yeah, and the point is they're all hyperbolic caricatures. I know that sounds like a cop out, but seriously, not to kiss my own ass or anything, but I think the last few years of my career make that point extremely clear.
My first job I got hired to an 8 person company by my best friend from high school / college. He sat next to me, and I lived at his place until I had enough money to get my own. We lived with another one of his friends (who was my boss), and the guy who sat in the desk next to me. So basically half the company went home every night to the same apartment and got drunk, then went to work together the next day. We also had 2 long term devs who basically trained us all like mentors.
Skip forward 2 years, the Exact Same company had 35 people, and was owned by a sales guy that thought programmers were a waste of budget every year. We were regularly getting yelled at by sales people who were hired within the last month to deliver things that simply couldn't be done on a computer. My mentors were pushed into off site sales positions, and my friend who hired me into the company got himself fired, so he could collect unemployment while he immigrated to New Zealand. The week before I finally quit, the new CEO held all the developers in a room to tell us that we needed to work from home, basically because we collectively weren't worth the lighting bill of the room we were in.
My next job after that was in a traveling consulting role. I spent 6 weeks in a top floor suite of a hotel in Seattle, getting trained by Microsoft personnel for my new role. I got a larger salary, and it was all expenses paid, plus some. Talking champagne and steak, all expenses paid every night, for months.
Then I worked from my bedroom for 3 months, and had meetings of instant messenger.
Then I took a job within the company where every Monday I commuted via fucking airplane to texas, to work in a cubicle farm. My PM on that project used to be a personal friend of Tim Leary, the guy who brought acid to the hippie movement in the 60s. So we basically worked our asses off all day, then got drunk around random cities in the US.
Fast forward 6 months, and he rolled off the project and was replaced by some brazillian millionaire. He had us working 16 hour days in a cubicle farm, 6-7 days a week, because he figured out a loophole in company policy where once we worked more than 60 hours a week, we could all get overtime money. I basically paid off my college loans that way, but gained 25 pounds and lost contact with a bunch of friends. Office Space looks like peanuts compared to that.
So I quit again and worked for the greatest company I've worked for yet. Great boss, ping pong table, great team. Lost 20 lbs. 40 hours a week max. I play mario kart during lunch every day, or walk home for lunch, because their office is a few blocks away.
But we recently got a new manager, and I was afraid the new manager was going to fire me recently, because I just got that vibe from him that he doesn't like me. Instead I just got a big raise.
If the above story doesn't make it extremely clear that you can literally find any type of job environment that you want, I don't know what does. As the top poster says, you work for people, not companies, and there are a million different types of people in this world. You'll get a feel for it through your 20s.
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