KylePaice.com

I was reading Steve Jobs' Wikipedia page today, and this quote totally stopped me.

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water to children, or do you want a chance to change the world?"

This sums it up perfectly for me. Sure, you can stay in that cushy corporate job for the rest of your life. You can sit comfortably above a group of people, and still have a bunch of supervisors above you to pass the buck to. Do what you're told, shuffle some papers around (none of which really mean anything), and not rock the boat in the slightest. Then you can call it a life at 65.

Yeah, you might grow wealthy in the process, but really: What have you accomplished? You entered an organization that was already firmly established, shuffled around within it for a while, and then left. If you think about it (or have worked at a large company), you realize it's really not that hard. Stressful at times, but never actually difficult.

So far, it's been MUCH more interesting to take on some real responsibility, and try to help build something great.

I always used to think that people who ran around the office or had two cell phones on the table during lunch were super important. That they had so much going on in their lives that they had to have two dedicated numbers (and a wireless internet card) to keep up with it all. I thought I was important to have these multiple modes of communication.

As with all of my other expectations about life in Corporate America, I was completely wrong.

You don't have two cell phones because you are important. You have two cell phones so that the important people can find you, and then shovel all of the miscellaneous crap they don't feel like doing into your inbox. That's why you've got to be reachable, because your time isn't your own. You've got the electronic leash to prove it.

That CrackBerry is your all-purpose excuse-remover. You'll get e-mails at three in the morning: A client threw a temper-tantrum in that night's meeting because the PowerPoint presentation wasn't in 12-point Arial font. And guess what? That had better be fixed and sent back out before your 7:30am meeting the next morning. What? You were asleep? Bull. You have a BlackBerry. Keep the ringer on. You're supposed to be on top of these things, that's why we give you the damn thing.

The real-life Ari Gold wouldn't have more than one cell phone - and there's no way in hell anyone other than his assistant and wife would have the number. Being unreachable, that's power.

It was our first day at the firm. They'd herded about a hundred of us fresh-faced college grads into a conference room built for fifty.

We all walked in with a deserved (we thought) swagger, because the hard part had been done. We'd gone to the right schools, gotten the right jobs, and were getting sweet compensation packages with big signing bonuses. Our lives were going to be on autopilot for the next forty years, during which we'd grow rich, happy, fulfilled, and generally be the envy of everyone we knew.

Then a bell rang. Thinking it was someone's mobile, I ignored it. As the sound got louder, I turned to see a thirty-something HR executive shaking a servant's bell in our faces. No one moved. We were told the bell meant it was time for us to take our seats. Her tone was patronizing, like she was speaking to small children (or someone about to jump off a bridge).

Looking across at everyone's faces, it looked like that scene in A Bronx Tale where Sonny locks the door to the Chez Bip and says to the biker gang, "Now you's can't leave."

Crap. I'd already blown away half my bonus on bars and other frivolous crap during my senior year of college, and -- judging by everyone's expressions -- I was pretty sure most of the others had too. We'd have to work for two years before our bonuses vested (meaning we were legally obligated to pay it all back if we left before then).

It was the ultimate "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" moment. For better or worse, they owned us. So I did the only thing that made sense: Lied to myself and said this sort of ridiculousness was an isolated incident.