Much of my adult life I worked in in a relatively small industry - demolition, and abatement of hazardous materials (asbestos, lead, etc.) in a small state Hawaii. I had an excellent relationship with all of the State and county officials responsible for regulating our industry, and knew almost all of the people at various contractors would subcontract our company. I primarily worked with family owned companies. I got constantly recruited by larger corporate entities but always said no.
I made less than I would have at larger companies, but had almost complete control of my time. I enjoyed that type of environment after having spent eight years in the Army. There are always tradeoffs working for family owned companies. At the last company I worked at I got along incredibly well with the owner, but clashed with his daughter. I told him once I charge you this much to work for you, if part of my duties are listening to your daughter be abrasive are part of that we are going to need add $10,000+ to my salary, I won't do it without charging you. He talked to his daughter.
Working at an institution where I would have no leverage, no matter the prestige or the compensation sounds absolutely horrific. I'm retired now and somewhat gladly, though I've seem to fill that retirement with as much or more activity than I had when I was employed.
Did you blow things up? :D
Family companies definitely have the pros and cons. One of the cons is that some owners will take business activities "personally" when they are not. This can cause a lot of issues for employees, that don't happen in larger companies.
I wonder if the compensation is missing at JP Morgan though?
More tearing things down, the blowing things up was when I was a solider.
I've experienced this directly :)
After the Army, my first job was an an environmental consultant working for my mother in law in Hawaii. During my enlistment in the Army the base I was stationed at was in Upstate New York, and bitterly cold, moving to Hawaii after that sounded amazing!
About 5 years after moving to Hawaii my wife decided she wanted a divorce. Perhaps a month after that, and while I was on a different island in Hawaii at a job site, I came back to the hotel I was staying at for the project, and had a fax waiting for me stating my employment would be terminated in two weeks. I decided I did NOT want to spend the next weeks working long hours for a project that wouldn't benefit me.
I let the client now I wouldn't be there the next day and flew back to Oahu where I lived the next day, and let my soon to be ex-mother in law know we could turn terminate my employee effective immediately. Fun times.