I work for a big US corporation.
Every job or project is slow to get approved and staffed, and often of little importance.
They pay me well and as far as I understand, the company does not fire people and is unlikely to lay people/departments off without at least a few months' notice.
The first 18 months were tough. I came from one of the best tech companies in the world, one of those included in the famous acronym and starts with A and is based in Seattle, and I got quickly frustrated in my new job with the slowness, the incompetence, the politics. And people didn't listen to any of my ideas, how rude!
They would tell me, "yes, good idea," "of course we'll do it," only to realize that no one thought it was a good idea, if they even listened to what I was saying, and no one was working to get anything done.
Then I understood the situation and calmed down. This is the way things work here, I told myself, and nothing I do is going to change anything in such a large company.
Now, some, maybe many among the HN crowd would tell me to move to another job, to find a place in which my ideas, assuming they make sense, are respected, properly valued, where promotions don't happen mysteriously but they reflect the value that the individual is bringing and will bring to the organization.
But why?
Why should I give up on a life that allows me to work little, take plenty of official and unofficial vacations, explore avenues of creativity like writing, painting, and cooking, build up my body by working out at the gym and tan properly by laying in the sun?
Why would I want to work again for a demanding machine in which I am a cog like 95 percent of my stressed, overworked and largely unhappy colleagues?
Why would I want to spend the time I can now devote to reading fiction in the summer sun, listening to great classical music while cooking, preparing instead for interviews that would put me in front of people who, at my advanced age, want to find a reason not to hire me because I am not as smart as they think, wildly overestimating their quality, that they are?
A reasonable question is: well, when this idyllic situation will change, because nothing convenient is forever, what are you gonna do?
I guess, if I need, I will start working "seriously" again. But not today, today I am reading a collection of short stories written by one of my favorite Japanese authors.