Especially if there are seniority/pension advantages. I’d still be working if it weren’t for the fact that I got to turn most of my accrued sick time into a fund that’ll cover health/insurance costs.
A caveat… the loyalty you feel for a big company may not be reciprocated, and you can be out on your butt with very little warning.
I’m reminded of a youth minister way back in the 70s telling us kids “Your parents might work at the same company all their lives. You will not, and at some point, many of you will get fired. But there is one protection from this: Have skills. Your abilities will be your best job security, and they’ll be the only way you know you’ll be able to survive a layoff and find a new job.” Pretty practical, preacher man.
Oh, absolutely. Part of the “overhead” in my case is that the company keeps reorganizing itself, and people get laid off and jobs get reshuffles every couple of years. It’s completely crazy.
Never reorganizing is a problem, too, of course, as big old companies get crufty. But the rate of return at this place is completely nuts.
That’s dumb advice. I mean it sounds like good advice because who’s going to say “I don’t need skills”? But plenty of people with “The Right Skills” have found themselves suddenly out of work when those skills suddenly became obsolete. Skills take time to acquire and master and old skills don’t necessarily translate to new skills.
Yeah,you’ve got a good point, but he wasn’t giving the advice to adults with jobs. He was chatting with a bunch of teenage stoners in the “Tune Out” days of Vietnam and following The Dead around the country.
It was very motivational… I mean, we’d been talking about running off to Canada and backpacking around to avoid the draft, or just going from one festival to another and getting high til it all blew over. The concept of “Hey, maybe I should actually learn stuff and y’know, DO stuff…” was good to hear.
…
eta: rereading msmith’s comment, I’d tell the minister to say "skills… by which I mean valuable, transferable, current skills.’
Bring a couple GoPros and a laptop with you, you could probably make a decent living blogging about that shit these days.
Possibly the topic of another thread, but to a certain extent I believe “The Skills” are overrated. At least at my level. I mean I’m not “doing” anything other than running meetings and doing project management shit. Any actual real “skills” I need for my project, I call some Resource Manager who calls up Cognizant, Wipro, Accenture, or whoever.
Ouch… sorry, mon. Hope you can do less of that post-covid.
Ok, now I’m thinking of the old hippie basement stoner gang. And they ended up pretty well. One designs hybrid engines for Ford, one just retired from heading up a sportswear company, one makes artificial flavors in his mad scientist lab. Oh, the biggest pothead of all is my mom’s cardiologist.
And that youth minister? He just disappeared. Well, pre-internet you could “move away” and never be heard of again. But he taught us a lot about Carlos Castaneda, so we’re pretty sure he’s wandering the desert on a peyote-and-gatorade walkabout…
That’s what that generation basically did. You could go to college, get a degree in (I assume) mechanical or chemical engineering, manage to not get sent to 'Nam, be a burnout, follow The Dead for a couple of years or whatever, then go have a successful career working at some corporation for the next 40 years and retire a millionaire.
Other than “program computers” and “run meetings”, I really don’t know what people actually do in companies these days. Most of my friends went to work for investment banks or consulting / accounting firms. My last job I led projects to build stupid little web sites for companies using some new tech we developed. Before that I led projects to install and maintain cloud technology for companies to run their data warehouses. Then it was 4 years working in some management consulting firm running some projects to help companies decide which companies to hire to do this that or the other thing. Before that, did some consulting for a big insurance company to lead projects using data science to detect fraud. Before that, some startup run by a bunch of ex-McKinsey comp sci PhDs using data science to improve sales. Before that, 6 years of using my mad SQL skills to help law firms and legal departments make sense of electronic data.
I read this book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber awhile back. It feels like a very accurate picture of modern corporate America (at least from my perspective). I also think it’s a big reason you never hear people talk about what they want to “do” for a living (i.e. “design cars” or “be a chemical engineer”). It’s always “I want to work for Facebook / Apple / Amazon / Netflix / Google” or “I want to work for a startup.”
I originally went to college to design skyscrapers and suspension bridges. There wasn’t a lot of money in that. Now 25 years later, I basically wrangle nerds to keep bullshit promises some sales jerk made to our customers.
That’s kind of what I did but I’m not that old. I got a MS in ME in 1990, did most of my Dead shows during college and retired last year at 56 after a career that was just short of 30 years. I worked for a few places and was laid off twice. My most recent job lasted 15 years or so. I hope that you don’t take the rest of what I have to say wrong because although you might not know who I am, I have generally very much enjoyed your posts over the last couple of decades. Your dismissive attitude of my path and people like me is telling though.
Yep. You chased the money. I had a normal engineering path and traveled the world as a humble manufacturing engineer. When I lost jobs, I almost immediately got new ones because of my reputation. When word got out that I retired, I got more offers for consulting than I care to do. I never have to work again but I have taken on a couple of things that amuse me.
I never had interest in management or jumping ship for more lucrative offers. I just kept my head down and worked. Many times you called people like me idiots. I was an idiot for just being a working stiff. I was an idiot for not padding my expense reimbursements. In fact, there was plenty of money in what I did and my work involved making real things and shipping them and having millions of people using them.
I have had the misfortune of having to interact with countless management consultants that Corporate brought in to fix things. Maybe three or four of them did any good. (Admittedly, sometimes management ignored some good suggestions from them). You once described your job as something like “I tell them what to do and I don’t give a shit if they take my advice”. That epitomizes why I take a very dim view of the legions of consultants that crossed my path. The last thing that I would ever say about my customers/clients is that I don’t give a shit about them which would explain all of the job offers.
Again, I hope that you don’t take this wrong because I honestly wish the best for you, Bro. It’s just been interesting to watch over the years.
I think this is just a function of being a consultant. I’m one as well and I have clients reject my advise all of the time. I just shrug and help them do whatever stupid thing they want to do.
I just went through this with one of my young engineers he was upset that the client was wrong and wouldn’t listen to his advise so he spent hours trying to convince the client he was wrong. We just got fired from that project tonight.
In the end you can’t take it personally “give a shit” if they don’t take your advice. They get to become a story you tell your next client if the misadventures of not listening to you. Over 80% of my business is returning clients or referrals so I want my clients to succeed and they seem to think we care about them as well but in the end my job is to give good advise and then help them execute in the manner they choose as well as possible which means I don’t care if they listen to my advise.
I wouldn’t say “dismissive”. Maybe early on in my career I had the arrogance that is typical of a lot of young people (particularly other MBA types who pursue careers in finance, consulting, startups and whathaveyou) where they think they know everything because they don’t know any better. Pretty sure I didn’t call you an “idiot” or suggest you commit fraud.
I graduated undergrad in 1995 and around a decade younger than you. All through the late 80s and early 90s people were talking about the Japanese taking over everything. You had films like Falling Down ('93) where an out of work aerospace engineer looses his shit. We even had a massive defunct steel mill right outside our college. So what the world looked like to me while starting my career was that traditional manufacturing / engineering based industries seemed to be in a decline. Then the tech boom started in the mid 90s and that seemed like the field to get into (I had an interest in computers and tech anyway).
The main reason I got into “management consulting” (after graduating B-school in 2001) was that it looked kind of interesting and seemed to be a good way to get exposed to different companies / industries and find out how they worked. But then it all just turned into “system integrations” anyway.
But you are correct in that a lot of my peers do disparage that kind of mindset of just working for some comfortable job for some big company their entire career. Probably because everyone in tech likes to believe they are working for the next Facebook or Google.
Personally, as a Gen X I feel like I kind of missed where people could work like you described for a stable company long term but was a bit too early to embrace the current Millennial / Gen Z “hustle culture” live out of their laptop tech startup change jobs every 18 months nonsense.
Good lord, not ever to the level of fraud. It was more like I tend to be very frugal even when on the company dime which you found idiotic. Something like that but I never took offense. Most of the discussions were of a general nature.
I very well remember all of that nonsense of the Japanese taking over. In 1990 when I started out, there was a giant collapse in the defense industry and it was very difficult to find a job as an engineer since the defense engineers had to find work elsewhere. It wasn’t like I was some kind of genius. I took literally the only job that I was offered and it was in manufacturing. Traditional manufacturing was on the decline as in steel mills and home appliances but I got a job in computer peripherals. We did prototyping in the US and then transferred the high volume products to Asia. That shit was booming and continued though the 2000 crash and was even fairly steady through '08.
The dotcom thing was interesting. At that time I worked for a company that made precision assembly robots. It didn’t really take off because all of our customers went under and our product wasn’t needed. All of our customers were startups in the photonics industry. They mocked the crap out of us because their startup was going to make them millions when the IPO happened and we were the suckers. Our place also went out of business (I jumped before that happened) so it didn’t really matter.
Anyway, there are still tons of old school engineering companies. I consult directly to one of them and I’m a subconsultant to a guy who sets up and installs equipment to dozens of them. It’s not sexy but I can guarantee that every one who is reading this has used something that I (along with thousands of others) had a hand in developing. Despite the frustration and stress, I loved manufacturing and it’ll be around in the US for decades to come.
I was at a trade show several years ago and started chatting with a management consultant during a down time. We really hit it off and had an interesting talk. He said, “if I’m being honest, I don’t know if I have ever added any value to my clients.”
Hey, I know a guy who convinced our company to put him up in Brazil for years to do “business development”. I feel like he was lucky they didn’t sue him or worse.
I’m glad manufacturing has worked out for you.
For me, I think I’d like to find a decent-sized well respected company that won’t be out of business in a few years that won’t drive me insane. LinkedIn says I might be a good fit for a Director of Digital Strategy & Enablement role, whatever the fuck that is. Sounds like some bullshit job some VP might give his roommate from Wharton.
The best one I ever heard dates back to the 70s and it involved one of my father’s co-workers. Dad was an engineer and eventually a senior VP of a very large aerospace/defense firm. One of his colleagues decided that he hated engineering and wanted to be a medical doctor. He somehow persuaded management, god knows how, to pay for his medical schooling and his salary while he was in school.
I went through a midcareer stretch of:
-Layoff after 8.5 years. I lasted almost to the end they were bankrupt a year later.
-Closing down the local office after 2 years.
-Refusing a re-location after 1.5 years.
-Hiring a manufacturing team and then realizing (because we told them) that their product wasn’t close to ready and laying all of us off after 1 year.
-Self employed consultant and then getting divorced so I needed to go back to a corporate job for health insurance after 2 years.
And then finally a stable established company that grew and prospered for the last 14.5 years. I had like ten straight years of job security worry and it was draining as hell so I feel you. I was pretty specialized after the first job and I learned after that to keep my experience general enough that I could land a decent job and not have to move. Specialization is the most lucrative so long as you choose well but you may have to relocate. All in all, I have been very fortunate.
Yeah, the way I talk about it, in 1990 peace broke out which was great for the world, not so great for me financially. It was twenty years before I was making that kind of money again – not factoring inflation in.
Boy, the idea that someone has a diagnosable and treatable pathology - PTSD - simply because a job didn’t work out, is complete bullshit. Really does a disservice to folk who may have actually experienced/witnessed traumatic events, and is the kind of “creep” that affects so many aspects of psychology - and victimhood.
Umm, I don’t think you have the right to draw the line and to decide who has PTSD and who doesn’t.
(I’m NOT an expert, so I’ll just guess that it’s a range, from mild to debilitating. Not a case of “You don’t have it, so shut up”)
And if that’s your point, you’re basically saying this thread is pointless because the OP should be able to suck it up and endure any kind of abusive workplace treatment with no PTSD of any sort.
I think it does little good to confound expected emotions and reactions to diagnosable pathologies.
I’ll note that it wasn’t the OP - or any mental health professional - who first brought up PTSD.
But obviously, a lot of people find it preferable to claim, “I have PTSD (if only a little bit)” instead of simply saying, “I’m upset, but I’ll get over it.” Like I said - people like to present themselves as victims.
When I saw you’d replied, I had a little bit of hope that you’d come back with an apology. But your explanation, though much more calm than the first comment, stands by your “bullshit” comment.
Sorry, this hits close to home. I’ve worked with people who’ve suffered in abusive jobs. I’ve had two supervisors who preyed on people below them, and I saw the toll that took on many people’s mental health (and their self-esteem, so they felt like they were incapable of leaving and finding another job).
(eta: One boss also had the class move of bad-mouthing “his” people, telling other business owners stories of theft and drug abuse, in hopes that none of them could “jump ship” to another firm in town. Damn…)
I kept in touch with one coworker who’d up and quit, and she mentioned that her psychiatrist was treating her for PTSD. It took a while, but she did re-enter the work force and now has a great job working for decent human beings.
That might be okay to say to a drinking buddy, but a really jerk move to say to an actual victim.
Not really sure how having PTSD makes one a “victim” any more than simply “being upset”. As I understand it, the symptoms (anxiety, depression, sleep issues, rumination, drug/alcohol abuse, etc) do sound similar. I would say if someone does lose their job and they continue to “be upset” for an extended period of time, it might be time to seek help.
It is frustrating though that these companies can just simply terminate your employment on a whim.
IMO&E, at least some people derive some benefit from presenting themselves as experiencing a pathology, rather than simply experiencing emotions, moods, and personality traits which most people experience and deal with. I.e. - the difference between, “I am depressed” and “I suffer from depression.”
I am not suggesting that NO ONE experiences PTSD. But IMO the term gets used a little too freely. Especially in the absence of any professional diagnosis. But self diagnosis through social media is quite popular.