I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

Corporations don't like employees to write blogs, and are now making it a point in employment interviews and contracts. Isn't that a riot? They only fear being exposed for the weak, self-serving ego-maniacal entities they were. Corporations that embraced employee well-being, nurturing environments, fair practices, and world beneft wouldn't fear a blog. They'd love one. So if a company fears being written about by its employees, it seems that it knows what it's up to, and that it's not very good....and so it seeks to limit your ability to notice and comment on it.

One can almost see the agitated HR rep (who has completely swallowed the Corporate Kool-Aid): "Now how are we going to keep up this combative, ego-driven culture that has made us so successful if you keep commenting on it to the outside world? Really, we can't have that..."

Isn't corporate culture an oxymoron? What's cultural about corporations? Culture implies some artistic achievement, some aesthetic sensibility, and some sort of highly functioning social system.

Corporations are authoritarian regimes wherein everyone is expected to conform, leave any non-corporate bits of themselves and their lives at the door, and give their all to an entity that has only its own self-serving interests at heart. The moment they falter, that same entity will swiftly act on them, with demands for performance improvement, and threats of termination.

Corporations harness resources and exploit them to their fullest measure. Resources are natural and human. Try to remember that while you are being exploited, and try to give only what you are paid for. Not anything more, because you'll never be compensated for it. You might be promoted, but only because they realize they can get 60 hours per week out of you for the price of 40. Does it really matter what particular tier on the ladder you are standing on while delivering that excess?

No. They'll still expect 60. And if you give 60, why not 65, 70, or 80? The problem with that system is that the only way to win is to eventually live at the office.

And that's what they want most of all. Not for you to be a nice, balanced, well-rounded person with a happy life of your own, only part of which is dedicated to work.

They want your soul. They want your slavery.

Why give this?

See things as they really are.

Give them only what they pay for, and nothing more.