Asklemmy

What job are you doing that isn't having most of the value you made taken from you?

I'm a highly skilled person, I've been in corporate America for 2 decades and have a long list of skills and abilities and work hard.

I've literally generated multiple millions of profit for companies I've been at. Did I ever see an extra penny? A bonus? A % raise? Anything beyond the normal bare-bones standard "cost of living raise" (which never ACTUALLY goes up as much as CoL does BTW) ? Nope. And that's part of the issue we are talking about. I could be a STELLAR employee and generate the lion's share of profit OR I could be a lazy unproductive idiot that costs the company money and you know what? Neither of those things changes pay for me. What does? How well liked I am, how much I brownnose, who I shake hands with, who I know, what shady deals I may do in secret, etc. But I have integrity and I refuse to lie, cheat, grift and schmooze my way up like most execs do.

It is EXTREMELY common to work your ass off, earn some CEO and shareholders millions and billions, then they can lay you off or you die and no one cares. They milked every last drop of productivity from you and will happily discard you at any time.