Anyone else feel like Australian corporate life has become completely cooked?
Not sure if this is a rant or if I’m just burnt out, but Australian corporate life feels genuinely cooked at the moment.
Hiring is a mess. So many jobs feel like they’re already filled before they’re advertised, but you still have to jump through 3–4 interviews, do the awkward “why do you want to work here” dance, then get ghosted or sent a generic rejection three weeks later.
Then you finally get a job and half the time it’s endless restructures, new priorities, new managers, new acronyms, new “ways of working”, but somehow the actual workload only ever goes one way.
The fake positivity does my head in too. Everyone pretending to be excited about “change” and “culture” while quietly drowning. Morning teas, RUOK emails, wellness webinars, all while people are doing the work of two or three roles and stressing about rent, groceries, fuel, mortgages, insurance, whatever else has gone up this week.
And the commute stuff is insane. Dragging people back into offices so they can sit on Teams calls, lose two hours a day travelling, and spend more money they don’t have, all for “collaboration”.
I don’t know. It just feels like the social contract has completely fallen apart. Work harder, get paid less in real terms, live further away, own less, pretend to be grateful, and keep smiling.
Maybe I’m just jaded, but it honestly feels like a lot of us are becoming strangers in our own country. Like everything is technically “fine”, but it doesn’t feel like it’s built for normal people anymore.
Anyone else feeling this, or have I just had one too many corporate town halls?