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Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

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Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#81

Post by ptero »

The fact that 1 in 4 white collar workers are not getting raises or promotions might not be a bad thing. As white collar workers get older they frequently stop optimizing for money and start optimizing for time, flexibility and other things and be totally OK with no promotions as the trade-off.

I personally find the US setup where often the longest serving and oldest workers would be earning the most, strange. Even when those oldest folks are clearly past their prime and themselves admit so.

There are always exceptions. I worked with a fantastic colleague who was a highly knowledgeable technical expert and a capable PM, always punching above his weight at work. One day in a chance conversation with him I was shocked to hear that he wants to retire soon because, now that he is on the wrong side of 90, he is not that interested anymore. My jaw dropped -- I never paid attention to his age. But I suspect many folks in the last quarter of their productive life will be happy to slow down. My 2c.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#82

Post by bryanrasmussen »

contagiousflow wrote: post #62
9rx wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously wages and productivity had to decouple. Wages measure human labor, while productivity measures all output, including that which comes from automation. ~50 years ago is when automation started to become more than a curiosity in industry. Human productivity to wages have kept pace with each other, though, so there is nothing to suggest anything has changed for the human. It is not like the robots are seeking…

> ~50 years ago is when automation started to become more than a curiosity in industry Where did you get that idea from?

The PLC, Programmable Logic Controller, was 1968. After which it started to become possible to have automated assembly lines with a few humans monitoring specialized robots.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#83

Post by TimorousBestie »

9rx wrote: post #61
supertroop wrote: post #46

I’ve been in the industry for 40 years. This has always been a complaint. Always. It is not new. UNIONIZE

I've been in the industry for 30 years. "UNIONIZE" has always been the suggested answer. Always. But nobody ever steps up and actually does it, even despite the people being already socially united through platforms like HN, making formalization about as easy as can be possible.

HN-style startups couldn’t afford to unionize, right? To a founder it would look like eating your seed corn for no realizable benefit.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#85

Post by mullingitover »

9rx wrote: post #51
smallmancontrov wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was famously an inflection point 40-50 years ago where wages decoupled from productivity to the downside. I'm sure it wasn't perfect before then, but things did change.

Obviously wages and productivity had to decouple. Wages measure human labor, while productivity measures all output, including that which comes from automation. ~50 years ago is when automation started to become more than a curiosity in industry. Human productivity to wages have kept pace with each other, though, so there is nothing to suggest anything has changed for the human. It is not like the robots are seeking…

> Wages measure human labor, while productivity measures all output, including that which comes from automation.

Until we have sentient robots, all that automation is simply a lever with a human laborer at the end of it.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#86

Post by danans »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #64

Stalling out on promotion has always happened. It can be explained almost entirely by two factors: As you become more senior, the success metrics for your role change significantly. Mentoring only goes so far because there is a large element of self-awareness and a willingness to change. Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails. It is the career equivalent of trying…

> Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails.

> > However, this requires a level of initiative and agency that most employees never exhibit

Even if some aspects of that might be true on the individual level, this take is the classic "blame the individual, but don't question the system."

Nothing about the concentration of capital by mega-corporations (enabled by tax policies they pushed). Nothing about the unfolding multigenerational disruptions by AI on the white collar job market. Just the old well laundered "bootstraps" argument.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#87

Post by tavavex »

arsan87 wrote: post #42

At my workplace we were hyped up for a special announcement during a company meeting. this is after, literally, years of layoffs, offshoring, cut after cut to benefits, and restructurings. Morale is incredibly low. The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us us…

I don't understand. What is 'unlimited' PTO? And if it's so unlimited, why can't you use any of it? I've only had jobs with very specifically defined PTO that had no ambiguity in whether I could ever use it.

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#88

Post by pjc50 »

nradov wrote: post #48

Kind of a silly article. If you're working in education administration or local government then why would you even expect career progression? These are not growth industries.

Those have always offered career progression, though. Whether the industry is growing is a different variable to whether someone is growing in competence.

Some environments require progression as a sort of anti-stasis measure. Famously including army officers, not exactly a growth industry either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_or_out

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#89

Post by SR2Z »

danans wrote: post #86
jandrewrogers wrote: post #64

Stalling out on promotion has always happened. It can be explained almost entirely by two factors: As you become more senior, the success metrics for your role change significantly. Mentoring only goes so far because there is a large element of self-awareness and a willingness to change. Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails. It is the career equivalent of trying…

> Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails. > > However, this requires a level of initiative and agency that most employees never exhibit Even if some aspects of that might be true on the individual level, this take is the classic "blame the individual, but don't question the system." Nothing about the concentration of capital by mega-corporations (enabled by tax po…

Getting promotions that can pay $1M is something only possible with massive tech companies lol

Re: Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

#90

Post by jandrewrogers »

unethical_ban wrote: post #49
deburo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was it different? I never saw that in big corporations, only SMBs when the founders were still at the helm.

30 years ago and prior for a generation or two. Employees had pensions instead of 401ks where tenure built up a guaranteed fixed income payment at retirement. Now we're all tied to the stock market. Oh, and back then a single income could support a working-class family to buy a decent house, two cars and maybe send a kid or two to college.

401k became a thing in part because of deep structural problems with employee pensions. Pensions don't "guarantee" anything in practice and many people lost them or had steep cuts. It is a promise, not a law of physics. 401k/IRA wasn't created for no reason. Pensions are exposed to much more idiosyncratic risk than a 401k and companies are poorly positioned to manage those risks.

Some people might not want to take responsibility for retirement savings in the same way they might not want to take responsibility for providing themselves housing but the alternative is strictly worse.

The only pensions that kind of work is government pensions because they can paper over the structural deficiencies with taxation. But even that has significant limitations as we've seen.

A 401k isn't required to be invested in the stock market. It is advisable but not required.

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