The Unbearable Struggle of Being a Quiet Thinker in the Corporate World

Is there a place in business for intellectual types to succeed?

Your twenties will fly by with the ferocious speed of a storm.

And then your thirties will race past you like a Formula One car.

You know what they all say about building your career?

Learn as much as you can in your twenties, build out your career in your thirties, and strive towards leadership positions in your forties.

For better or worse, the odds are stacked against me.

Starting My Business Career Later Than Most

You see, I had a late start. I went to the military for two years when I was eighteen. Not because I wanted to, but because my country mandated it.

Then, when I went to university, I discovered the life of the mind. Reading, thinking, reflecting, pondering, writing — that was what I truly wanted to do. Not business or sales. My aha moment!

So, when I had the opportunity to apply for a master’s degree scholarship, I went for it. I went on to graduate school.

During graduate school, my rose-tinted glasses turned dull.

It turned out that academia was an industry of a different kind — the academic kind.

“Publish or perish” was the mantra of the day, and it probably still is. I saw my professors publish paper after paper, all on the same research topics, all writing in a certain way.

With the low stipends that you get as a Ph.D. student — which can last 4–5 years — and then the financial uncertainty you get as a post-doctorate, I cut my losses.

I jumped ship and went into business — specifically, into marketing.

Why? Well, I wanted to understand what makes people tick. I wanted to know what could make people spend thousands of dollars of money on a piece of tanned animal skin. I thought that would be my ticket to success.

I knew I could learn that, intellectually, in marketing.

The Brutality of the Corporate World

Well, the first three-and-a-half years didn’t go too well.

I had to change my mindset moving from academia into industry, and I believe did the best I could. But I struggled mightily, all the same.

To say it was rough is to put it mildly. The corporate world was brutal. It was a world of action, not ideas. It was a mode of operation foreign to me.

Selling did not come naturally to me. I struggled to explain myself simply — and I still do. Two thousand things are going on in my head at the same time.

I knew two things back then. First, I wanted to work in marketing to jumpstart my business career. I believed (and still do) Peter Drucker’s maxim that there are only two functions in business — and marketing was one of them.

Secondly, I wanted to work in Japan. So, I joined a company that seemed to promise the opportunity for both.

In the end, I only worked in marketing for a year before I was transferred to sales. The only marketing task, I did was translating copy that came from Japan in Japanese, into English, for the Singapore market. And writing copy for Facebook posts.

Unfortunately, there was hardly any competitor or consumer analysis. Most of what I did was promotionally driven.

When I finally got the chance to transfer to the Japan office — the headquarters of the company I had joined in Singapore, I took it. Well, that didn’t go too well.

The late nights working in the dark.

The inefficient meetings where nothing got decided.

The endless paper in an era of laptops and digital devices.

I had to prioritize my mental health. Before I went crazy, I left.

My working environment now is less toxic, but I still work long hours. I think it’s the nature of the marketing job to be all-consuming.

Well, we all need to eat somehow.

At least now I don’t have to deal with so much physical paper.

Too Old to Start Over

And now, as I enter my late thirties, I look back at my career and realize that ten years have passed since I left academia. I no longer have the same energy, passion, or ambition I had when I first joined the corporate world.

I don’t have the energy to join a startup. Nor do I have any experience in “growth-hacking” — the marketing skills that are valued by startups.

I’m also too old to start anew in a completely different industry. I can’t outcompete the young folks fresh out of university. Generation Z. The real digital natives.

I’m a digital fraud, even as I write about Bitcoin, meme tokens, and NFTs.

The MBTI personality test suggests that my type could do well at programming. I investigated that. I’ve tried a few times to try programming, but I could never focus long enough to learn it. Maybe I have a mild form of ADHD?

And anyway, it’s probably too late for me to try to be a developer. There is too much competition out there, and the unicorn bubble seems to have burst.

The Unbearable Struggle of Being a Quiet Thinker in the Corporate World

I had a conversation with some friends recently. We all wondered why we ended up with somewhat mediocre jobs despite our reasonable intellect.

This might sound arrogant, but it is not intended to be. “Intellectual” isn’t used in any pejorative sense — just as a mental inclination and predisposition.

We think we know why.

The corporate world isn’t made for intellectual, reflective people to succeed. It’s a game created by go-getter types, the people who are skilled at managing upwards and downwards.

Leaders don’t need to be intellectual — they just need to be people-smart, ambitious, and driven — and I’m not.

Sure, my corporate experience helped me to “fix” some of that. The meetings, cajoling, negotiations, and presentations gave me some people and communication skills, but I always felt like an imposter and a giant conman.

I was never building on my strengths and interests, only fixing my weaknesses. And that is the problem with the corporate mold — if you don’t fit, there’s something wrong with you to be fixed!

So, every time someone asks me, where I see myself in five years — my honest answer is that I want to start my own thing.

I want to have my own gig.

Rediscovering a Life of Reading and Writing

By chance, I stumbled upon Medium. I started to rediscover what I probably still do best after all these years — reading, thinking, reflecting, and writing.

Slowly, I began to build up a library of content.

It’s not academic research, and it doesn’t pretend to be. I’m freed from the conventions of academic writing, and I certainly get to reach a larger audience.

There is some pressure to put out new work regularly — otherwise, your views tank, and then it takes a while to build it up again.

But I would write anyway — because writing is what keeps me sane in an insane, uncaring world that only cares for career paths, KPIs, and corporate missions.

If you enjoy what I write, I thank you for it.

Despite not really liking self-promotion, I realize we live in a cruel world, and we have to find a way to survive.

If you enjoy my writing, you can support me and other indie writers on Medium by subscribing. You get unlimited access to the platform.

It’s only $5 a month. A portion of your monthly fee will also be paid to me if you use the link below to join Medium as a subscriber, at no additional cost to you.

I would be grateful for your support if you use the referral link here to support my writing: https://medium.com/@alvintanwx/membership

© Alvin T. 2022

The author is an editor of Japonica and also writes on a wide variety of topics. His key topics are society, culture, modern work, and cryptocurrency, with the occasional fictional story, creative piece, or reflective essay. Discover his most-read stories here.

If these topics interest you, consider subscribing to receive new stories from the author via e-mail.