I’m with you on all that. What happened to me was that I ended up in large corporations that were poorly managed and kept cancelling projects. Also, during those last years I was a business analyst in IT. Now, that used to be great, but when I joined a company that did almost all it’s work through vendors, I found myself almost comically redundant. I was close to retirement anyway so I just stayed the course as it got progressively worse.
Then the virus hit and we went WFH. My job was almost all meetings. And those meetings were almost completely worthless. 15 people trying to talk over each other with bad connections, bad english, etc. I tried to create a virtual white board on most of them even though I was just a low level “attendee” in most of them. That helped a lot, but still. They were mostly an exercise in futility.
I did that for a year and retired. My contacts in the company say it is MUCH worse than it used to be and people are almost waiting for the whole thing to get shut down, and checking on a daily basis - for the last year. Most of the truly good people have left.
This is a large and ongoing concern. It’s not going anywhere. But I think it very much speaks to the concept that most people don’t do anything at work. There are all sorts of articles and youtube videos about it. And it destroys people and their motivation.
Now that I’m retired, I get to choose what I do and my choices involve actually getting stuff DONE. And stuff I, personally, want done. It’s empowering.
For most people, the job just keeps you alive with the means to feed yourself and put a roof over your head. That is why I think those that own and run their own businesses are the “happiest” people in many ways. They spend their time working toward their own goals. And yes, as an employee you can make doing your job well your own goals, but the measure of success is imaginary.
I have a huge amount of respect for people who run their own business. Huge. They work their asses off, and their paycheck is dependent on their own effort...and not guaranteed.
I recognize the inherent value in real human contact, and a zoom meeting doesn’t replace it. I do a lot of meetings these days, and in some of them (even large ones) I am the only person with a camera on.
You know a lot of people simply are not paying attention in the least. It is my effort to show people I am paying attention. Plus, I am one of those people whose face is completely transparent, so the people I work with use me for that function to convey emotion to vendors...:) They don’t say it aloud of course, but from their comments, it is pretty clear...:)
Eh. I would retire now, but...I just don’t think I am ready yet. I like hearing from people like you who are, and live vicariously through you!