After having to work with Akamai as a vendor in several positions (it being out of my control to use a different vendor), their corporate attitude doesn't surprise me at all. Apologies for your experience.
Oh, and people in other industries have told me it's par for the course everywhere.
This is why networking is so important. That's my main advice to give. Meetups, user-groups, etc... get involved in them and do your best to learn, interact, and "level up" (to steal a brilliant recruitment/marketing slogan from the big A)