The last place I worked - a commercial solar energy company - was 35 people when I started in '07. It ballooned to over 500 in 5 or 6 countries before a sudden "right sizing" move in '08. I stayed aboard through about 2 years of no money and no direction, waiting for it to implode. I figured I'd get a good deal on the stuff in my shop in any case.
Then one day there was a big meeting. Massive trays of dot-com era sushi, bottles of champagne, booze, the whole deal. "WooHoo! We're "merging" with (huge multi-national silicon company)"
Next thing I've got an army of McKinsey consultants all the way up my ass trying to determine how that can make things cheaper. My little world, it turns out, was about the only aspect of what the company did that was functioning correctly. Not that anyone had any idea ~what I actually did~.
I was pressed into a massive design effort for a product which I repeatedly stated aloud I was not qualified to design. A factory in Malaysia was constructed at a cost of many, many million $USD to manufacture this product. I was on conference calls ate dark-30 in the morning and late at night to accommodate the management in India, China and Malaysia.
It was incredibly frustrating. My boss, who'd moved halfway across the country months earlier had effectively checked out and offered zero support, The company was so rigidly vertically integrated that I functioned in a near-total vacuum.
The only upside was that were paying me quite well. Still I set a one year limit on how long I'd stay - my retention bonus stock was mine after that date.
As the clock was running out, I got a call from someone I'd worked for a decade ago, back when I was in biotech. he offered a contract position at a big government entity everyone has heard of doing lab instrument stuff. It paid about the same as the hateful job, and was fewer hours - but with zero benefits - a 1099 contract gig.
I took it in a heartbeat, and have left the world of not knowing if my employer or job will be there in 6 months. I've taken on a couple more clients to help cover taxes and insurance, and it's a little funny to get used to how different it is, but I'm really genuinely relaxed for the first time in years and years.
I'm never going back.
