You’ll survive if you remember two things, everyone is your enemy and what side you take depends on who you are talking to.

Take a leaf from Frank Underwoods character.

I survive by creating micro-cultures

Hnggggggggg….

*loads shotgun*

jamj is right, the key is just to make sure your group is working well and forget the rest. Of course it’s likely to collapse around your ears when you get reshuffled but that’s a future worry.

If you are finding the corporate BS too much as someone at the “working level” then I highly recommend you avoid becoming a line manager. At a big company it comes with another layer of BS and tedious processes.

Building a team is actually fun and rewarding. Leading them is also mostly rewarding if the team is doing something interesting.

But getting to the end of the year and subjecting them to a demoralising performance review process that you have no real input into because everyone has been adjusted to fit into the ‘bell curve’, and having to dig up petty negative feedback to justify a pitiful payrise and average ‘grade’ to someone who’s doing a perfectly good job, and you can’t really fault. And is actually your friend too.

That’s not fun.

jamj has the same idea as me, and you can just about keep yourself sane the rest of the year by doing that, but at review time you’ve got to put yourself face down in the trough of BS and stay there until Christmas

Thank God that’s not my job anymore, and they’d be happening right now too 😀

You could try working at a charity.
You spend a significant portion of your waking hours at work, going to work or thinking about work.
Trying to choke it down by saying it’s just work, it’s not my life is kinda blinkered.

Third sector has its own issues, but in general you have the knowledge you’re working towards something positive not that you make the company x times as much as they pay you

Best advice I ever got, from a guy that I wanted to throttle:

“Remember, it’s all just a game”

I only need to do six months (contractor), but at the moment six weeks feels daunting.

Smile and invoice.

You could try working at a charity.

You could, but dont think that mean less BS, politics and high AQs – at least not necessarily

Third sector has its own issues, but in general you have the knowledge you’re working towards something positive not that you make the company x times as much as they pay you

I work towards making the Health services work better, making business work more efficiently so that they can make money pay tax and contribute to society. Maybe not as noble but just as worthwhile at times.

I do love these threads sometimes as it really does pick out some of the “doesn’t play well with others” 😉