Why I’m Glad I Took That Boring Corporate Job

In our current generation of neo-hipsters and man-buns, corporate jobs can come with all kinds of stigmatism. For many of us, just the thought of wearing a suit and conforming to ‘corporate guidelines’ is enough to send a shiver down the spine, and that’s okay, right? If university has only taught me one thing, it’s that conforming to society norms isn’t the only way to live. One can stay up drinking all night, hit a 9am lecture on Economics, nap through midday and go out drinking again then next night, all done with no job and no money! So why would I need to ‘sell-out’? To work for the Man?

Simple; the university lifestyle is not sustainable, and if we are being truly honest with ourselves, is it even fulfilling? If I wake up on a Sunday morning with a throbbing headache, not remembering much of last night does that mean I’ve had really good night, or just that my expectations of a good night are far too low?

At some point in life, we all realise that we want just that little bit more. Suddenly, scrimping and saving all week to blow it on a night out at the weekend doesn’t seem worth it. This tends to happen around the transition to what many may call ‘maturity’. Of course you can be mature and still enjoy a wild night out, but it means you might prefer to miss a couple of nights out a month and put the money into a savings pot for a holiday or a new car. Sounds boring, doesn’t it?

This is where that corporate job comes in. You’ve left university, got your degree, maybe got a job or two ready and waiting for you. The world is your oyster. Now the only decision to make is which job to take, and right now it seems the scariest decision you’ve ever had to make. Corporate jobs are given negative publicity left, right and centre by the opinion leaders of our generation. Creativity and freedom is pushed ahead of structure and stability; working for a niche, fun, snazzy SME (small or medium enterprise) is glorified, and one can get chastised for even mentioning working for the big corporation with 1000s of employees, the head office in London, and the great pension plan.

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We are part of the generation for whom adulthood begins at 30, so why would you want to be living like your businessman-father just yet? The office, the job, the car, the house can all come later on in life, right? Why sacrifice the enjoyment of youth on the off chance that you will have the wealth you aspire to now when you’re too old to spend it?

I faced the same conundrum a few months back, I received a job offer from a huge multinational company, and for a few days uncertainty was my lifeblood. I’d really been holding out for a smaller company, a fun company, one in which I felt that I could really make my mark. Where a small change in profits was noticeable and where I could say with pride ‘That was because of me’. Such an offer didn’t come and I started to lose hope and the will to keep applying so I took the corporate job, more out economic duress from my student debts than willingness. I’d spent my whole life believing that I was creative, and that was to be my calling in life. I was under the impression that if a corporate job doesn’t even fit in with our generation’s zeitgeist, there is no way it would fit in with my life plan.

7 months on and I’ll be the first to admit I am by no means loving it, but without a doubt I don’t regret the decision. I am far from being an organised person, and if I don’t see the point of a rule I struggle to justify following it, my mantra up until this point has been ‘beg for forgiveness, don’t ask for permission’. Just in case you were wondering, this is a terrible attitude to have in a corporate business, at times I’ve found myself drowning in a sea of bureaucracy, only made deeper by my attempts to circumnavigate the riptides that are rules and procedures. In some circumstances, attempts at creativity have been frowned upon and even actively repressed, but all of that aside, working for a corporation does have some benefits and is nowhere near as bad as it’s cracked up to be!

Firstly, the money. Nice and simple. The only reason I wake up at 6:30am on a weekday, drag myself out bed, leaving my girlfriend behind, to go and battle the cold-start of my shower is money. I hate needing money, but let’s be honest, you won’t last very long in our contemporary consumerist society without it. We can talk about Maslow and motivation as reasons for going to work all we want, but the long and short of it is that self-actualisation doesn’t buy food, my primary reason for going to work is getting paid, and I’m sure I can’t be the only one here. At the time of looking the corporate job I accepted paid over 10% more than the smaller companies that I deemed to be a more favourable work environment; this then leads me on to the next main benefit of taking that boring corporate job.

Travelling. Having grown up in the past two decades wanting to take a gap year to travel seems almost as cliché as wanting the big house and family. Yet all I want is to experience a bit of culture, Kerouac seemed to speak to my soul when I read ‘On the Road’, it became a dream of mine to explore the world with my own Dean Moriarty. Ironically, the corporate job which I was told would take up so much of my life has enabled more travelling than I ever thought possible. In the past 7 months alone, the extra money I’ve earned has allowed me to holiday in Virginia, New York, Brussels, Liege, Prague, and even a skiing trip in the Alps. Admittedly I’ve had to be creative with the way I used my annual holiday, but hey, at least I’m getting to be creative with something, right?

Another huge advantage of taking that corporate job is the challenge. I’ve had to interact and organise events with people in completely different continents. If you thought it was difficult arranging a night out with mates a week in advance, try arranging a photo-shoot in India from over 1000 miles away. By doing that boring corporate job you will face challenges that you’d never face in any other circumstances; meanwhile learning things about yourself you’d never get the opportunity to otherwise.

If you’re still unconvinced by these arguments, you’ve always got the people. Sure, working in a multinational company you can meet some incredibly grey people, those so swamped in the bureaucracy of their jobs that it’s split over in to their personality, but from an observational point of view these people can be almost as interesting as the lively party animals you spent time with at university. However, on the whole, most people who work at fairly high levels in corporations got there because they’re intelligent and they know how to talk. Couple this with the fact they’ve probably always had the money to travel and really experience life it means you can meet some really interesting people in these places; they may not always be the most amicable of people, but interesting nonetheless.

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I’ve always appreciated a bit of multiculturalism, I find it fascinating that we can all grow up in the same world and be so vastly different in so many ways. Corporations pull the best people from all over the world for employment, meaning that you will never struggle to find someone different and interesting in these companies. There are 30 other young twenty-somethings working on my scheme, and only a handful of us are UK born and bred. This can make for some incredible conversations over a drink in the evenings.

A large part of me feels it a real shame that corporate jobs have been castigated in recent years. It’s true that the bureaucracy of globalisation and the 21st century means that your Don Drapers no longer exist, but that isn’t to say there aren’t numerous benefits of taking that boring corporate job, even if it is only for the short term. I don’t see myself staying in this career path for longer than a few years, but by the time that I chose to leave it, I’ll have a CV full of experience, a photo album full of exotic holidays and even a savings account fairly full. Of course, people as individuals value these things differently to others. For many people, my younger self included, the thought of having a job that didn’t fill me with excitement in the mornings, or that didn’t allow my creative edge free reign was heinous; however as we get older our priorities begin to change, and who knows maybe if you gave it a shot that boring corporate job would appeal to you more than you’d realise.

The prerequisite for any life-decision like this is to be able to answer what you really want out of the choice. Do you want to live for work, or work to live? For me, once I posed the question like this the answer was simple, and I’m glad I took that boring corporate job.