Free from 9 to 5 Chronicles of people and ideas to inspire and achieve freedom from a 9 to 5 job

Don’t want to be a Corporate Sheep

I am more and more unenamored of a job in corporate America. It bugs me that there are so many sheep here. A manager says do this by this deadline and people scramble to meet the deadline. It’s admirable, really, from one perspective, but pathetic from another. Why are you stressing yourself out for? I know you need to keep your job to make money and earn a living, but is it worth sacrificing your dignity and life doing someone else’s bidding for someone else’s gain?

I used to be one of these sheep. I never liked it, but I did it. My upbringing in the Asian tradition of blindly listening to and obeying authority contributed to this. And you could say I’m still a corporate sheep and I wouldn’t argue. But for the first time in my employed life, I have a deadline, but I’m not scrambling. I just plod along everyday doing what I can. I didn’t get any say in when the deadline shoud be; if I miss the deadline, so be it. So some bigwig won’t get as big a bonus, big deal. So a product gets delayed to market, what do I care? So profits are possibly lost; I don’t see any of the profit anyway, do you think I give a damn? What’s the worst that can happen? I get chewed out, I’ll repent with the proper amount of contrition. They fire me, I’ll work on my own software fulltime for a few months and see how it goes. Or failing that, I can always find another job. It’s not the end of the world. In fact, it may be the beginning of a better one.