school and like to think for myself. Interesting how life works. I still 100% believe in this picture.

Medical field is just as bad or worse, 35 yrs of exp.

This ^

This is how I felt when I got out (laid off) 3 months prior to 62 in 2020. Nice severance and unemployment (covid money) for quite a while. Very nice send off, so I can`t gripe. Worked in 2 industries that were totally different but with similarities. The main one was the cream will always rise to the top. Good help will always stand out. HR departments suck wherever you go though.

HR works to protect the company not employees. Worked for a COO and he called them HR pukes. I really only had 1 bad experience with HR. I had to terminate an admin assistant that was just making too many mistakes. She had mental issues and saw a shrink every Wednesday so ADA came into play. It took me 6 months to collect enough evidence to satisfy HR. Every time I thought I had enough they said not yet. One day I dropped a large box on the HR managers desk and said enough?

I am very lucky I suppose. I work in a Co-Op company. We are an electric co-op company, we serve our community, our owners are the members. We have a propane company which I am the CEO of, we have a Fiber technology company providing the best and reliable internet in and around our servicing area. Then our parent company the Electric company is a cheaper price than the standard electric company run by corporate people or owners.

We meet once a year, members come to us an tell us what they want, how we can improve and we take 100% of that to heart and do our best to meet or exceed their request.
Our propane company has one of the lowest prices around, sometime more than $2.00 less per gallon from those national companies. Yes, we can go up in price and still be cheaper but our member have decided that is not the type of company they want. We make money, yes, we pay our employees well, we have great benefits but what we do not have is millions in the bank. We spend what we make and are proud of our relationship with all our customer owned customers.
We have never had a lay off one 1 personal. Our motto is we hire you to not plan on firing you. We train our employees and the company overall is known as the best company in our area to work for. Our pay scale are near the highest around. People remind us just how lucky we are working for the Co-op and wished they could get a foot inside the door as a floor sweeper to just move up in the company.
We give back thousands upon thousands of dollars to our community, for the high school sports, music, education improvements. We give scholarships to those graduates that earn it from our scholarship funds.
We build huge warehouses and sell them for cost to new industry to come and hire the people in our community with good paying jobs.

All in all, the company I am a part of is a caring, giving, concerned group making the lives of our customers better.

The company I worked for was structured as a cooperative for many years. But competition forced us to offer richer deals to our larger members, putting our co-op status at risk with the IRS and losing that tax deduction would have cost way too much to risk. I did enjoy working with the financial nuances of being a co-op.