Escaping the Corporate Hamster Wheel

We’ve all heard it before—the tale of the IT professional who decides they’ve had enough of corporate nonsense and sets out to build something better. You know the type: high-margin pressures, body-leasing gigs, and career ladders that lead straight to burnout. Our Founder was one of them. Like so many others, he was tired of working in a system where employees were treated like disposable tools and success meant sacrificing your sanity at the altar of profit margins.

So what did he do? He left it all behind and founded a company built on the radical idea that work should be enjoyable. (Shocking, I know.) No more climbing the corporate ladder, no more hamster wheel. Instead, he envisioned a place where self-organization thrived, collaboration was real, and—get this—people were actually motivated to work. The goal wasn’t just to make money; it was to create an environment where work made sense, and people didn’t feel like they were selling their souls for a paycheck.

But here’s the thing they don’t tell you: escaping the hamster wheel isn’t as easy as it sounds. Sure, you can create a company with flat hierarchies and Agile ideals, but the moment you think you’ve outsmarted the system, reality hits you like a buggy code deployment on a Friday afternoon. You can’t escape the grind forever, not when your days are filled with dystopian IT-security nerds, aggressive buyers from the automotive sector, and project trolls who lurk in every sprint planning meeting.

As the Founder soon realized, the business world isn’t exactly hospitable to idealists. There’s always another crisis on the horizon: an OEM suing you over some trivial “misunderstanding,” a cybersecurity audit that turns your life upside down, or project deadlines that push the company to the brink. Some projects will bring you to the edge of ruin, while others dangle the promise of sudden riches just out of reach. Welcome to the rollercoaster of running an IT firm.

But despite all the chaos, despite the endless client demands and moments of near-disaster, the Founder never wavered from his original vision: a company where people, not profits, came first. Where work didn’t just mean clocking in and grinding through the day, but actually meant something. Because, at the end of the day, it’s not the project that matters—it’s the people who make it happen.

So, is the dream of escaping the corporate hamster wheel realistic? Maybe not entirely. The hamster wheel follows you, no matter where you go. But in this company, we’ve learned to slow it down a little, to make the ride more bearable. And if we can do that—if we can create a place where people actually want to work—maybe we’ve achieved something after all.

Welcome to Lost in Digitalization. Buckle up.

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