Arthur Dent wrote:
Is there a more soulless and anti-human invention than the modern corporation? It's so strange that it has become the dominant institution of our times.
I don't agree. I'm not sure what anti-human means here, but as far as employment goes I've worked for small businesses and large corporations and the best experiences by far were large corporations. The small businesses I've worked for were run by people who were stressed out all the time and hardly had time for anything but the business. They typically wring as much as they can out of you for as little money as possible. Benefits are lousy if they exist at all. I typically had no idea how my performance was judged and would instead hear about any complaints through the grapevine. I thought I had found a good one, but I'm basically going through this all over again. My current boss changes procedures and company structure every few months. He issues mandates and won't follow through. Instead of talking to bad employees one on one, he complains at meetings to everyone.
The one thing I can say is that small businesses tend to be more flexible. But they then expect you to be more flexible as well.
The large companies I've worked for gave me feedback, trusted me to do my job and left me alone unless there was a problem. I got benefits and regular hours. Right now I'd love to have all that back.
I'm sure there's good small business owners out there, but I haven't found them.