I get back at it by getting paid as much as I can for as little work I can do. Like I said, I’m not doing nothing, but I’ll never sell my soul for marginal increases in wages and that occasional promotion.
I get back by having a life after 5 pm, Never going in to work on a weekend, taking time off to spend it with family and never letting stress and bs from corporate world affect my private life.
Yeah, that's how corporate America works, buddy. You give up on finding fulfillment at work or striking it rich, and just do what they tell you without thinking too much about it. In return, you get to clock out at 5 and take a nice vacation every year.
As oppose to what? Spending 20hr of unpaid overtime in hopes to get noticed? Or starting a company and betting your (and your family) whole future to be next facebook?
They are doing 9-5 and then do whatever they want with their life. Maybe they are working on a side to break from corpo world, maybe they have no other choice or wants.
Oh, I'm definitely not saying they should do otherwise. One of the great things about large corporations is that they can provide a stable work environment that doesn't interfere with the rest of your life.
But to suggest that this is how you "get back at corporate America" is laughable. In fact, it's the opposite.
That’s nonsense. It’s extremely hard to fire people in many corps. I’ve personally seen it take years even when everyone agreed (including management) someone needed to go. And often the paperwork threshold is so high that even people producing negative work aren’t fired; you just hope they eventually move on since you’re not giving them raises etc.
That’s when an org really starts to collect dead weight (actual dead weight).
Don’t get me wrong, shitty managers need checks and balances, but when an org loses so much trust in itself that it makes it impossible to remove pretty much anyone (except those trying to improve things usually, despite the rules), it’s going to get pretty bad soon.
I dislike that framing. It seems disingenuous to call "doing what I'm required to do by my employer" any variant on "quitting". It's explicitly not quitting, after all. If the employer expects that you do more, it should require it.
The only way your claim of "as little work I can do" is accurate is that if you spent one minute less working, it becomes the trigger point where you'll get fired.
But it sounds like you're just a normal corporate worker who does exactly what is stated in your employment contract and no more (and no less) -- but I suppose you should know that there are many people who do much less work than is formally required and get to keep their job.
There is a pain threshold for most managers to fire an employee. They have to spend time and money on recruiting and training a new replacement, so in theory if the cost of you slacking off is lower than the cost of finding a replacement, they might not actually fire you.
