Whenever I hear tea-baggers extolling the virtues of for-profit organizations over government, I always think that they clearly never worked for a large corporation - or they weren't paying attention when they did.


You got that right. I recently stepped down from my management position back into an individual contributor position, and my life is about 150 times better for it.

It is so frustrating to see bad decisions being made, or decisions being made that don't take into account the REAL work that is done--not the work that upper level people THINK is being done by those in the trenches. I wasn't high enough on the food chain to be rubbing shoulders with the really big people, but I was high enough to see all of the "don't tell the Emperor he's wearing no clothes" moments, of which there were a lot.

Now I still know it goes on, but I don't have to come back to my employees and explain how doubling their workload and removing their administrative support is "a really great thing in the long run," or explaining why they aren't getting a bonus this year, even though we exceeded our plan, or "yes, I know you scored an 'exceeds' on the objective measures on your performance review, but...."

I now work 40 hours a week, and take my hour for lunch, and come home and sleep like a baby.

And... the good thing is, I really like what I do in my contributor role. It's easier to measure when I'm doing a good job, I get to deal with a wide variety of people, and it's mentally challenging. Not in the way that management can be mentally challenging trying to deal with the DoubleThink.