10 ways to excel in your Corporate career
If you know me then you know that I am not going to tell you ways to excel in your career, if I had some concrete strategies that actually work, why would I tell strangers on the internet? I'd tell my friends so that they can become rich. But I don't have any strategies. I’m probably the last person who should give career advice. I don’t understand office politics, I don’t network properly, and I still think good work should speak for itself.
If you specifically think about Software Engineering, I am not good at interviewing, I am good at my job. I am good at system design, but I suck at DSA interviews, I can never get to the most efficient solution :P But that's my bad, I should just grind more leetcode. I digress.
I think workplaces should empower you to work on everything that you want to work on. You wanna fix the CI/CD pipeline? Raise a PR. You wanna cook better food? Bring your gas stove at work and do it. You wanna fire your senior? List all the reasons why they should be fired and send it to the CEO. You wanna improve security? Put out retina scanners outside the office entry door. You want to track people? Put CCTV cameras all around the office and then you use LLM to track people as soon as you see them idle, you announce on the loudspeaker their name and tell them to get to work. You gotta take ownership.
Anyway, I am going to talk about Corporate life.
Imagine.
You open your eyes slowly, wincing at the alarm clock. You have to wake up, it is a new day. You wake up, you get off the bed, you make the bed. Do not forget to turn off the alarm clock. You make your way to the bathroom to pee and brush your teeth. I won't comment on poop schedule, everyone has their own routine. After brushing you sit on the sofa, and meditate. Deep breath in, out, in, out....Now you have to make tea, and your open the Parle G packet and gobble up all the biscuits with tea. You have to prepare for breakfast too, what will you cook today? Poha? Sure. You prep and then you make it. After that, you take out your office wear, and then take a bath, after dressing up, you eat your breakfast. You have your own car? Probably not. You book an auto, it takes 15 minutes for the auto to arrive, you lock your home and climb down the steps, get into the auto, and vrooooooom, you are at your office. Swap your id card, wait you forgot your id card at home, so what you gonna do? You ask the security person to swipe his card because he knows you work there. Now you are in your AC office, at your desk, scribbling something on paper, you work on your laptop, you attend meetings, you eat lunch, you take tea break and then you get an auto and come back home. You gotta prepare dinner now. So you do that. You do this day after day after day, and one day something in you snaps, you climb the stairs go to the roof of the building, you stand on the ledge, you look down, you take a deep breath, and you jump, you start flapping your hands rapidly and now you are flying, and then you fly towards the sun and hope it engulfs you.
Am I right? Hmm.
The corporate ladder is just a ladder, you have to climb it at your own pace while preserving your sanity. People will try to sabotage you, but you have to keep going. Corporate jobs aren't bad, you work, you get paid good, now you can use that money to buy things that make your life comfortable. You see? It is a good system. I won't deny that bullshit jobs/fake jobs exists, but that's a consequence of the systemic workings of the society. You can also get a fake work job. Nobody is stopping you. But you have to be a superficial human to keep working a fake job. It takes a lot of purposelessness to think your work matters in a fake job.
This is why I like startups, the things you do affect the trajectory of the company and you feel like a bigger cog in the machine. A cog with some importance and equity that is going to be worth 0, you see a lot of startups fail. But the experience makes you stronger.
After working at a startup if you go work at an MNC and now you have to write documents and get permissions and all that just to change one simple thing. You feel sad.
But MNCs pay more money and more money in bank account will make you feel good, you can buy a home, a car, an iPhone, send your kids to a good school, or a foreign university, buy a high value term and health insurance. People who think money cannot buy happiness are wrong. Money can buy things that can give you happiness and comfort. At some point you want life to be less of an adventure and more of a peaceful journey towards the light.
So you work, you work and earn good money and make your dreams come true.
You can also open your own business and somehow make more money.
Corporate can also be an unforgiving place, you might be the best performer and end up on the firing roster, why? Because someone up the ladder might hold a grudge against you. You wanna climb the ladder, visibility is important, you have to do your work and then you have to work more to show people that you are doing work. It is a stupid thing, but a thing nonetheless. It will effect your promotions and increments. Visibility. It doesn't matter how small the change is, the visibility should be high, but you have subtle about it. Because at some point your seniors would be like, why does this person show up every time? They might start tracking and seeing what you exactly do, and then if it comes out to be a nothingburger then you are on the firing roster. Just make your boss money, or make your boss look good, that should be fine.
The corporate culture is changing though, a lot of young people are entering the workforce and they don't take shit from anyone. I see this as a good change. The servitude attitude needs to go away. It will though. Real change will come.
Maybe corporate life is just learning how to survive repetition without becoming a robot. You work, you earn, you buy comfort, you dream a little less recklessly, and somehow try to preserve the small part of yourself that still wants to fly towards the sun.
I'm not sure what this blog is about. I will ask Chatgpt. Cheers.
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