I read the article in the NYTimes this week about how GenX has seen so many of its careers just disappear and how hard it has been to pivot (especially for those in the media/publishing/arts fields). Upon reading it, I felt that at once I had been seen and heard.
Anyone else relate?
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Yes.
You can see a gift link to the article here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bornin1968/s/NcAcbppmp7
Yes. Knowledge and judgement based jobs are more secure but it is going to get really rough in the next decade.
I know plenty people our age getting forced out in their late 40s and early 50s from in demand careers. Very difficult to find anything equivalent in salary.
This will really upset you then : our generation invented/realized potential for the tools putting us out of work.
The generation before us stayed in their jobs and never retired, or they retired with a pension and then took another career opportunity for themselves on top of the first one
Entry level genx folks just couldn’t compete with career professionals from other fields, so we never got careers, just temporary positions and independent contractor jobs
I am there right now. Had to take a simpler job for my last few years before retirement. I could make more if i took more risk, but am planning to just be patient and let it run out.
No. I stayed with the same job my entire life. When I look back, I’m a little amazed that I stuck it out. But in the end, it was 100% worth it.
I did land a job after over a year of looking. And hair coloring. And losing 10 years from my resume.
there was a big thread on this yesterday
there was a big thread on this yesterday over in r/genx
I’ve been through so many careers that my head is on a swivel.
I am an academic librarian who specializes providing access to and managing the storage of our physical collections. I’m painfully aware of the fact that we are now in the closing of the “Gutenberg Parenthesis” but I’m hoping that I will be able to ride out the next two decades before print becomes nothing but a curiosity from a bygone era.
No I don’t relate. I’ve been in IT since 1997. I’ve changed many times to grow within the job. Adapting is key
Yup. I was a professional translator for over 20 years. Now I’m doing a master’s and looking for an internship to start again from the bottom in a completely different field. What can you do? I could sit at home and be sad, or I can try to see it as an opportunity.
There are going to be a lot of people our age looking to retrain
I’m a consultant. My firm couldn’t care less about me or my skills anymore because I’m too pricey. They just want me for my industry contacts.
I get mined for the opportunities I can bring into the firm and as soon as that dries up, I’m dead to them. They’d dump me without a second thought and I have expert level skills in my field.
Early Gen X here.
Major insurer turfed me after 20+ years just prior to my 50th, from Prod Mgmt., Marketing, Entrepreneur in Residence type roles.
Shit opportunities for 5+ years before landing at national broker focused on audience strategy.
Best wishes for success, brutal out there – way too much fuckery.
I was fortunate enough to make the hop 21 years ago from creative to business. I can totally relate, however, to that article and have seen just what it describes happen to the particular creative industry I was a part of.
The trick, if it is one, is to select a field that requires lifetime retraining, such as, medical and mental health. Certain industries now just hire new grads, suck them dry for two or three years and then lay them off and hire new new grads. Or automated the job.
Yeah. I spent 20 years full time at a newspaper until it closed its brick and mortar operation. Another 15 years as a freelancer, while rates dropped and publishers offloaded expenses onto writers. Finally packed it in after the COVID lockdowns and frankly, it was an immense relief.
Kids. Underestimate how much effort their parents worked to make it look easy…
I went from a professional librarian (most of the jobs were going part time sans benefits and the field is way way over saturated) to cybersecurity. I worked 2 part time jobs for a while and pivoted into a support specialist postion for a couple of years while finishing my 2nd masters. it was a little tough but worth it. We are the Goonies generation. we survive.
Watching imbeciles gut federally funded research has been a thrill. Looks like my retirement plans may move up a couple years, as I now appear to be a luxury item.
The article was an accurate reflection of my experience and that of so many others.
When I entered the creative workforce in approx 2000, I worked at a giant media company that we all know well. I made a fairly decent salary, but nothing like what my peers were making in consulting, finance, or more traditional jobby-jobs. But we had a lot more FUN at work, and enjoyed lots of great perks that made the lower salary an acceptable tradeoff. Most of us were the smart weirdos in high school who were suddenly allowed to help make cartoons and TV shows and video games and comic books. As employees we had a generous 401k match, awesome health benefits, subsidized child care, flexible spending accounts, plus lots of fun work trips (Comic-Con every year, or SXSW, E3, you name it) and healthy expense accounts. There was plenty of money and budgets were enormous. Not to mention other little employee discounts and things too numerous to mention like campus events and off-site meetings. Plus we occasionally got to rub elbows with celebrities and “liberate” cool freebies from the premium closet like T-shirts and tote bags and even big ticket items when we got really lucky. We had no idea how good we had it.
Sadly, the next few decades were just a slow degredation of what made working in corporate entertainment such a great job. The endless mergers and cyclical layoffs. The seemingly revolving door of clueless C-suite executives with no plan. Goodbye, 401k match. Goodbye, $20 co-pays. Oh, we’re only sending 4 people to Comic-Con this year, sorry. No more free shit from the premium closet. No more parties with performances by Cirque du Soleil or Eminem. Please turn in your company phone. No more expense accounts. It was the “slow boiling frog” over the course of many, many years.
By the time of my exit, which was around 2022, I was a contract employee without benefits (fortunately my wife had us covered). I was not authorized to travel for work, even when it was kind of necessary. (Forget about business trips for fun.) Colleagues with highly specialized skill sets, some of whom were at the very top of their fields, were getting laid off left and right. The human toll was obvious. And the content was suffering, becoming more vanilla and by-the-numbers with each passing year. Risk tolerance was at an all time low. Forget about innovation or trying new things, the VPs were just keeping their heads down and trying to save their own jobs. It was a time of perpetually “waiting for the other shoe to drop” and hoping your department wasn’t on the chopping block. The anxiety was off the charts.
My friends who still work at legacy media companies are pretty much all different shades of miserable, but thankful to still have a job. I couldn’t work in that environment anymore. I’ve been freelancing the last few years with varying degrees of success. The creative directors I work with don’t seem to be enjoying themselves, it’s just making the donuts while everyone waits for Silicon Valley to swoop in and buy the scraps of what’s left of linear television and pop culture ephemera. I was sad and bitter for a long time, but now I recognize it as simply a matter of marketplace evolution and the blazing speed of technological advancement subverting the business models that once kept the money flowing.
Bottom line: creative jobs will always exist to some extent. But whatever is coming next will look nothing like the world of the 2000s. Don’t be sad that it ended, be glad that it happened.
I have watched multiple friends, especially creatives have to pivot multiple times because of this. I feel fortunate to have always been a bit of a nerd and to have gone into tech. I do think some of this is for the first time in history we have had to adapt to new technology in all fields pretty much constantly. Most fields prior to our generation did not have to adapt more than once or twice in a carreer. Sometimes you just can’t keep up, because of time or money.
I’ve just been lucky. bleeding edge Gen-X (born mid 1965) but I’ve had two fairly solid ‘careers’ and still in the latter one. college dropout (twice) while in broadcast engineering then automation/controls.
so, no. I wasn’t even aware there was a meltdown.
edit: but I DO know that automation/controls and HVAC (because I know this field) is in a SERIOUS glut for knowledgeable and qualified or even interested applicants.
I’m Gen ex…. We were fed a bunch of Crap about college and careers…. Computer Computers, computers,
Are the future, I know two programmers….. some of the most often unemployed folks I know, there are others
I can’t really relate. I was able to ride the wave somehow.
I had a lucrative career in the magazine industry. Pivoted to web design and custom publishing towards the end.
Through great good fortune and luck (and real estate invesment) I was able to retire at age 56.
I worked for money. Once I had enough, I stopped working.
I’ve been in the same career for over 30 years and am still passionate about it. However, I had been applying to job postings because of the perceived instability of government contracting work and I just couldn’t keep it up. I’m tired. I’ve worked my ass off for years. I have to keep doing it because I have young kids at home and bills that have to be paid. Getting rejection after rejection is so disheartening.
I’m fortunate that I can pivot if necessary because I have a lot of skills that are adjacent to my main career, but it’s been so hard to force myself to keep looking and applying.
Given how shitty they’re being in this thread with their hate of Boomers, I don’t have much sympathy for them.
No, but I’ve been in education and that doesn’t change much – or hasn’t yet anyway. Taught for decades and just mvoed up to central office administration last year. Grateful it’s one of the few careers left with a pension, I’ve got about 7 years left until retirement.
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Even for boomers it wasn’t that rare to have a career fade under you. I had 20 good years has a tech writer — some extremely good, during the dotcom era — but the jobs got harder to get, paid less, and were farther away. I switched careers twice; the second one took. I wasn’t all that happy with it, but it came with a pension and has made life much more comfortable in retirement. A fair number of Silicon Valley / media refugees joined the outfit after 2008. And yes, they were Xers.
Oh, tell me about it. I had an amazing job in executive print and web sales that I loved -working for a top 10 newspaper. Theft just as the internet killed paper. That’s not a job that pays anything now and while it does exist it’s quite limited. Thankfully, I was smart enough to take opportunities on the technical side and became a subject matter expert on one of their software installs and that opened the door to other jobs.
I think far too many people pigeonhole themselves based on the workplace/career field and not the foundational skills they curated and applied. Two years ago I worked on a one year contract for a power utility in Design (they renewed my contract, but I wind up leaving so I could travel). I don’t know shit about electricity. Frankly it scares the hell out of me. Well now I do, now I could actually wire up one of those big green transformers. I didn’t even apply for the job. They reached out to me after their staffing company farmed my résumé. They wanted someone that could work in a high-pressure environment (newspaper deadlines, hi-volume sales), had technical skills (SME, buying high-tech newly developed products for the govt) business to business relationship building (b2b sales and procurement) communication skills, and work in confidentiality (had a clearance). I checked all the boxes. I even asked them during my panel interview if they really wanted to hire someone that had absolutely zero electrical experience. Turned out to be one of the best jobs I’ve ever had. I’ve also worked in real estate with a license (but in property management), and in a state prison in finance. 🤷♀️.
It’s really important as we age to keep up with current technology trends.
Not much sympathy as I worked in a volatile industry (by choice) and so I had to pick myself up multiple times and reinvent myself.
To some extent it was feast or famine although I never really feasted as I learned to bank as much as I could to get me through the inevitable famines.
I am a Baby Boomer and it is a fallacy to think that boomers had “steady” careers.
My parents who were products of the Depression worked at one employer for as long as they could and also retired with actual pensions for the most part.
Almost none of my contemporaries worked for the same employer their whole life. A few worked as teachers for the same school system and I know one doctor who worked at Bellevue Emergency as a cardiologist for his whole career.
By the time we Boomers were settling into careers the landscape was changing in the private sector. Private pensions were a thing of the past as 401 (k) plans were adopted. Well paying blue collar jobs were diminishing for the most part as the “Rust Belt” became rusty. The percentage of people in union jobs declined which meant declining benefits for everyone.
I don’t know why there is a myth about how “easy” boomers had it. Most of my contemporaries didn’t buy their first home until their thirties and mortgage interest rates were about 14% when I bought and the only reason it was doable was because I was able to assume a mortgage from the seller AND he financed a portion on a five year note plus I was lucky enough to have parents who were able to help with a modest down payment.
I will cede that housing prices have escalated far in excess of inflation as have rental prices. My first adult apartment was in Manhattan with a fabulous view looking North in the Village – adjusted for inflation the rent was about $2600 which was affordable for – as compared to what it would now rent for which would be $6000 which is more than twice what the inflation adjusted rent would be.
My father saw this coming in the 1980’s. It’s a simple concept: if you invent something that does the work of 100 men, what do you do with those 100 men? Initially, it was thought that retraining would see everyone right and everything would be fine. But eventually it became obvious what was happening: the rich were innovating the poor out of a job.
And here we are.
I’ve seen many friends experience similar things, e.g., journalism majors graduating in the 1980s, but I avoided it myself.
I earned a Computer Science degree in 1980, just as personal computers were seriously penetrating businesses, and 15 years later, homes.
I’d been reading about computers since 1975, and started working with them hands-on in 1976, so I could see where things were headed.
Nevertheless, CS was my 4th college major – it took me a while to zero in on CS as the right fit and opportunity. Music and Russian didn’t seem to have much potential, for example.
I intentionally caught the personal computer wave as it started and stayed in the computer industry for 43 years, my entire career.
All of this is swell, but I still kinda miss running the counter at the video store… it wasn’t a career, but boy did that gig disappear.
I’ve been in the same job for 20 years. I would love to last for 15 more, but I doubt that’s going to happen.
As a late boomer/Generation Jones, I had to reinvent myself several times over the course of my working life to stay ahead of creeping obsolescence. So yeah, I can relate. While finishing up a two-year technical degree I worked part-time repairing audio electronics. After graduation I got a job with IBM just as the old job started to fade away. My first gig with them was repairing Selectric typewriters. After a few years I transferred into a manufacturing plant as an electronics technician; soon that business started to fade and I transferred to a different plant. About the time I finished up my BS, IBM sold off our division to pay the bills. I changed companies, leveraging my experience to get a network management position. I stayed there until a vindictive Gen X boss got a burr up her butt and forced me out; but I changed my career focus a little more and landed on my feet, working there until I retired.
Is there a link to the article?
I used to work on laser printers. HP mostly. It got like being a TV repair man. Technology improved, prices dropped. A lot of machines became cheaper to replace.
Ahh you whippersnappers don’t remember Reagan creating the rust belt.
Not really. I have had three careers because I like trying different things. When I turned 30 I got a wakeup call and I did some soul searching. I put my dreams aside and I asked myself “whats a decent profession that you could you tolerate doing for 8 hours a day 5 days a week and you’d have good pay and you’ll always have options for work/ be in demand?” At the time I went to my local library and perused the occupational outlook handbook put out by dept of labor. It lists every profession, growth potential, education needed, salary, career options etc. I found something that had good potential and I went back to school and I’m still doing it 30 years later and I’ve never had any issues finding work. I had to be realistic and go for something that wasn’t my #1 choice but had stability, options and a future.
Nah. I got the grief done with out of the gate. I got laid off from my first corporate job…shortly after I purchased my first house. Luckily for me, the house was tiny and cheap. Mortgage was a lot less than renting.
Job market was negative, couldn’t afford to move because I spent all my money on a house. Couldn’t sell the house because no one was buying.
Ended up switching to HR. Did really well, eventually ended up running HR at a new company. No kids, no appetite for large purchases = savings and investing.
Ended up getting out of it all. Every company I worked for ended up laying off everyone, or merging then laying off huge numbers of people. I’ve seen HR departments shrink in size, and the one I ran only had a handful of people for a large company.
I did HR consulting after corporate work. I was also the HR department for a handful of small companies. In the past, these would’ve had at least small HR departments.
Job market for HR is bleak and getting worse. One company I worked for moved it all to a regional operation. The local HR department was a phone number on a bulletin board. Pay has fallen off a cliff. HR director pay is now only 55% of what it used to be.
I’m pretty sure if I didn’t get that HR job at a new company, I would have been merged out/laid off/regionalized/take a job at half pay but same duties.
I went the nuclear option and enrolled in a masters program at age 57. I am easily 30 years older than all of my classmates and often my professors. Sometimes I think it was the stupidest thing to do and I don’t even particularly like what I’m doing, but it was either this or poverty wages forever.
I had three different careers during the time from 1978 to 2019. All three were in what ended up being dying professions. Sad to see the changes in employment in my lifetime, but I supposed it’s always felt that way as life as changed over the centuries.
I left graduate school before completing a PhD because the job market for my field of study collapsed (and never recovered). The two long-term careers I have had are still viable. I left the first one after a decade or so because the stress levels were too high. I’m still in the second one (librarianship), which pays very little, but is a lot more enjoyable. It is becoming increasingly difficult for new graduates to get jobs in that field, though.
I went to trade school (AAS Instrumentation Engineering Technology) I’m 37 years deep in this career path and there is still more demand than supply for positions in this field.