Why I Left Corporations

It’s 10:45 in the morning. I just had my daily stand-up. Of course it wasn’t brief — my colleagues love to talk about their work. Or perhaps they’re trying to persuade us that they’re productive? One might think this is the highlight of the day, but it gets worse! I’m supposed to study specifications from the OpenWallet Foundation. My client works on a solution built on top of giants. It might sound impressive, but in reality it’s mostly reading what someone else has designed and then doing Proof-of-Concept work. And of course, making a public pull request is strictly forbidden. Why should we collaborate? For someone like me this is a dead-end job. The pay is good, but my soul is burning from the inside…

Sounds familiar?

Patterns in Corporations

I’ve been in the IT industry for more than 14 years. I was a networking engineer, a software tester for telco hardware (which actually involved a lot of coding too), I worked on a maintenance project written in Java where the original developers had already left, I did several high-impact Android projects, and even more embedded projects — including some startup work.

What did these projects teach me? Let’s put the hard knowledge aside. Yes, I gained experience and I could land a job easily. However, the more time I spent in corporations, the more I realized that all companies are more or less the same. I began to see patterns. They were everywhere.

I saw how not the best people were promoted, but often the laziest — those who just socialized with managers. I saw people hanging out and berating everyone who wasn’t present (often me).

I saw that hard work was not rewarded with more money. The more I worked, the more responsibility I gained. My managers loved me. They said: “Remo is a workhorse, he does everything. Everyone would like to have Remo on their team!”

Warm words — but I am not employed just to receive praise. On the contrary, I don’t need praise at all.

People don’t realize this, and companies often try to obfuscate the true meaning of employment for their own benefit. But the truth is plain and simple:

Your work is an exchange of your time for money.

That’s it! Your employer might say how the company is “changing the world for the better” and that you are an “invaluable member of the team,” but the truth is that everyone is replaceable. Maybe you’ve heard this too: “We couldn’t do this without you.” And yet, after you leave, the machine still marches forward. We, people, are just cogs in a colossal machine.

Time Flies

So let’s go back to my quote: we are exchanging our time for money. The problem is that our time is finite. If you’re in your 20s, good luck! I’m soon entering my early 40s, and the older I get, the more I feel like I’m flying at supersonic speed. Can you imagine it’s been 24 years since 9/11, or 14 years since the Fukushima disaster? I remember both days well, and I just nod my head in surprise at how fast time flies.

Tempus fugit (Latin: Time flies)

Naturally, given that I’m not stupid, I found my way around corporations. My priorities became crystal clear. I wanted to minimize my time spent at work, maximize my income, and — if possible — maximize my job satisfaction. In other words, if I must deplete my finite time resources for money, let it be worth it!

This shift paid off. Soon my income doubled, I worked exclusively from home, and I was able to do my work in 3–4 hours. Sometimes I worked more, sometimes I skipped entire days. The public shames people like me because we hold up a mirror — why should we slave for someone else when the compensation is so low? We are exchanging our life force for some paper currency that rots anyway, remember?

Corporations Run on Averages

Last year I put together an online course. I called it How to Outsmart the Corporate. I taught it for free just to get feedback, and I think it was a success. Right now I’ve shifted my focus to something else, but being a coach was a novel experience for me. Every experience counts.

I could share many lessons about corporations. We will have time to go into more depth later. But I’ll add one essential lesson right now: corporations run on averages. Our world runs on averages. Take airplane seats. Their size is set to accommodate the average person. Plus-size people might complain and sometimes succeed, but designing on averages makes sense when you’re working at scale. Smaller seats mean more seats, which means lower ticket prices.

In the early days of IT, the very first programmers were outlier geniuses. Sometimes I wonder whether they were on LSD when they came up with operating system architecture. They were simpler times. We had giants like IBM challenged by newcomers like Apple and Microsoft. Today Apple and Microsoft have outgrown IBM and other legacy corporations — only to become even bigger corporations with the same flaws. As an aside, watch the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley — it’s old but gold. In many ways the story exceeds big-budget movies like Jobs.

Back then, innovation in IT was driven by geniuses, by pirates. People who assembled their first computers in garages. That era is long gone. What is also gone is the genius factor. Instead of relying on a few brilliant individuals like Steve Wozniak, companies hire 50 average people. Individually, they are not capable of creating anything novel. But the crowd of 50 is, as a whole, good enough to earn an income. Today, real innovation happens in startups, where founders must risk everything to bring disruptive products. While I have my problems with the startup ecosystem too, at least some creativity still survives there. Every outlier who is even remotely smart likely has a startup — either as a hobby or as a full company. Most corporations, meanwhile, employ average workers in average jobs that pay just enough to sustain operations and maybe slight growth. That’s it.

Average people are predictable. Outliers are not. Hiring someone average means hiring someone obedient enough to do whatever is said. Hiring someone average means you can pressure their salary lower, and they will accept because they need the money. Why would anyone build their business on rare geniuses with quirks? The answer: usually they don’t.

Or let me rephrase: they do — but the outliers are not hired as outliers. The Gaussian curve is given. Simpletons, average Joes, or Gregory Houses of the world — we still have to eat! When we get hired, it’s usually for positions that could be filled by hundreds of other average Joes. It’s just numbers and statistics.

What They Couldn’t Use

This is my biggest problem with working for corporations. I tried the employee path, I tried the contractor path, but the result was the same. I was hired for a very narrow, specific task. I did the task well, but I also realized that the corporation could not use my full potential. Developing a quality Android app is perhaps 10 percent of my potential. I shine in creativity, problem-solving, leading people (I have proven experience from the non-profit sector). I’m good at hacking. I’m good at music. I hope my writing is decent too. In short, my biggest potential lies in connecting the dots, seeing patterns, integrating and synthesizing something new.

Imagine being an employer trying to hire me. What job would you offer?

I can imagine the interview process right away:

“Remo, you have an impressive résumé! You’ve worked with various technologies, you’ve worked for non-profits, you seem smart. Here’s our offer… You can start as our senior developer next week, coding the new interface for our medical app. It saves lives and makes the world a better place.”

To be fair, not everything in IT is doom and gloom. I had a few projects where my creativity could shine. One time I was hired to work for a large e-shop. They were well-known, with almost limitless money. They could afford to pay us to work on their internal apps and improve them. It was a creative process, slow iteration, and I could do the work in three hours. I finally looked forward to the project. However, nothing lasts forever. After six months, my agency pulled me to another project, and it was a nightmare — an e-banking app. Coding issues aside, the project required strict, joyless work. There was no room for creativity. After a year, I had to quit to keep myself sane.

Working for corporations feels like sacrificing my life. I know what I’m capable of, but corporations don’t give me the chance. They all say I’m smart, but they also realize that I’m not obedient. I am sovereign. I do something because it makes sense to me. If I must do something else just because it’s an order, I feel like a hired bitch. This is barely living. It kills my soul. It’s like Voldemort, barely alive after drinking unicorn blood. That’s how I feel.

The Cathedral for Outliers

My most precious memories are from leading non-profit organizations. I learned a lot. I discovered my talent for leading people. I found out that I love helping others get better and that I love building together. After 14 years in the job market, I finally found my purpose. I found something I’m great at and something that fulfills me. There’s just one tiny problem: work in the non-profit sector is rarely paid.

Yes, I learn a lot serving others, but I still need to drink the unicorn blood just to stay barely alive. I’m not even 40 yet. There has to be a better way.

And there is. What I didn’t tell you is that I’ve always come up with startup ideas. For years I tried to make it big, but under my own terms. While I’m certainly no millionaire, every single failure taught me a lesson. And recently everything clicked into place.

First I thought I was building a podcast studio. Later it was a creative powerhouse. Only recently did I realize what I’m actually building.

I am building a new realm. A cathedral. A sanctuary for rare outliers, like myself. I’m not looking for average people. Instead, I’m inviting all of you who suffer at your jobs because you feel — like me — that your talent is wasted and years are slipping away. I’m not interested in your CVs. Five or ten minutes with you tells me more about your hidden talents than any paper could. I handpick people based on resonance.

I want to help you find your purpose — something where you shine and something you love. I want to help you find what I found for myself. I want you to grow with me. To fund this, we’ll make real-world products. But inside? It’s the same non-profit leadership model I know well. This new realm is my life project. I’m determined to spend decades building it. Maybe I’m naïve. I’m attempting to create a new corporate model. Because it’s new, it naturally lacks a name — I’ve called it An Anti-Corporate Corporation. Will it work with hundreds of people? With thousands? Or is it just a dream, where I barely survive? I wish I could give you the answer, but I don’t know.

But here’s the deal. I’m giving this world an offer: an Anti-Corporate Corporation built not on greed but on resonance. If the world — if you — say yes, the cathedral will be built. And if not, I will have more time for myself. Actually, it’s a win-win for me anyway, because I already left the corporate world, and I’m not coming back.

Whether the world says yes or no, I am free. The cathedral is already rising — because it lives first inside me.