Doing Basically Nothing And Getting Paid

Ah, the glory of "corporate coasting."

If you want to get big-time rich in America, you likely need to invent something that scales massively — or inherit said wealth, or receive it in a divorce of some kind. If you want to get big-time rich but not “fuck you” rich, you need to be really good at something like lawn care or HVAC in a large city that still has room to grow, and you need to be tireless about promoting yourself and your services, while also (usually) not paying your guys that fairly. And if you want to be comfortable and struggling in times of inflation, but still comfortable enough that you can bomb people with vacation photos twice a year, you usually need to work in pre-automation corporate. That window maybe has 2–3 decades left, but hey, it’s still churning right now. We are so back, baby!

If you have ever worked 15 seconds in corporate, you know that corporate is over-populated with (mostly) guys and (some) women who do literally nothing all week except tell you how slammed they are and how it’s their “busy season.” Their bosses barely know what they do, but they are usually good scapegoats in a pinch, and/or they can be thrown into an urgent deliverable if need be. We call this “Management By Warm Body.” It is very popular in corporate.

If you are good at “playing the game” of corporate, which is a mix of —

• Understanding buzzwords

• Being seen as available

• Looking the part

• Never pissing off the powerful people

• Etc.

— then you can easily stay in corporate 30 or so years (maybe not right now re: automation) and make good salaries some years. You will probably get laid off here and there, because corporate does like to cut heads, but you can bounce back to another equally meaningless widget company within about 4–6 stressful months of being laid off/fired.

Now let’s bring in a few other wrinkles.