The death of the corporate job: Part 2

How thousands of people have given up trying to make corporate work meaningful.

I spent the last two days going through every single comment. 500 people wrote about their experiences. Dozens messaged privately.

Here's what stood out.

The salary gap

"I make £120k to essentially be in meetings about meetings. My friend who's a paramedic saves actual lives for £30k."

This comment appeared in different forms throughout. The gap between pay and value has become absurd. Master corporate language, earn six figures. Do something essential, scrape by.

Once you're earning that much for that little, every other option feels like failure. The money becomes its own trap. One person called it "expensive prison."

Different ages, different responses

People in their fifties wrote about wasted decades. They'd invested everything in careers that turned out to be nothing. Too late to pivot, too early to retire.

Twenty-somethings were relieved. They've never believed in corporate careers anyway. One wrote: "My parents think I lack ambition because I don't want to climb the ladder. But why would I want to climb toward more meaninglessness?"

Thirty and forty-somethings are stuck. They see through everything but have mortgages, school fees, responsibilities that make leaving feel impossible.

Below the line: why managers keep people they know are doing nothing, what happened to the readers who quit and had to come back, and the pattern that showed up in almost every comment.