This is why 14 of the last 16 years I've been a freelancer. I worked for a corporation for about 18 months last year, to catch a breather on insurance costs, and to "prove" my "market value" to other freelancers - but they didn't value me or my experience at all.

I spent the last 12 of those 18 months trying to tell our "leadership" how and why their big, expensive "commercial sales initiative" was failing - due to a lack of caring about smaller customers, and a foolish attempt to force enterprise pricing models on small and medium sized businesses.

I was told to stay in my lane.

Last August, they closed the commercial sales wing of the company, and laid me off. "It just didn't work," was what they told me.

DUH.

Fortunately - I worked with a bunch of younger dudes, and (having learned all of these lessons and more from my corporate stint in the late '90s) I rarely ever worked past 5pm, or worried about work after working hours.

Here's the kicker. They just reached back out to me after only 5 months, and tried to lure me back to the "enterprise sales team" with a much higher base salary. Having watched the other sales folks leaving the company one-by-one over the last 5 months, I know the company is nosediving. They still haven't learned how to listen to their people.

I'm halfway tempted to go turn in an application to replace the CEO and give a shot at turning the company around again. I know several of the folks on the board of directors, and could point out that the dude they hired to take them to IPO is completely off-base.

They're paying over $1mil a month for an office space that's never more than 1/3 full, and only because they require RTO 3 days a week.

And since they can't figure out how to get their support team to talk with their sales team, or their product team??? They're on a crash course to hell.

Here's to the freelancing life all the way. Where at least we get to make or break our way to success on our own terms.