“This isn’t the typical ‘side hustle’ trend where people drive Uber after work or sell crafts on Etsy. These are people systematically reclaiming their working hours to build real businesses while maintaining the security of corporate income. Using the skills, networks, and even office space their employer provides to prototype the work they actually want to be doing.”

“They’re not quitting, nor are they falling into the existential crisis you might expect. Instead, they’re using the corporate infrastructure, the steady salary, the laptop, the stability, as a platform for building something real.”

“All of this means the corporate role isn’t dying in some dramatic collapse. It’s dying like religion died for many people, slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.”

“The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it’s building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes—that faith is evaporating.”

– Alex McCann,
“How to Keep Your Soul in a Corporate Job,” Oct 4, 2025