Ask HN: How to be a happy corporate cog? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to be a happy corporate cog?

4 pointsvexed_dev6 comments

Hello HN,

Please share your mental frameworks for staying sane in dysfunctional corporate environments. If you're by default thriving in these environments then this is probably not a question for you ;)

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In the decades I've been in this business, I've never figured out how to do this. I suspect it's a temperament thing -- either you have it or you don't.

My solution evolved to becoming very choosy about where I'm willing to work. I am reasonably good at predicting what workplaces will make me miserable and simply don't apply to those. When I've messed up and found myself in one anyway, I haven't been shy about quitting.

The other thing I've found is that pay cannot make up for a bad working environment for me.

Compartmentalize. Your day job du jour is not your life, nor the meaning thereof. And you definitely need multiple other sources of self-esteem and social interaction.

Have Red Lines. All-consuming work weeks, broken promises, inter-personal nastiness, lack of credit, shorted or crappy pay, ways you won't treat other people, lies you won't tell, etc.

Have a Plan B. Whether BigCo crosses one of your Red Lines, or just lays you off, or your job there stops seeming "worth it for now" - do what you can to make sure you won't be SoL for lack of alternatives. (Yes, thinking about and working on a Plan B or few can be one of your positive Compartments.)

Exit Gracefully. Even if you're 100% in the right, angry rants and telling tales are very unclassy. And will help convince a lot of people that you're in the wrong. Or are making shit up. Or that BigCo's HR was smart to dump a hot-tempered liability like you. Privately practice explaining your departure in understated and ever-so-blameless corporate terms. In a neutral, passive voice drone-tones.

Avoid Legal Action. In serious cases, 99% of the people who say or know too much are treated as expendables. If you quit when BigCo was dumping toxic waste into the municipal water supply, and wanted you to sign off on that? Even if kinda pressed, say "I was a bit concerned that a few things had been underbid, so in the future it might become miserably difficult to maintain full regulatory compliance." No hint that you ever knew specific details, let alone of any wrongdoing. Be very aware that big-case lawyers are extremely good at tracking down expendables who know too much, getting them to say too much, then dragging them into court.

It helped me to recognise that every corporation is a dysfunctional chaotic mess in its own way and held together by hope, process, and power. And that through convergence, the chaos occasionally materialises as something of value.

If the corporation is successful, whatever you think is not working is not important enough to stop what is working. Identifying and understanding how the corporation works is the first step, then determine how you can make that work for your own goals is the second. Conversely, establish your goals, and then evaluate if the corporation works towards them.

There are many frameworks/techniques for goal-setting and resolution which may be helpful, and if you can't accomplish that goal within your environment, change environments.

If the money is good, and the job doesn't take all of your time and energy, then you can just ignore the dysfunction and focus on your work. You can use your free time to look for something better, or to work on your own thing if you're ambitious. Being a cog is actually even liberating as cogs are only responsible for a very small part of the whole, so you can just do your part and not worry about the rest.

Is that possible? I have never managed it. After a few tries over many years, I now simply avoid taking corporate jobs.

It depends a lot on your personality, values and the specific ways in which your environment is dysfunctional. I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all framework.

Things I have done:

    Create a bingo card with meaningless management speak, share it with like minded co-workers.  Sit in meeting, ticking off terms as the manager speaks them. Then suddenly one of the cohorts yells "bingo!". Completely wrecks the manager's train of thought.

    Break several petty rules to deliver a KPI-level "win".

    Use neuro-linguistic-programming techniques to flip conversations into the equivalent of "please explain" but indirectly.

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