The Biggest Lie Sold to Us Is That Reaching the Top of the Corporate Ladder Will Make Us Happy
Here’s why bigger salaries and bonuses are a trap
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know ― Ernest Hemingway
Climbing the corporate ladder seems intelligent.
It’s the default path in life. Go to school, get a degree, get a job, get into debt, slowly climb the corporate ladder, get better job titles, earn more money… then happiness?
Wrong.
This is one of the greatest lies ever told. Most of us live this way of life then find out too late that it’s a nightmare in disguise.
I want to save you some time and convince you to quit the corporate snakes and ladders game, as someone who climbed high on the corporate ladder and retired at 34 because of it.
Corporate careers are slavery in disguise
There’s so much focus on revenue and pushing a business’s agenda, that you lose touch with reality. You start to think a logo and your employer’s mission is the meaning of life. Most of the time all the business stands for is profit.
There’s no meaning behind any of it. “Number must go up” as they say.
Then we wonder why we feel off. Why we feel lost or numb. Life doesn’t make sense or we feel like we could do or be more.
Part of the problem is the modern corporate-ladder-job has zero creativity and imagination. So we’re only using 10% of our human capabilities. If you run this rat race for long enough, you end up living a life of quiet desperation.
That can lead to depression, which is what happened to me.
The higher up you go, the more morals and integrity you have to leave behind
The top of the corporate ladder will disappoint you.
CEOs, c-suite executives, heads of, etc, are all just glorified politicians. Their job is to tell customers, stakeholders, other execs and employees what they want to hear at all costs. That’s how they keep their jobs.
Nice words matter more than actions.
Over time the politics gets stronger. You have to start abandoning your morals and throwing people under the bus to stay ahead. In my last corporate job ever, I had to tell my boss’s boss to fire my boss. It was either him or me.
I chose me because I didn’t want to get laid off. I still feel bad about it. Corporate life can turn us into terrible human beings.
It’s not evil, it’s just survival.
Do you really want to be a politician who’s full of sh*t?
A sh*t ton more work
“My friend used to work from 8 am to 6 pm (in one of the biggest consulting firms in the world). He got promoted.
Now he works from 8 am until midnight.” – Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi
The higher you climb the more time you spend at work.
No one tells you that.
The reason is that the higher positions require 10x more meetings. Those meetings fill your day so there’s no time for the real work. The only way to make up for lost time is to start work earlier, finish later, and catch up on weekends.
If you love burnout culture and zero work-life balance, you’ll l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ve the top of the corporate ladder. But if you want to live a good life, then wake the hell up.
Barely know your family
A guy I worked with in banking had it all.
Nice house, family vacations, two healthy parents, three kids, a nice BMW, etc. I wanted him to be my mentor. I worshipped everything he said and did.
To get close to him I used to strategically sit next to his desk. One morning I came to work. He seemed a little off.
“You alright, man.”
What he said next took my breath away.
“My wife left me last night and took the kids. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
I felt emotional. He did so well at work but I couldn’t see what it cost him at home. His family missed him. They forgave him for the first few years of staying back. But after a while his wife grew more upset and eventually left with no warning.
Thanks to his disaster it taught me a lesson. So I decided to do the opposite and it saved my life.
Family provides you with more meaning than chasing KPIs ever will.
“Take a closer look. It's actually a hamster wheel, not a ladder.”Have no time for hobbies/side hustles
Part of the joy in life is having hobbies.
Doing things for the sake of it regardless of whether they make you money or upgrade your status. I found that the people who got to the top of the corporate ladder had to trade most of their hobbies in.
Their corporate job was their career, life, and hobby all in one. Sad.
This is why when layoffs strike these people end up miserable. Their whole identity is tied to their job so they know nothing else. When that way of life is taken from them, they don’t know what to do. They feel lost.
You can’t reach the top of the corporate ladder and have work-life balance – that idea is an oxymoron.
The assumption is that you can reach the top of the ladder
No matter how hard you try, we can’t all be at the top of the corporate ladder.
What no one tells you is that reaching the top is similar to playing the lottery. Even if you do everything right and trade your precious life away for a big salary and fancy job title, there’s no guarantee you’ll ever make it.
Most never make it.
You have a better chance of success doing your own thing than climbing the corporate ladder. Why? Because climbing the ladder comes down to politics. Politics is unpredictable. You can be a great corporate actor but there’s always someone better.
If they win the politics game then you lose.
Every time you lose you’ve got to start again and go interview for jobs at new companies. But the previous loss stays with you. Interviewers ask about it. Leaders are wary of the past political failure.
Even if you get through all of that, you can fail to climb the ladder again.
Some people fail their entire lives trying to climb the corporate ladder. What a waste of time. Honestly, may as well buy a lottery ticket instead.
Here’s why bigger salaries and bonuses are a trap
A smart reader of mine said this: “The money or luxuries are just there to kill the internal pain.”
WOW.
The extra money you get from climbing the corporate ladder is a poor substitute for the meaning and happiness you lose.
To unconsciously numb ourselves from this reality, we delude ourselves into thinking that the luxuries we can buy will make up for it. We justify the ladder climbing with “but it bought me this nice car.”
The self-talk sounds like this:
“But this job pays for my lifestyle. I can’t pay the bills without it.”
This is short-term thinking. The question is, is the lifestyle the corporate salary earns you worth it? What if there was a better lifestyle?
Money and job titles are a great substitute in the short term to paper over the cracks of a misunderstood life, but in the long term they’re like putting a band-aid on a nuclear bomb.
“The biggest lie we believe is that reaching a specific ‘something’ will make us happy”
(Madeline Tyler, Substack reader)
Let’s go deeper.
No specific goal will make us happy. When I made my first $100,000 online, I thought I had arrived. Then I made my first million dollars. Then I hit 100K email subscribers. Then I made my second million.
At no point was it ever enough.
What the corporate ladder climbers misunderstand is that happiness is found in the journey itself. No level in any life game makes you happy. It’s seeing who you can become that’s cool. It’s helping other people be successful that counts. It’s building something bigger than yourself.
The drug that drives humans and keeps us motivated is dopamine. And here’s the big unlock, according to Dr. Robert Sapolsky:
“Dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness, it is about the happiness of pursuit.”
Choose a life game you can get excited by.
Plays games that have meaning and are full of creativity. And stay away from games that are all about revenue and politics. That’s how you find an uncommon form of happiness that’ll make you come alive.
Tell me in the comments section below what you think of the corporate ladder.
P.S.
If you're really looking for the "anti-corporate" path, you'll need social media to do it.
(Unless your daddy passes on his great port-a-potty business to you)
Get the jumpstart on social during my free masterclass
Topic: 3 Social Media Templates Everyone Should Know
(We might even do a 4th bonus template if we have time)
Click here to reserve your seat.
Make SURE you show up on time.
I recently quit my job as a BigLaw lawyer defending big companies in lawsuits to write science fiction instead. So this post resonates!
While reading this, I realized that many of the people that I know who are climbing the corporate ladder, relate to their loved ones the way they relate to their colleagues, subordinates, or supervisors.