This is very belated, but I'll throw my $.02 into the mix.
I've been going through a similar phase for quite a while now so I'll offer a few thoughts, many of which are half-baked and others which I've pondered at length.
I am a bit of a job hopper. Used to be that my usual length at a company was about 2 years. Usually I left because a better opportunity came up, but I was also fed up at the same time. The problem was, without fail, typical corporate "structure" issues:
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The commandments:
1. All ideas must come down from disconnected strangers from "above" because the low people who have to work intimately with their tasks every day, all day, couldn't possibly know better.
2. A group cooperating together and working toward a goal is much less effective than the One Manager taking complete control over every task, break, time clock punch, conversation and decision.
B. To improve the One Manager's effectiveness, stop all "productive" work and have meetings at least once per week.
5. To improve the One Manager's effectiveness, throw paperwork at the problem. To introduce the new paperwork, create a PowerPoint presentation and use every transition effect available to impress the lowly employees, then see #3 above.
4. Employees must be referred to as "associates" even though the origin of nor reason for this practice is known. All the other managers from last summer's seminar did this, so you must do this too.
7. Of utmost importance is to create a working atmosphere throughout the company that your thumb is firmly held down on each and every employee...er..."associate".
8. Reprimand often and create a paper trail for each one. This makes it easy to fire anyone at any time and harder for "terminated" employees to receive unemployment compensation. Change policy often and/or add new policies weekly. Before long it will be impossible for anyone to follow them all. Reprimands for everyones' file!
If you follow the above instructions, you will have totally switched the focus of the company from delivering quality product to a well-oiled mass of corporate soldiers. The creative and talented individuals who would be able and willing to challenge the logic of your strategy will leave on their own early-on in the process. Congratulations!
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Sound familiar?
I realized long ago that the answer for me would have to be either self-employment or finding a small company to call "home". I haven't worked out the discipline to be self-employed, but I recently found a good company that could hardly be smaller - 3 of us, one of whom is the owner. The reason my salvation had to be in a small company is that, for a really small company to succeed, the decisions have to make sense. Do that corporate "policy" junk and it will go under in a hurry. Large companies can go under too, but they have so much corporate money and credit that they can feed off that tit for a very long time before they finally call it quits. The other thing I like about my current job is that, when he started the place, he decided to focus on high-quality, interesting, precision machining. We don't do drudgerous multi-thousand-piece runs. We'll occasionally do 100 pieces but normally it's between 5 and 20. This means the actual work is changing often and keeps it interesting. Since high-quality is the highest priority, we are never pressured to work faster (other than self-imposed internal pressure I guess). We have all been in this field for quite a while though so we work very efficiently just from experience. No worries.
OK, I'm basically ranting so far, but this is what I've found to work for me:
They say working in a field that you are passionate about is the key to happiness, but that's not true at all unless you consider where you decide to place that passion. You have to look under a lot of rocks, but if you look enough you can find a place worthy of your talents.
You work your best hours of most days at your job. If you hate your job, then the money looks much less appealing. I could make more money in several large companies around here, but the daily atmosphere where I work now is very positive (unlike anywhere I've been in over 20 years) and that's worth quite a bit of money to me.
Luckily I've spent a lot of time creating a relatively frugal lifestyle and that helps a lot. If I had to, I could almost collect aluminum cans by the highway and take them to the recycler to make the house payment. When I work on my house, it's almost always the result of deciding to put to use some pile of lumber or rocks or whatever that someone else decided to throw away. One example: My yard is fairly large and that means I need a riding lawnmower, and even that is a scavenged system. Over the years I've dragged home five of the same model mower because people were throwing them out. Mowers are always breaking down and I have two working and three for parts. This life is a little more hassle than the typical "throw money at the problem" style that most everybody I know have, but I think it keeps me a little more engaged too though.
Anyways, for me dealing with life has become a two-pronged approach. 1) create a frugal lifestyle so it's not so difficult to live within my means and 2) Find a job which, though maybe I don't "look forward" to going to every morning (i.e. if I won the lottery I'd retire in a second), once I get there it is a pretty good experience with people that I respect and usually enjoy being around, and they respect my abilities & opinions too.
So that's the "job" part of life anyway. The multitude of other facets in life are still a challenge of course, but those don't seem to take such a big chunk out of my soul.
Sorry for the long post.
