I don’t recall ever seeing a BLS time series but I recall about 20% of employees have some sort of supervisor responsibilities. But that runs the gamut from small team leads to executives. And says nothing about movement into or between roles. But assuming that rate stays constant, that means that there are about 200,000 new supervisors each year, given that the jobs level grows by about a million each year.
I was still coding at age 54. But that was as old as I got.
R.I.P.
A lot of so-called supervisors in things like fast food are called that so they don’t have to be paid overtime when they stay late. So some of these managers are not that managerial.
Corporate policies can be ridiculous. When I worked in Banking, clerical workers like me started as Grade 3, Mgmt/Exec started as Grade 12 and required a college degree or 5 years experience. But there was a rule in place saying that no one could be promoted more than 2 grades at once. If a Grade 3 used tuition reimbursement to get a degree, she still couldn’t get a grade 12 position she was qualified for because she already worked at the bank so it would be considered a promotion. She would actually have to resign, wait a year, then apply for a Grade 12 role.
Someone that went thru that rigamarole was disgruntled to discover we were both grade 12s in about the same time. I simply kept posting for higher grades internally, and by the time they finished their degree going to school part-time and took a year off to re-apply, I’d worked my way up. To be fair, moving higher from that point would be easier with a degree, as would changing jobs.
It’s not sinister, just indifferent to put employees in a role and expect them to do that same job until they retire or you don’t need them anymore. If after a reasonable time, you aren’t moving up a level, it might be time to question why.
Big companies tend to instill that sort of “I’m due for a promotion” mindset with their multitude of levels of managers managing managers and highly rigid work structures. After so many years doing exactly what you are told, checking off the boxes, eking out 2% raises, you expect to move from Marketing Analyst 5 to Marketing Analyst 6.
it becomes a lot more political as the pyramid narrows and positions become associated with real responsibilities (and compensation), not just title bumps. A big company only needs one VP of Marketing for North America.
Aren’t some of these questions about advancement addressed in performance reviews?
This is why I prefer to be a big fish in a little pond. I stuck around as a part-time employee and it took seven years, but eventually all the veterans vacated, and I finally have my dream job, with seniority, with a better salary than most nonprofits pay (I negotiated hard, and since I’m so fucking good at what I do, I had them over a barrel.) Out of 50 employees, I’m not quite executive leadership, but I’m treated like it. I have an incredibly high degree of autonomy. I love all the management stuff just as much as the grant writing stuff. I love the strategic planning, the budget meetings, the hard problems to solve - you know, being in the room where it happens. Fuck, I love the mission (DV/sexual assault services and systems change.) I love the people.
The only thing I don’t love is being forced to work on other people’s timelines when I have hard deadlines to meet. That part is extremely fucking stressful. Such is the nature of my work.
Despite my education and skillset, I do think I just lucked into this job, but I earned the respect of my peers by getting results, and it feels good. I don’t think I would feel as good at an organization with say, 500 employees. I do have a sort of “what if…?” job back of mind, once I master my current job. I’ve always kind of had a dream to work for the Division of Victim Services in my state, the agency that administers pass-through federal grants to victim service providers. It sounds deliciously difficult. But that’s a long way off. Ten years maybe.
I would bet a strong majority of white-collar workplaces in the U.S. do not have formalized, periodic performance reviews. Cut out places with fewer than 50 employees, and I would bet it’s less than 5%.
Regarding the comments a few hundred posts ago about “why don’t people just move to where the jobs are,” I heard a brief additional problem with that. Another barrier, aside from leaving family, expense of moving, etc., is that the places with the jobs don’t have adequate housing.
You can’t move to Boston, SF, etc. in the hopes of finding a good job if there is nowhere to live once you get there. The statistic given was the US is down 4.5 million homes from where we should be.
I’m having difficulty cutting and pasting links, but a quick google for top states/cities for job seekers/job openings list many places other than Boston/SF. Instead, they list states like W. Va and Kansas, and cities like Provo, Utah and Jacksonville, Fla. In fact, one site listed SF as among the top 8 WORST cities for job seekers.
Apologies with my inability to paste links. Sites were US News and World, Money Geek, and Commodity.com.
I periodically hear of locations in smaller, somewhat more rural locations that are offering bonuses to people willing to move there.
So, yeah, if your concern is finding gainful employment that will support you and yours, maybe your dream destination may have to wait a little while.
Yes, though where I heard the information about lack of housing was only a few months old, I think there have been a lot of changes in the last few years, in a large part because of housing issues. Expanding your company is going to be very difficult if there is no place for the new employees to live, and at some point it became necessary to move the jobs.
Perhaps market pressures are finally working to spread out the population to areas where there is room to build more housing.
My city has tons of job openings, we have the highest per-capita income in the country and the lowest taxes, and you can buy your own aparment here for $100,000-$200,000. A newish starter home with a double attached garage for $350,000. Our house, a 3000 sq ft 20 year old home on a 1/4 acre city stormwater lake lot with a walkout basement and 2.5 car garage, was recently appraised at $590,000. A home half this size in the GTA would be well over a million. Our house in the GTA would likely be close to $2 million.
There is plenty of cheap real estate out there. But everyone wants to live in Boston, San Fransisco, Toronto, Seattle… I was looking at real estate in upstate New York and was shocked at how cheap some of it was - just not in the big cities.
Yes but less than a month ago you told us you had crippling energy costs.
We do for a few months in winter, but that’s fixable now that we got rid of the NDP. We are putting in more natural gas peaking plants, and a huge pumped storage facility is being built to help spread solar power into the demand peaks. Our power prices will come back down eventually, now that we are abandoning Trudeau’s crazy mandates.
In any event, energy bills aren’t so bad if you live in an apartment.
Just a reminder that this thread is about why REAL people we REALLY know aren’t working. I’m not trying to host a bitch fest about what we THINK is a problem with the American worker.
If you personally know of someone who can’t better themselves because they refuse to move to WV because it’s a drag and not as fun as Boston, then let’s hear it. If you just want to come up with ideas for people to relocate to find a goldmine of work, perhaps move it to another thread.
My personal anecdote is that I couldn’t find a good job in my home town, so I moved.
My kid’s partner is moving here, rather than them moving to Connecticut where he lives, because real estate here is 1/3 the price.
Look up the numbers for internal mogration. Lots and lots of people make that choice.
Ok but are any of those people in those anecdotes not working currently because they refuse to move?
Every week I hear unemployed people complain that there are no jobs where they live. Not the sole reason I encounter them, but one factor.
I suspect you’re wrong, since performance reviews are kind of standard HR practice. Little companies, more likely.
Now if you revise your statement to say effective and useful performance reviews, then I’d agree. And unless someone is a stellar performer, questions about career advancement are going to get no answers or no meaningful answers.
There are many potential problems when trying to promote someone, so managers are trained never to promise or even hint at anything.