Listed company and status?

Does finding a job in a listed company on NYSE or Nasdaq have any social status in US? In my country, Japan, finding a job in a listed company on Tokyo Stock Exchange or others has some sort of social status because it promises you high salary and stable employment.

Men want to find a job in a listed company. And women want to get married with a man who is working for a listed company. Is that the case in US?

not entirely.

the very best listed companies maybe have that sort of status [MicroSoft, Google, IBM, maybe a few others] BUT

in America, high salary and stable employment frequently do not go together any more. People with high skills have high salary, and they may need to change jobs every few years for any or no (logical) reason.

The economic processes of "creative destruction" are fairly advanced in America and all manner of once very stable companies are in serious danger of going bankrupt [Ford Motor Company -- and their US rivals -- are examples of this].

When this happens, many employees who thought they had stable employment may suddenly find themselves redundant and thus laid off.

The ranks of middle management, once well paid and stable, at nearly all of our older firms have been heavily reduced by the information technology revolution. Their tasks used to involve coordinating the activities of many otherwise separate people who now do their own coordinating via the Internet.

Here in America, one of the frequently mentioned goals of about 1/3rd of the work force is to "work for yourself" -- be self-employed and thus have no boss.

Since starting and later selling your own company is still a very viable route to becoming mildly rich, this makes sense in our country. That many Americans have poor social skills (or hugely bloated egos) and thus do not work well with others inflames their desires to be independent.

For those women interested in marrying a man who will be successful [still the majority, imho] the process of judging which man has the right degree of prospects is more difficult than you describe in Japan. As always with humans, if a woman chooses a man who is not successful enough she will have regrets for all her days. On the other hand, if she chooses a man who proves to be too successful, she will worry all of her days that he will leave her for another [usually younger and sexier] woman.


I hope that my words have shed a small amount of light into the darkness and confusion so evident in our society.

When external guideposts are not available, one must steer by one's internal values and one's lessons learned.