Before outlining the benefits and drawbacks, it’s important to understand that corporations are as diverse as any other aspect of life in this universe. The options are endless when one considers the diversity of companies, cultures, jobs and bosses. Therefore, while the following provides a general outline, these benefits and drawbacks will vary or can be overshadowed by the specifics of an individual job, manager or company.
Benefits of working in a corporation
Self support and independence
It’s very hard to start your own business or become a freelance earner. Over 90% of business start-up result in failure, In fact, while it is one of the noblest of achievements to start a business that employs other people, not every one is fit to be entrepreneur. Working for a corporation offers an alternative. However, when considering working for a corporation, one should not be resigned to have given up on being an entrepreneur. You don’t need to work for a corporation forever, but it can buy you time until you figure out what you want to do while also gaining basic skills. This experience has motivated many people to start their own business because it allows them to recognize unfulfilled needs by customers. It also allows people to confirm that corporate life is not for them and that they must pursue other options. However, one should be cautious about settling and getting too comfortable within corporate life. A regular salary can be very addictive and can lead to a life of dependence that ultimately becomes a brutal life trap.
Money to do other things – Working to live
For some people, their passions may never lead to a lucrative marketable skill or even a livable wage. Therefore, for many people, working a “9 to 5” job can provide them with the income to do what they really love outside of work. As an example, Herb and Dorothy Vogel are featured in a documentary titled; “Herb & Dorothy”. This couple loved to collect art, but they were not wealthy. Dorothy worked as a librarian and Herb worked for the US Postal Service. To enable them to pursue their passion for art collecting, the couple lived a frugal life and decided that one of their salaries would be used to pay for life expenses and the other’s would be dedicated to paying for art. Herb was not passionate about his work, but the steady income allowed him to satisfy the couple’s passion for art collecting. After a lifetime of art collecting, the couple managed to collect and ultimately donate two tractor trailer loads of art to the US National Museum which compensated them with a perpetual income annuity. When one has a passion outside of work, boring work can be easier to accept.
Being part of a team that does something great for the world
Some people love to work with others and collaborate with others in a team environment. Corporations offer great opportunities for working in small or large teams. In fact, it’s hard to avoid working in a team environment within a corporation. This can be a source of camaraderie, long term friendships and a sense of accomplishment that goes far beyond what someone could do on their own. Imagine being a part of a team that discovers the next great cancer treatment or lands people on Mars. If you are not a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk but you still want to make insanely great products, working in a corporation can give you the opportunity to experience first hand the greatest of achievements in civilization.
Learning/education
While boring office life is often knocked, it’s important to understand that corporations offer people an opportunity to learn industry specific knowledge and basic working skills such as teamwork, accountability, planning, collaboration, communication and technology skills all while getting paid. On top of the job specific learning, many corporations offer opportunities to attend courses, conferences and formal education reimbursement, The author of this article earned a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering entirely paid for by one company, and an MBA mostly paid by another company and numerous other paid courses and conferences.
Mastery
Developing mastery in a skill or corporate function (R&D, Finance, Manufacturing, Supply Chain or HR) can be enormously beneficial for not only possessing a marketable skill, but for also providing meaning in one’s life. Mastery delineates amateurs from professionals analogous to the difference between an apprentice and a master craftsman. Mastery usually requires about 10 to 15 years of full-time work in a focussed area, but excursions into supporting functions can enhance one’s mastery in their target function. For instance, spending a few years in a Quality Assurance Department will enhance the career of someone who wants to develop a career in manufacturing or supply chain. Larger corporations provide for ample opportunities to develop mastery assuming that one can “stick-to-it” and bare the mistakes, errors and mishaps that inevitably occur in such a long-term journey. However, the “scar-tissue” earned from such a journey prepares one for challenges outside of corporate life. Again, working for a corporation provides this opportunity while providing a salary.
Developing people
If one becomes a manager in a company, then one has the opportunity to develop others. This can provide incredible satisfaction. While making a widget might not be what you dreamed about doing as a child, the opportunity to develop a person who may go on to do bigger and better things than you did can make it all worth while. Some people really excel as nurturing and boosting others up in life.
Being part of a family
Working for a private company often provides people with the opportunity to feel that they are part of a family. Although private firms often pay less and offer less benefits and perks than larger corporations, private corporations tend to retain employees longer because they create a family environment where people actually care about you. This is often lacking in larger corporations where each employee must be expendable for assuring corporate resilience.
Camaraderie
Corporations, particularly large corporations, are capable to doing great things and making great products. Imagine being part of the team that developed the first iPhone or part of an R&D team that successfully discovers a cancer drug. Being part of such efforts involve extreme challenges, risks, disappointments frustration and then ultimately success. Having the opportunity to share such success with trusted colleagues produces great camaraderie and friendships. Because of the large scale nature of such projects, they often occur in large corporations where even an administrative assistant can share in the team’s victory. Small companies of under 20 people usually offer camaraderie at the highest levels. For instance, imagine the teamwork and camaraderie that comes when a small company takes on the “800 pound gorilla” and takes it down.
Solving problems
Corporations do difficult things. They make complex products like smartphones, vaccines and sophisticated machinery. Difficult efforts always involve lots of problems. People who are good critical thinkers and problem solvers have a lifetime of work to do in corporations. Success in solving problems not only brings career success, but also the deep satisfaction that comes with doing something that few others could do.
Developing skills (Making mistakes/failure)
When starting a career, making mistakes and failing are part of learning. These mistakes could put you out of business if you have your own company. However, within a larger corporation that is organized to neutralize weaknesses and failures in individuals, these opportunities allow you to fail without catastrophic consequences. Over time, one learns to mitigate the impact of these failures and get stronger in the process. In effect, you get to develop your strengths while not allowing your weaknesses to hold you back.
It’s also wise to fail quickly and often during the early part of your career because such mistakes will usually be forgiven. This opportunity is uniquely offered within corporate environments.
Access to facilities (Capital, equipment, computers, chemistry)
Many industries such as the pharmaceutical, oil, railroads or the construction industries can be very capital intensive. It’s nearly impossible to raise capital for starting an energy company without significant experience and backing. If your career interests lie in a capital intensive industry, then going the corporate route will offer you the easiest route to get into the business. With mastery and success over a number of years, the corporate route then offers one the experience and contacts for an eventual possible entrepreneurial venture.
Specialization
While specialization has been criticized in recent years, the fact is that some people just like doing one thing and one thing only. Some people also don’t enjoy having to engage in a complex network of corporate departments and a myriad of personalities. For such people, a large corporate could offer a great opportunity to specialize and do one thing. For instance, an introverted chemist can enjoy a long career in the Quality Control department of a pharmaceutical or chemical company testing various products before the products get released to the public. This work usually involves working alone with minimal team interaction. It’s not for everyone, but for those that like working alone, it’s a viable and sustainable career path.
Corporate ladder climbing
The opposite of the socially anxious person who likes working alone is the extraverted corporate climber. They love working with people while getting energized by political competition. For these people, working in a large corporation offers ample opportunity satisfy their ambitions. It’s quite an amazing feature of large corporations to be able to accommodate the shy person who likes working alone and the gregarious social climber all within one organization. Both personalities need each other, but it’s hard to maintain a win-win opportunity for both unless they coexist in a large company.
Decision making
Unless you’re doing repetitive and simple manual labor, you are likely working with your mind and that makes you a “Knowledge Worker” according to Peter Drucker. This means that most of the work is going on between your ears and it also means that you are making a lot of decisions. The decisions may be as simple as which emails to respond to first or when to call a meeting, but they nevertheless require brain work. Working in a corporation gives you the opportunity to make small decisions and to watch other more experienced people make more consequential good and bad decisions. This is yet another opportunity to learn a skill, decision making, in a relatively safe environment. While in the worst case you could lose a job, its better to learn this mistake in someone else’s company until you have the adequate skills to confidently make good decisions in your own company.
Comfortable working conditions
A large percentage of adults born after the 1970s have no experience working in difficult, unpleasant or even dangerous conditions. On the other hand, working in factories from the industrial revolution until fairly recently involved working in extremely bad conditions. Upton Sinclair’s book titled “The Jungle” is a good reminder of what it was like to work in horrible places. This was unfortunately all too common for most people and still is in many parts of the world. Things didn’t change much for most people until the 1970s when conditions improved and opportunities for equal pay were initiated. Working in a corporation often means working in an office or clean warehouse.
Less complications
In the West, particularly the US, we live in a highly regulated environment. Most employees don’t feel the regulatory impact because corporations deal with these issues. However, when leaving the protective umbrella of a corporation and trying to start a business or even become an independent consultant, the regulatory obstacles can be formidable. For instance, one will need to establish a legal entity, establish separate bank accounts, pay for lawyers to review contracts, negotiate contracts, do marketing, file for more complicated and more expensive tax returns, employ cyber security measures, manage accounting, manage a website and source insurance. Besides the cost, these activities require an enormous amount of time. Again, even if you’re an independent consultant (gig economy type), you will need to deal with all of the items mentioned above. After all of that, you still face a higher risk than an employee. If an employee creates a disaster at work out of pure negligence, at worst, they simply get confidentially fired. In fact, unless the act was proven to be intentional or illegal, the company will often have to pay the employee to leave. As an independent business owner or consultant, negligence or mistakes, regardless of whether they are intentional, can lead to a lawsuit. Cyber security is yet another issue. Maintaining customer data, including just receiving emails, requires a lot of effort and expense to keep secure. Not if, but when you get hacked, you will need to hire a lawyer to issue notices to past and existing clients regarding possible lost data. This could then lead to lawsuits, hence the need for general, professional, umbrella and cyber security insurance which can cost between $1,000 to $2,000 per year (prices in 2020). All of those complications go away when you work for a corporation because they deal with all of that, and probably better than you can.
Conclusion
While some of us may find it boring or unattractive to work as the proverbial office drone, this still often means working in a safe and clean environment, with minimal complications, and free of abuse and sexual harassment. These benefits cannot be underestimated as many people in the world do not have them to this day.
Drawbacks of working in a corporation
Bad bosses
In my experience, most of one’s day-to-day experience in a corporation (good or bad) is determined by who your boss is. That means that about 80% of how you experience your work is influenced by your boss. Although you could work for a wonderful company with a great company culture and with excellent colleagues, if you have a bad relationship with your boss, the entire experience will likely be negative. Bad managers can also set you up for years of bad habits, particularly if you learn these habits when you are young and assume that these habits are normal. Successful managers that are good at negative politics or abuse of employees will pass on this habits to their young employees who will then exhibit these behaviors when they become managers. This is a similar psychological process to abused children who then become abusers themselves. In many cases, bad managers don’t have intentions of being bad, but they do nevertheless create the same negative impact. For instance, given the extreme artificiality of a corporate environment, it takes many years for many people to learn how to be a good manager. Therefore, although a person may eventually become a decent manager, their early years as a manager are likely to be bad for those who work for them. This is simply something you need to accept because the same process will apply to you as you learn to become a manager.
Working with assholes
Throughout life in a corporation you will need to accept that you will encounter people with bad intentions; assholes. This is not a choice in most companies. For instance, some companies or managers will put up with an asshole if he or she is providing a rare value or special expertise. That can be bad news for you if you need to accommodate these people. Some companies have gotten a little better at avoiding accommodation of assholes, but in my opinion, most have not. This is usually a sign of a weak or lazy boss unwilling to defend or support most of his team from the abuses of one individual. Small private companies tend to be better at this because the owner’s often recognize the toxicity and negative impact that one asshole has on the other staff. However, in larger corporations, the impact is smoothed out and weak managers can hide the negativity while reaping the small rewards for having a strong player who is otherwise creating misery for other people.
Politics
One of the biggest drawbacks of working in a corporation, particularly large corporations, is having to deal with corporate politics. Corporate politics comes with the territory because it’s simply often the only or easiest way to get things done in ambiguous situations. For example, if two departments disagree on who should manage a high profile project, these disputes often get resolved behind the scenes via political avenues. If you’re not good at influencing or engaging in politics, then you may want to avoid working in a large corporation, but that doesn’t mean that you have to avoid corporate life. Small companies or private companies can offer a less political environment. As an example, while studying for my MBA, I took a course on entrepreneurship that was taught by an actual entrepreneur that owned a $50 million company. The owner remarked that he’ll never hired person who spent a significant amount of time in a large company because they likely developed survival skills that are not conducive to teamwork in a small company.
Being a follower (unless you’re the CEO)
Unless you’re the CEO or owner of your own company, you will be a follower at some level when you work for a corporation. Even the top Vice Presidents or the leadership team must follow the CEO. Therefore, if you’re not the following type (i.e. comfortable with taking an order or accepting a decision), then corporate life will not suit you. That doesn’t mean you can’t push back or debate a decision. Good companies will welcome and promote pushing back. However, at the end of the day, there is one decision maker and you will need to follow that ultimate decision.
Losing decisions
When working in a corporation, particularly as you progress to higher levels of the organization, you will find yourself debating an issue within a group setting. If the group does not reach consensus, then you will inevitably be either on the winning or losing side of that decision. When that occurs, regardless of whether the decision went your way, you need to be prepared to back the decision 100% without reservation. This is required in a healthy corporate environment because you will want others to back your decisions when they disagree. If you cannot accept this compromise, then corporate life may be frustrating for you and you may lash out in unhealthy ways which will ultimately leads to problems or dismissal.
Not being able to pick your team members
It’s wonderful when you get to start from scratch and hire your own team or pick your own team members for a project. While the accountability falls on you, you ultimately get to control some of your destiny. This usually happens after you’ve arrived at a reasonably high level (director) in an organization. However, when you’re just starting out, you will likely be thrown on a team not of your choosing with some team members that you don’t like. When starting out as a manager or joining a new company, there is also a high probability that you will need to adopt people not of your choosing who sometimes have performance problems. This can be seen as a test of your competence as a manager to either turn a bad performer around or manage the person’s exodus in an efficient but humane way. In any case, not being able to pick your own team members comes with the territory of working for a corporation.
Getting pigeon holed
While some people like to specialize and see this as an advantage of working in a large company, others don’t. Therefore, when joining large companies, you run the risk of being dedicated to a very narrow task and narrow scope. Your scope may be so narrow that you lose touch with your connection to the customer or end user of the company’s product or service.
You’re working to support someone else’s vision
Not everyone is a visionary, but some of us have more vision than others, particularly as you gain more experience in your career. When working for a corporation, you must remember that you will be ultimately supporting someone else’s vision. This could be the vision of the CEO or your direct manager, but it will probably not be your’s. Therefore, you may encounter a conflict if you develop a vision that is contrary to the vision of your management. Some company’s have stronger visions than others. For instance, in a stronger visionary company like Apple, you are likely to encounter a strong visionary direction at all levels of the organization. On the other hand, more stable or mature companies such as McDonalds have well developed processes where strong vision is not required or welcomed.
It’s not a democracy
If you live in a democratic country, you likely enjoy your ability to express your opinions and even openly criticize your political leaders. You are free to create blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos or write editorials expressing your opinion about any views and opinions that you have, particularly about political or business leaders. In a corporation some feedback is acceptable when requested, but unsolicited and unrestricted criticism of your management will usually result in negative repercussions. Your right to unlimited and unfettered expression ends when you enter the doors of a corporation or use any of it’s equipment such as smart phones and computers. Your ability to share your work experience on social media is also often not permitted as many corporations request that you sign non-disclosure agreements that include social media terms and restrictions.
Risk of having a bullshit job
As outlined in his book titled “Bullshit Jobs”, Professor David Graeber exposes a phenomenon in the corporate world regarding jobs that are unnecessary and contribute little to the corporation and society. Professor Graeber describes the different types of bullshit jobs and he goes into detail on why these jobs exist. Graeber notes that bullshit jobs are not the same as shit jobs. Shit jobs such as low paying janitorial work or day laboring work are quite beneficial to corporations and to our society despite the fact that they are difficult and pay very little. On the other hand, Bullshit jobs can be surprisingly high paying with accompanying high status even though they contribute little and even have a negative impact on corporations and society. What is important to understand is that these bullshit jobs are primarily found in corporations. It’s also important to note that while they can be high paying, they apparently have a negative psychological impact on those who hold these jobs because the job holders understand that their work has no meaning. If you work for a corporation, you are at risk of eventually having a bullshit job which are difficult to give up due to their perceived benefits. Even worse is that if you spend years in a bullshit job and lose it, you will be entirely unprepared to do useful work. In other words, you may be training yourself to be useless.
Losing a sense of who you are (can’t be yourself)
When working in a corporation, you will be at risk of losing a sense of who you are. As social animals, humans adjust to the social norms of their culture and environment. This social phenomenon has been studied and is well documented in social and psychology journals, including its manifestations in corporate organizations (Hackman). Corporations generally require conformity to enable harmonious and productive work environments. Therefore, as one works for many years in a corporation, one is at risk of adopting corporate social behavior that differs from the norms outside of work and from your own true nature. It’s quite common for people who have spent decades in corporations to recall who they once were and regret what they have become. This process is slow and insidious so that the person doesn’t feel that it is happening. You psychological “DNA” is mixed in with the corporation and those that you work with so that there is no longer a clear separate between you and the corporation. You have become corporatized. Undoing corporatization and institutionalization can be impossible depending on how many years you’ve spent in a corporation. Therefore, when considering to enter corporate life, one should consider options for how to disrupt this process.
Low likelihood of becoming wealthy
Unless you join a company that offers stock options, one of the biggest drawbacks of working for a corporations is that there is a very low probability that you will become independently wealthy by selling your time to a corporation. The owners or the corporation will get wealthy from the fruits of your labor, but not the other way around. Therefore, assuming that you want to eventually build wealth, it’s important to view a corporate job as a temporary effort, even if that means working for as long as 10 years in a corporation to build your savings. Your other alternative is to use the corporate job as a means to acquire wealth by investing in stocks that produce wealth for you in the future, but that’s a long shot.
Becoming accustomed to regular pay checks
Author and former Trader, Nassim Taleb, is quoted as saying; “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates and a monthly salary.” There is a lot of wisdom behind that statement. While a regular salary provides for a seemingly predictable and stable flow of income, it can leave a person susceptible to taking on monthly spending habits such as mortgages, car payments, cable bills, internet bills and subscriptions of all forms. Jakob Lund Fisker describes this phenomenon in great depth in his book titled; “Early Retirement Extreme”. In his book, Fisker outlines our modern social structure having evolved to push people into a lifestyle that encourages consumption, debt and living beyond your means. This structure is built into many of our institutions such as schools, corporations, banking, political and economic. As one takes on this conventional lifestyle, one then becomes dependent on a regular salary which leads to a lifestyle addiction that is very difficult to break. Unless we understand the process and intentionally resist the process, it’s quite easy to fall into the “rat race” trap of an unhappy corporate life.