When you hammer a nail into the wall at home, you do it because you value the wall with the nail more than without it. The need to hang something on the wall forces you to hammer into it. When the work is done, you receive some kind of benefit. The prospect of this benefit is what gets you off the sofa. If there were no benefit, you would just keep lying there with a book in your hands and a cat at your feet.
If you are “hired for a job,” this happens only because the “work” produces some result. And this result is useful to other people. Why? How do you find out about this? Very simply: these people are willing to hand over their money for the product that your “work” creates. Now let’s think about this—how many of you are actually involved in the end result? Surely, a fairly large number of people reading this don’t even know exactly what the company they work for produces.
Corporations are like little states. In them, as in a state, people busy themselves producing reports and work for the boss rather than for the result. Corporate divisions are primarily occupied with finding and allocating budgets. You have probably noticed how often “new models” of corporate products appear these days? This is because some department of the corporation—whether marketing or advertising—has secured new funds. They pushed through the appropriate budget with management. Now thousands of people make the “new” product, thousands advertise it, and thousands try to explain to the consumer how the new product differs from the old one.
However, sooner or later, the laws of nature catch up with corporations as well. If people are not willing to pay for their products, corporations suffer losses, and then the layoffs begin. Again, they fire whoever and whoever they don’t like.