Many years ago, when Dan and I were young and hopeful — let’s see, carry the nine and make faces at the calendar… it was well before older son was born, so probably around 37 years ago? — Dan had a job interview near his parents. Since at the time we lived more than 12 hour drive away, we stayed with them. And since Dan hadn’t got a new suit in something like six years (and the suit got actual wear back then. Also he’d got it before we were married, and he hadn’t trained his taste, really) we went out and blew our meager budget on a very nice suit for him.
His mother was furious at this. She insisted we should have spent half the price on the suit for him, the other half in a similarly upscale outfit for me. Now, part of this was feminist rats in her head. But part was that she was obsessively worried about what would happen if, when they were seriously considering him, they invited us out somewhere so they could meet me too.
The idea that this was a thing baffled both Dan and I. This was the eighties. Most of our friends were working various temporary and makeshift jobs, and even those like Dan who worked in a tech avocation weren’t exactly socializing with the boss.
Because I don’t like things I can’t understand, I thought about it. A lot. And I realized that there were a lot of plots in old sitcoms about bringing the boss to dinner. And even homespun humor by housewives books talked about the anxiety of meeting the bosses, etc. This for positions that weren’t exactly VIP.
I was therefore forced to believe that at some point this was a thing. And the point had to be in the twenty year window after WWII when my MIL’s ideas of the world were being set in stone.
This also made it very clear why our attempts at making headway in life made no sense whatsoever to her generation. Both his parents and mine (with the added flip that mine were in a completely different culture) kept giving us advice that amounted to “Well, just tell the boss you want a 200% raise, and then sit back and spend the money” and then being incredibly upset we didn’t do it. (This wasn’t literally their advice, but a lot was d*mn close.) The fact that if we’d done that we’d have ended up fired or worse referred to mental health professionals didn’t make a dent, because they KNEW what we should do.
Of course, we came into the job market in the early eighties when not only were things falling apart and not fully recovered from the Carter plague years, but new tech was already starting to upend the market. And the boomers having decided to cut their hair and go to work had taken most of the positions we might have gotten, and–
Look, I’m not going to compare misery with the current generation. We’d lose. We came into a market with expensive houses, but not ludicrously expensive. We had trouble finding jobs, but at least temp work… worked. it wasn’t retail. And retail, as it was, (I did it as my first job) wasn’t being run by people too stupid to realize they’re shooting themselves in the foot with the hours they set for employees and the way they run the work schedules.
But that said, there was no clear path to get where we wanted to go. There was no path for me, of course, because I was told again and again publishing was no longer viable. No one read. You couldn’t make a living in it. And every way to break in was now moot. Write short stories first? It was harder to break into short stories than into novels. Submit cold? No one was reading it. Go through agent? Most agents now had the slush pile of publishers of old, so if not impossible, it was almost impossible. People kept telling me to attend cons, which was correct, except for the fact that we were broke and had no access to the con circuit (as in, we had no clue where to find out if they were happening) because neither of us grew up in the culture.
Then there was Dan, with his degree in number theory, working at the thing he learned on the side for grins and giggles: Programing. In the eighties and early nineties. It was part insanity, part scam, and bosses expected you to live to work. The idea of having a life, much less a marriage seemed to not occur to them. (True fact, Christmas eve 1993 Dan’s supervisor was confused he was leaving work early. When Dan pointed out he had to buy a gift for his 2 year old kid, because HE’D WORKED STRAIGHT THROUGH THE LAST FOUR WEEKENDS, his boss seemed puzzled. After all…. wait? Kid? When did codemonkeys start having kids?) And we again saw no “path” to go anywhere.
There was no road. And yet…. We kept doing, finding, and since there was no plausible road, we tried the implausible, the crazy, sometimes the absurd. We still are, honestly.
I’m not holding us up as a pattern. We are too risk averse, and only jump when the fire is starting to choke us. Which means by the time we jump we’re out of resources and end up in absurdly tight situations monetarily speaking. And I value security far more than I should.
BUT we still had to jump, because there was no road, and the bridge was out. And some of those jumps worked, and we could get a little ahead.
Everyone I know my age to about 5 to 6 years older to two years younger, the weird micro generation wedged between boomers and x who certainly aren’t boomers though some have some characteristics (look, if Zillenials get a name, can we be BooX? Let’s socialize it.) took the weirdest approach to career. Very few of us work in the field we majored in, where we thought our career would be. And even fewer work in the field where were started out. Or even the second of those. Our “careers” so called resemble a drunkard’s walk more than anything else. And yet, for all that, we didn’t do badly, as a group. Most of us are okay.
And as invidious as the situation the young people of today find themselves in, I think they’ll be okay too. At least if we can get over the effects of the Autopen-plague.
Look… It’s like this — the biggest thing holding them back right now is the illusion that there is or there should be a road to success. That there is a path that, if you follow it, will deliver rewards like clockwork. If you only do what you’re supposed to.
As my assistant pointed out, when I was talking to her about it, there used to be paths. The paths, traditionally, through history, were to apprentice with your dad, and eventually get into the same job. Some people were even very happy this way, and families developed high influence in certain fields.
If you were less affluent, or you know, like Leonardo DaVinci, a bastard and therefore couldn’t be say a lawyer, like Leonardo couldn’t, then you were more or less indentured to a master in some trade. It then was supposed to work like following your dad’s footpath. You learned from the master and eventually became a master yourself, and you had all the contacts and knew how things were done.
This worked for centuries, until the renaissance and the industrial revolution, and accelerating technological innovation made it non-viable.
But note it worked for values of working. It lent a certain rigidity to the advance of society, since anyone with any knowledge “knew how things had always been done” and also … well. I wouldn’t have liked my mom’s job. Utterly unqualified for it. Or my dad’s. My mind wouldn’t bend to the math, and who the heck is that interested in textiles, even?
For a moment, briefly, there was a path again after WWII. When the GI bill allowed people to go to college and fill positions in a crazily revving up economy, in ever-growing top heavy associations, both government and corporations, there was that path. “Go to college and work hard” And you’d end up with the key to the executive bathroom and eventually a secure retirement.
By the time we entered the work force THAT was dissolving. A college degree was slightly more useful than today, but not nearly a guarantee of “A good job.” So we had to improvise.
And the things that we improvised (let alone the people before us) accelerated tech yet more, causing upheaval where I never thought to see it. If I’d stuck with my original profession I’d now be out of a job. AI can do scientific translation much faster than I could at my peak, and frankly, the person who needs to check it over doesn’t have to be a senior translator paid a bazillion. You can have a relatively young and underpaid person doing it…. And I have to tell you, honestly, that is the one job I never thought would be affected. Yet, here we are.
So the kids are trying to get a foothold while the traditional job market as such as hit an iceberg and is listing dangerously. The orchestra still plays on, but there is no room in the lifeboats.
The metaphor is the one I used when all of my contemporaries (seemed like) got fired in 2003 partly as the aftershock of the horrible post 9/11 quarter (because bad sales are always the author’s fault, of course!) My first career also foundered, but I rapid fired enough proposals that, while there was no room for me in the lifeboat, I was floating on the grand piano. (For the record, one of the cooks of the Titanic survived that way. Apparently he had drunk so much alcohol that despite having swam to the grand piano, he didn’t die of hypothermia. There is a metaphor in that too. Like most things that worked in my path to my present career, being a little drunk (or in my case just desperate. I don’t really drink much. Maybe three times a year and not enough to register) helps.)
But first, if you’re a young one (At this point for me that’s anyone under 50) you must rid yourself of the idea that there is a road. Or in the metaphor, the idea the voyage will go on, as promised. Or even that you’ll fall into a relatively secure path like a lifeboat.
There are no roads. There are no paths. If you keep insisting on staying on the path and doing what should work, you’ll either stagnate or worse.
I’m very sorry if you’re as risk averse as I am. Yes, your immune system will hate you. (We’re now trying to solve damage of decades!) BUT you must scout out a new way to get where you want. You must think of all the wild ways to get there, and be ever alert for an opportunity, no matter how small. And always, always, be aware of where innovation is, and try to go with it, to find what new step has just formed in the every protean situation and take advantage of it.
The Titanic metaphor fails in that — unlike traditional publishing’s slow but inevitable journey — technology and economics haven’t suffered a fatal disaster. The turmoil is caused by catastrophic innovation.
When you’re trying to find your way amid shards of opportunity and rumors of prosperity, it might seem like a distinction without a difference. But there is a difference.
Unless things go really really wrong in a political sense in the next ten years (And honestly I think it can’t happen. It might happen for two or even four, but not all ten.) and politics throttles economics aborning, we are on the verge of an explosion of opportunity and innovation.
Which means things are opening up, not closing down. It’s just they’re opening up in ways no one was trained to see.
First you need to read yourselves of the idea that there is a path, an order, a way to get where you want to go. Or even that where you want to go will be there when you get there.
Instead, do what you can, what you’re good at, what you can learn to be good at, and do it unreservedly, with gusto, all the while scouting out the next step, the next opportunity.
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads. Which is good, because there aren’t any.
Which is why Americans are uniquely qualified to survive and thrive in this. Chaos is our native state.
Pull up your bootstraps, keep your eyes peeled. Go!
2026 Blog Fundraiser!
Hi. This blog doesn’t have ads (you might have noticed.) And unfortunately no one gives me a grant to write here, seven days a week, give or take (for values of “write.” Mechanically and time-wise the meme post is brutal.) Never did. Probably because I’m not the sort of blogger that USAID would fund. I like the USA too much.
Also, like most bloggers to the right of Lenin, I have paid a steep price (as has my whole family) because I stepped out of the shadows. Yes, even I, in this little blog.
This is not a complaint, and it’s not your fault. I chose to do it. (Though I’ll say I never thought things would get this crazy.) It is however a fact of life. Just as the blog is a third career, competing with the paying one (writing) the the unpaid one (cleaning and handywoman.)
Which is why after resisting it for years, I do an annual fundraiser. (I have so much psychological trouble with this, that if it were only for me, I wouldn’t bother, but frankly Dan and even the boys deserve some compensation for the years they’ve shared me with the blog.) This is not an emergency. I won’t say we’re swimming in dough, but we do know where the next meal and mortgage payment are coming from. SO PLEASE DON’T HURT YOURSELF TO CONTRIBUTE. And I’m not threatening to quit blogging. I will quit when and if I feel I can, but this year is not even the eve of that time. So, not demanding you give.
However, anything you can give without hurting yourself, is much appreciated.
If you wish to donate: There is a Give Send Go fundraiser for this specific fundraiser set up. Here is a Paypal Me Link if you prefer that. (Yes, I know. Paypal, but for now, they’re behaving.) If you have a monthly donation setup to the permanent Give Send Go, that is still working and thank you! There are also two substacks you can subscribe to. One is on the side bar of the blog, the other is supposed to be a newsletter, as well as giving you chapters of the current work in progress if you become a paid subscriber. It takes cards. For snail mail: Sarah Hoyt 304 S Jones Blvd #6771 Las Vegas, NV 89107
And if you want to read the whole appeal, it’s here: Toss A Coin To Your Blogger, Oh Readers of Plenty.
According To Hoyt 
I certainly get the point, a bit older than you but it seemed like everything was changing and I went through a number of career changes from the late 70s until I finally decided to retire this year. The old paths faded away, opportunities kept changing and I had to adjust as I went along. I think we’re in the midst of even more changes now, especially as many of the younger folk realize that the “system” (schools and politicians in particular) have been selling them a bad bill of goods. Still a great deal of risk but the potential for a great future is there and growing.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Correct.
I am under fifty.
I’m also old enough to tell that, even after the self sabotage is accounted for, there is no f&cking road.
There is no road, and thinking that there was a road, and looking for ‘road is working feedback’, was an element of one type of my self sabotage.
(I have more than one type of self inflicted problem.)
Anyway, there is no f&cking road, and my search pattern was expecting the feedback from my experiments of ‘aha, here is the road’, so I basically swept past some possible gambles that I could have committed to, if I had known what I had wanted.
All water under the bridge.
Chess expertise is a ‘non-wicked’ problem where you can maybe teach a kid early to become a super specialized expert.
Career navigation these days is a very wicked problem.
So there is a lot of demand for advice, and channels have a lot of terrible advice being broadcast at gain.
Picking gambles of this sort is also a wicked problem, and a bit of an art, and it does not teach well, or transfer well. Some advice is just bad, and some is zelazny’s ‘write the last chapter of a novel’ level untransferable for beginners. There’s maybe good advice somewhere, but I’m at the point where I might understand ‘life sucks and then you die’ that way, and basically depression is also a mistake. So what works for me is built on a foundation of my own failure, and my own struggles with depression, and it can be a pretty traumatic ball of feces to dump on some poor kid.
Expecting to have to invent my own positions, and cost justify them to people, was actually a break through for me. But, maybe also one where I make mistakes.
LikeLiked by 3 people
“There is a path, that if you follow it, delivers rewards like clockwork, if you only do what you’re supposed to.”
Sister, that hits hard, because that’s what was drilled into me my whole childhood and adolescence. Right there with, “Work hard and do what’s right and your superiors will notice and reward you.”
Being a firstborn, and a “good girl”, I tried my best to do that, which is how I wound up doing 32 years in the Federal civil service. To be fair, the promotions, to a point, did come like clockwork, then stalled out. And my becoming a PIA about the nuts and bolts of my work – as in trying to hold the work to standards – did not enhance my political standing. My beloved’s advice to retire early because I was getting bitter was spot on. (I have Opinions about Albert, “Trust the contractor!” Gore Jr., oh, yes, I do. Which is only one reason I voted Bush).
He, otoh, had the drunkard’s walk career despite being 100% Boomer. My having a steady paycheck was very helpful at times. Until we were able to buy a stake in the tax practice and he discovered a knack for stock picking, which made him the primary income source and let me become something of a kept woman.
Our son has suffered through, “Oh, white male, we can’t hire you!” a lot. He’s working like a fiend on the restaurant and has started talking about wanting to open a place of his own. Which is ironic, because he could have gone into accounting and inherited the practice, but he was put off by the long hours in tax season. (The restaurant hovering on the cusp of self-sufficiency; we didn’t have to put in any money at all last month). So we’ll see. If he could only find a woman who doesn’t either treat him as an income source or get scared of commitment….
LikeLiked by 5 people
You know, there are nice Hun women looking…. I don’t have any on the roladex right now, but I know they’re there.
LikeLike
We get dirty looks when we bring up significant others. But same “he could only find a woman who doesn’t either treat him as an income source or get scared of commitment….”
LikeLiked by 1 person
–
Dang. Sounds familiar.
I could have coasted in any of my positions, once I switched to computers. Not built that way. Even tried it my last year working (almost, at least once I decided I was done). Not in my DNA.
Son is in a similar work situation. He probably could get on with restaurants, or low end health care (the “saints of health care”). But why would he? What trading he does (not day trading exactly), he already makes more money than minimum wage.
LikeLiked by 1 person
In most ways I did coast, but not by choice. I wanted to do more, but the system worked against it. When I left, they divided my workload among five people (two were interns, so it was training for them), and it hadn’t been enough to keep my busy all the time. Now, when multiple bookers came in at once, it got very busy.
LikeLike
LOL
When I started there was a sub system that had been brought in house. I made the mistake of saying “You know I just spent 7 years programming for these type of *devices? Right?” Sigh. By the time I retired, I’d upgraded the hardware twice and programs (matter of old hardware and OS going away; Intermec). All the programs were stable.
Just a matter of when new clients wanted the subsystem, putting together the quote, then hardware, installing the program initially (never got the distribution installation process working … Hey when you try only once or twice a year …). All documented, step by step (again, once or twice, maybe three times a year).
After I retired? System went back to origin (also where the hardware was purchased). Interesting on how they, outside the company, managed the major file management change I made? Oh, well. Not my problem.
Something else I noticed, okay, not so much as noticed, as was told (stayed in contact with some clients on social media, for reasons; no work for them, that was out), anything I had worked on didn’t get passed to others. Eventually? Had to. Again, Not my problem.
(*) The Percon (now DataLogic) Falcons were a lot easier to deal with. A Lot.
LikeLike
No wonder video games are so popular. They often have a path with predictable rewards. No insult to fellow video game enjoyers, I too appreciate the escapism of gaming.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting timing. I just wrote up my stories about a writing career (or careen) in the old days. Mine was in the 70’s, and I gave up by the time you came along to try it in the 80’s. I could already see the pre-woke writing on the wall.
I also recommend my first book about my actual paying career called A Geek’s Progress which is sort of an adventure story of an odd somehow surviving the corporate world despite continuing to be odd. I can’t even imagine the world that twenty-somethings inhabit today. Despite sharing the material world with them, I realize my experience of it is totally foreign to them. My only advice to our fellow odds who are that age is, do not, under any circumstances, take a union job (even and especially a government union job). Those jobs might work for non-odds, but they are soul crushing for us odds.
LikeLike
I’ve had [counts on claws] at least five career paths. Military didn’t work out, aviation went splat, academia went splat just as I entered the job market, research historian went splat (although I foresee a resurgence in demand for people who can back-stop the LLM and find the real data and information requested), the history tours, and currently writing and teaching. Some of that was me, some was outside forces changing things and yanking on the rug just as my front paws touched it.
Semper Gumbi seems to be turning into the generational motto. I’m early GenX, waving at the blue light* on the traditional career path S-Bahn in Vienna and anticipating a long walk to my destination. I wonder if this is a bit what the skilled craftsmen felt like in 1900 as the assembly line and other mass-production techniques began kicking in in earnest, but more so.
*The last train of the night has a blue tail light. If you see that departing the stop, you’d better have taxi money or walking shoes.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Bravo!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The climax of Desk Set, where Katherine Hepburn triumphantly proves the computer can’t replace her, and Spencer Tracy points out that it was never intended to, remains evergreen.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Same in Porto, not the blue light, but last train of the night and….
I walked home a lot, through unsavory areas because I was young and was going to live forever.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Me too. The local serial killer wasn’t looking for lone walkers, though.
(… yeah, that was a thing.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
When I first moved to NJ I lived within a few blocks of a serial killer. I remember walking on the boardwalk one evening and getting a sudden, overpowering urge to be somewhere else. I’ve always wondered if he was out scouting that night.
LikeLike
Re clanker-overwatch jobs, the term I hit recently is “botsitting”:
https://cybernews.com/ai-news/white-collar-workers-botsitting-ai-report/
LikeLiked by 1 person
IT was not unusual, if not exactly common, to take a job candidate and his wife out to dinner as part of the interview process. Last hurdle usually. I suppose it’s less common now. The wife and I did it, and my Mum and Da did it. It’s all so much more transactional now. When I interviewed at the bank back in 1983, they took me to Harry’s Bar on Hannover Square and put several gin martinis into me to see how ai reacted when I had drink taken. Being able to hold your liquor was part of the job, as was entertaining clients, and their wives.
Number two son is in job seek hell and it’s everything you read. I’ve been trading options on my own account parallel to my regular employment for 30 years and I’ve been teaching him the business. IF this goes on much longer, I’m going to put him on the payroll. It’d be a nice, if not extravagant, income for him and no greater incentive to find a job exists than working for his dad.
LikeLiked by 5 people
You know, I’m glad the drink thing wasn’t a thing for programmers. Husband has a big dollop of Amerindian and the resultant no resistance whatsoever to alcohol.
We’re a very strange couple, as I drink to excess MAYBE twice a decade but when I do, you can’t tell. As in, at all. I become relentlessly rational, in fact. But my poor darling takes a sip and is either verbose or under the table, and usually one, then two.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I had the group luncheon interviews a couple of times. No alcohol. Even if the interviews had, I wouldn’t. Not a drinker. Mostly don’t like it.
As far as bosses and spouses go. Yes, I knew hubby’s supervisors, union bosses, and main office managers, we worked for the same company starting out. Now mine? Only at the large timber company did he know my supervisor, district boss, and some of the managers I wrote software for. He graduated with one of the latter, the others he knew, and I didn’t, because he’d filled in at the company log yards a few times. The other jobs, in particular the last one, he met maybe one or two coworkers, only because we’d run into them with their family at a restaurant.
One engineering group met my sister and her family at a lunch, because we, as a group had walked in, I picked up the youngest niece out of her high chair, and calmly walked to the groups table. It was shocking to the coworkers, until we got swarmed by the non-highchair sitting rug rats, yelling “Aunt!!!!”
Definitely a different generation than our parents. Not only did mom & dad socialize with dad’s bosses, but dad’s bosses came to our wedding receptions (and sisters weddings, but mine was at the in-laws house, so head count limited).
LikeLike
I don’t drink much these days, but on the rare occasion that I have more than one, my French becomes <b>much</b> more fluent. It could not possibly have been because I partook of underage frequenting of taverns in Quebec.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think my dad’s immediate boss came over once, which probably drove my mom half crazy. We never had anyone over other than occasional relatives while I was growing up.
LikeLike
Mind you my dad’s boss came over and vice versa. he was a third or fourth cousin, married to a third or fourth cousin of my mom’s, so….
LikeLike
I worked in Tech here in California from 1987 through about 2013, and am working outside of Tech still now (sortasemiretired, a bit, mostly) and never not ever had any meals with any of my bosses until I left Tech and got the current job in something with no Tech rollercoaster up and down thrills, with a small work-remote company with like ten employees spread out nationwide, that boss being local to me and asked me and my wife over.
LikeLike
Very thought provoking post, though mainly the part that took me back to the eighties. I was a very young professional married to a person of the same profession. And she was destined to make oodles more money than I based on career path. I envisioned myself as a working not too hard Father having all sorts of time to raise his son. Ha, Ha. I made enough mistakes to totally destroy that path. I ended up trying on a few more over the next 15 years. Then I metaphorically lept to another dimension I had never imagined and had some of the best times professionally (and worst personally). After being forcibly ejected from that after a decade finally found the partner and what I thought was the real path. Didn’t exactly follow the planned path but it did work out and here I am so much wiser not very rich and yet about as happy as I can be given my previous life choices. If I’m lucky I have about 20 years to enjoy this but if fate decides otherwise somebody is going to have a hell of a time cleaning out my garage.
LikeLike
c4c
LikeLike
There was a road, once – when I was a teen, and my mom and grandmother were dead-keen on me taking it. I was expected to go to college, marry a young man with good prospects and then be that good corporate wife, expertly managing the household and the children, the house in perfect tasteful order, and me always well-dressed in a low-key and elegant way… basically, the new-oldfashioned tradwife. Which I would not have minded, particularly – except that I did know that I wanted to write and tell good stories, and to go out and have a bit of adventure first …
So I did get the degree, quietly scribbled fan-fiction, went and joined the military (where I did meet a guy with good prospects, only it didn’t work out) wound up staying for 20 years … and then didn’t get any sort of job that my military training and experience would have qualified me for. (Media and radio work. Best I did was part-time for the local classical station.) I did secretarial and data entry stuff for another ten years, before finally breaking into writing professionally. Through the back door of blogging … yep, definitely no road that could have been mapped at the start.
LikeLiked by 4 people
“Where we’re going, we don’t need…. roads”.
Well, that’s good, cuz all we’ve got is a scrap of paper with “here be dragons” and the font changes every time you look at it :P
The point about ‘when MIL’s view of the world was being set in stone’ strikes home too, as I get ‘intended to be helpful’ job search advice from people who love me but haven’t job searched in over a decade and were well-qualified for everything they applied to.
Luckily even compared to the beginning of the year, the ‘must have a 4-year-degree-or-better regardless of how experienced you are’ does seem to be dying off fairly rapidly, although there’s some companies who still are hung up on it. As long as you don’t look at ‘manager’ positions that these days require you to be a very skilled and up to date engineer and have X years of people management and the degree.
Even ‘must have 7 years experience in an 8 years old technology’ seems to be less prevalent, it’s often phrased as ‘strong experience with….’.
Fingers crossed and praying, hopefully one of the ‘they seem to really like me and think I know my stuff’ interviews from last week will turn into a job offer before the end of the month.
LikeLiked by 8 people
From my working years, things that really cheesed me off:
1. When you say you’re unemployed, everyone ASSumes you’re collecting unemployment. Nope. Never happened. There was always some difficulty with the paperwork, or my hours, or some damn thing that meant I couldn’t get it.
2. My parents told me that getting a job was just a matter of “pounding the pavement.” Hah. As if. (“Apply to everything.”) When I lived with them, temporarily, post-divorce, it opened Mom’s eyes. Because I applied for at least ONE job every day. And kept records so as not to double-apply.
3. Those same parents had told me that college would help. Again, le snort. They were Silent Generation, maybe in the fifties and sixties it did. In 2003 it did not.
Those records show that I applied for a hundred and twenty openings for a dozen interviews. A dozen interviews for one offer. And of course I took it, because being picky is for people who aren’t in the red. Minimum-wage drudgery literally cleaning up other people’s feces, but it paid the bills.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Well, back in the 70’s pounding the pavement did actually work for me in finding a summer job during college. I went to the industrial/commercial district and stopped in each business, explaining I was looking for a summer job. Within 2 days I had a job as a drapery installer. It was a better job than my first post-college one of sweeping the floors in a clothing factory.
LikeLiked by 2 people
LOL. I remember a job ad in 2000 asking for someone with 5 years of Java experience. I told them James Gosling wasn’t available.
LikeLiked by 2 people
This. The “HR has absolutely no idea what the words they are putting in these job listing mean, do they” listings I saw during the various down-rollercoaster times I was looking still stick with me.
LikeLiked by 3 people
LOL
Ran into this too. Similar response of “Not even (releasing company) developers have # years of experience using XYZ.”
Did run into one request where my answer was “Experience? Released June ’97. Started working on it July ’96, until latest release (’02).” I was the developer hired to finish and polish the code when they brought it in house. Still didn’t get that job (contractors).
The interview for my last job I hadn’t ever worked with the tool or the job code it was for. Well past intro level for job market. But, needs must. Like someone else said, “When operating in the red, do what is needed.” Mentioned before we were bleeding cash once unemployment ran out (it always does). Well versed in how unemployment works because the career we started with guarantied annual unemployment; learn or drown.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My beloved at one point applied for a job that required expertise in Lotus 1-2-3. Byt the time it mattered, he had the expertise…learned by desperately studying Lotus after he got the job.
LikeLike
I got my second post computer degree job because of “skills updating” through county after timber company sold out facilities and shutdown. Took two seminars, Visual Basic, and Java. Seminars were back to back weeks. Applied for the job between seminars. Job interview request almost as soon as I was back from the second one. I had a whole week of Visual Basic skills when I got the job. OTOH, I had seven years of C experience, which was the other half. So, win. Never did use Java.
I had zero experience with Delphi (decade plus old classroom experience with Pascal, which was Delphi base) when I got my last job. Whatever, Visual Basic/Delphi/etc., pretty much the same. Now C/C++, isn’t. C# wags hands. One can use it as the VB/Delphi mode, or more toward the C++ pinnings. The terminology is the same, the deal is to know what is and isn’t acting as a pointer (to take advantage of). The wrapper programs tend to hide that from the programmers (“VB doesn’t use pointers”. Um, yes it does.) Which if not careful can cause all kinds of interesting problems.
That last job was supposed to take six months until I was making actual code changes for release. Nope. Less than a month. Only took that long because it took IT a week to set up my system. Harder to learn the application systems and “proper coding styles”. Can’t anyone do this? (For reasons. Apparently not.) Seriously. I could. I’m good, but I’m not a savant!
LikeLike
Required five years experience in a one year old technology is always a sure sign that the company is run by idiots. that was a regular phenomenon in the day.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not always. Sometimes it’s HR meddling with the job posting. Several months ago, someone recounted an instance in which HR mistakenly listed a *much* older (and now obsolete) version of a particular piece of software. IT management was rather upset when they discovered the problem. The issue comes down to how much control HR has over the job postings, and over which candidates get forwarded to the actual managers. If HR rewrites all of the job postings (presumably to conform to some internal guidelines designed to reduce some perceived potential risk), then it strongly increases the chance that something stupid will show up in the posting.
LikeLike
Even ‘must have 7 years experience in an 8 years old technology’ seems to be less prevalent,
In my experience it was 7 years experience in an 8 month old technology. (As in, you needed in that release, not a wholly new technology, to be sure.)
LikeLike
There are no roads. There are no paths. If you keep insisting on staying on the path and doing what should work, you’ll either stagnate or worse.
So we’re back to the frontier then. :grips hat brim: Right. Okay, then….
LikeLiked by 5 people
Boldly going where no man has gone before….
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was thinking more Daniel Boone than Captain Kirk, but good callback!
LikeLike
Oh, I immediately thought of the King of the Wild Frontier when I read your comment…but…considering the usual crowd around here…well…I couldn’t resist. 😁
But a frontier is a frontier, right?
We’re ‘Mericans, amiright? It’s what we do. We just have to remind the young’uns. Manifest Destiny isn’t just for continents anymore, it applies to the universe. Round ’em up and move ’em out! Folks didn’t stampede to the new world until things became untenable in the old.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Mid boomer here, and the road to success was more like a disjointed series of trails, paths, and Jerry Brown’s infamous incomplete intersection of US 101 and I-280 in San Jose. (Completed when we finally got an R governor.)
My specialty as a fresh EE lasted 2 months, and the subsequent 28 years was a miss-mash of Process, Test, and Product engineering. (The latter, meaning “anything that goes sideways with “your” products is your responsibility, bucko”.) The lack of speciality helped me with outside projects, few of which had anything to do with electronics.
I learned carpentry, partly from Dad (who learned it from FIL Grampa Pete), and books. Learned auto restoration, and when it’s hopeless. Learned construction through a couple of house renovations before and during early (50 years old) retirement. Once in Oregon, I’ve done more construction, a few outbuildings, reroofing large and small, a handful of solar systems, and so on. When I can do it, I prefer to do it myself. As age and mileage hit, I’ve learned when to write the check. Mercifully, savings did the job, and we’re doing OK. Still, the materials to reroof the house were about 20% of the cost of getting the barn reroofed. (That one offended my sense of survival. Was happy to write the check.) Doing the house was strenuous, but Icy-Hot helps…
As L. Long put it, “Specialization is for insects.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Had similar conversations with my in-laws after I got out of the military in the 90s based on their experiences in the 60s.
Keep a stock of good liquor on hand to make mixed drinks with when the boss and coworkers come over (never had that happen outside the military)
(And by the 90s drinking culture was becoming more and more frowned on in the corporate world)
Buy stock in your company, they look at that when looking at promotions (so if the company goes south I lose job and investment? Also, I’m not entirely sure it was legal for my employers to know if I purchased stock from the company outside of their matching plan )
More than once I’ve stopped the conversation when I ask “and just when was the last time you did this/saw this happen”.
See also discussions of how tech worked back then vs now.
The past is foreign country, they do things differently there.
LikeLiked by 2 people
In my career, I’ve never had the boss over for drinks/food. Did performance reviews at one bosses, hung out at a couple of others (one had an amazing stereo system, another got exposed to my love of Monty Python. He didn’t care for it.) Have had a fair number of parties with bosses included, but a) spouses weren’t always invited, and b) I wasn’t married or romantically involved at the time.
I can recall one social occasion when $SPOUSE probably met an ex-boss (I’d been RIFFed in Dot-Bomb Bubble V1.0). Most of the rest of the people were still employed, but that was at best meta-stable. The company was shipping the entire business to SE Asia (and later unloading it to a Vulture Capital group-KKR if memory serves). So, barring one guy (who went into the biomed “lab on a chip” effort), everybody else got the axe. The original product line ended up going to TSMC over the years. Can’t say I much care.
LikeLike
Hubby’s company did not have stock. It was “not-for-profit” third party grading outfit.
Both ’90s jobs only had 401(k) matching with company stock. Couldn’t legally require buying stock in your 401(k) but if you wanted matching … We did really well with both. Had the first long after they sold the western division and put the workers out of work. Second stock got bought out (no trading of stock) when company sold.
New company offered discounts to employees who bought stock. By then they couldn’t penalize the 401(k) matching if one didn’t buy company stock. I didn’t. Told hubby he wasn’t to touch the stock in our outside accounts.
Other than the employee discounts, I had no insider trading information; just a very, very, bad feeling. Could have gone the other way, I suppose, but, FYI, the employees who took advantage? More than a few lost a lot of money on the stock.
LikeLike
I’ve always been rather fiscally risk averse. My biggest problems were not having the cash (or not understanding how to free up the cash) to invest in things I knew were sure money makers when the opportunities were there. “I coulda been a contendah, but now I’m just a bum” really resonates.
LikeLike
To quote the lead character on the Brit-com Chef, “I’m stupid about money.” OTOH, $SPOUSE is really good, and I learned. Maybe not as much as I should, but the IRA and pension from my job helped a lot, and various other things helped too. We retired circa 2000-2, and money was tight for several years. The proceeds from the San Jose house let us do the vital work we needed before we could access the retirement money, and later Social Security. Living on a (nowadays) inexpensive chunk of land with a modest but well-kept house helps a lot.
LikeLike
Hubby was on the union side of the pension board. He learned a lot on how the stock market works. I follow what he does, but really have no interest in actually doing anything that way. Hubby is teaching son how.
What he does doesn’t make a “stock killing”, OTOH it also makes the stocks profitable, even if stock drops before being called away.
LikeLike
The retail world problem is really the fault of the ACA: you cannot employ one person more than 30h a week without suddenly making them defacto salaried and being on the hook for everything. And you can’t run a retail on 29h employees. So they just auto-schedule grist for the mill and grind them and themselves death.
Housing is another weird one. On a foot for foot basis, apparently houses haven’t gone up that much, given inflation. What has happened is the bottom rings have been kicked out: the small 1000ft starter homes don’t exist now. You just can’t buy one unless you build it yourself.
Which means everyone rents.
And nearly everything I dig into is a similar story: the government stepping in to level the playing field, and because it cannot create, it levels through destroying what could have been.
The current push seems to be regulating the Internet and 3D printing out of existence. Fun times.
LikeLiked by 2 people
It’s not just the ACA. Work schedules in jobs like retail change – seemingly at random – from week to week. This means that even if someone wanted to work two jobs to make up for the bad hours situation… they can’t.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, no, 0bamaCare is not the only intrusive bit of government meddling that’s F*KING up the economy, just the most stuck-on-stupid. ☹️
One of my characters is going to lose her job after sustaining catastrophic injuries because they have to hire somebody to do her work and they’re right at the limit — one more employee and they’d have to provide medical insurance for everybody which would put them right out of business.
LikeLike
I’m pretty sure that is a second order effect of it. With people working only 29h if someone flakes or misses a shift, you can’t call in someone who has already worked close to the limit so the computer draws names until someone comes in.
That sort of thing, though for a different set of reasons is what cause the flight scheduling collapse a few Christmases ago.
LikeLike
In 1980 joined the Army. Then tried a college for a while, got a job with the State Department doing basically the same thing as the Army, but I didn’t have to go run every morning. Stuck with that, and retired a physical wreck.
And the Army sent me to Italy, and State sent me to Iraq.
LikeLike
That sounds like government—the military in a peaceful[ish] place, and the diplomats in a war zone.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My experience as a code-monkey in the 80’s was different, I was working in Europe as a student apprentice for an automotive company at the time as part of a degree course.
I was sent to various departments. When I arrived, they would ask “what can you do?”. I would say “Well, I can program” and the floodgates would open; as in “we have this little project we have wanted to develop for simply AGES”.
It was fun. I wrote time-tracking databases, integrated finite element analysis models and reporting systems, and logistics planning systems. I learned a lot.
I did experience some of the cognitive dissonance that you mention. I went to work in Germany in the 1990’s and a number of people expressed serious reservations. They were of the WW2 generation, so I understood. Even though it was 50 years in the past, people had lost family members and friends, and the loss was clearly still raw. I did wonder, however, what they thought was going to happen.
It was even stranger in that my parents were of the same generation and had lived through the bombing of their Northern city. However, we regularly had vacations in Germany and the family had German friends. It never occurred to me to have any reservations about working in Germany until those comments.
LikeLike
Yes. It was different in Europe. Even just knowing BASIC I had jobs pushed at me. It’s not what I wanted to do, but if I had, they were decent jobs with housing and company car. Different here. WHICH arguably is why more innovation happened here. Pressure cooker and all.
LikeLike
I’m not aware of anyone in my parent’s (aunts and uncles as well) friend groups that ended up in the career in which they got their undergraduate degree in, outside of engineers, teachers, and criminal justice. So I never really expected to end up in a particular field unless I went into something like that (dropped out of engineering because of the math, never got a degree in anything), and most of my friends were the same. And most of the employers also seemed to treat a BA/BS degree as just a way to weed out applicants. Luckily I haven’t been job hunting in close to 20 years, but I imagine it’s much the same now for many people.
LikeLike
Jones. Generation Jones is between boomers & X. We are here!
LikeLike
I prefer Boox. Jones was bestowed by the boomers because we supposedly “Jones” after what they have. Holds middle fingers aloft. As if! ;)
LikeLiked by 1 person
I had not heard that origin story. They WOULD think that tho. So not true. Our sub-title is : “Older boomer siblings ruined our childhood”.. something-something.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Yep. Pretty much. Again, I’m pushing BooX. yes, it’s ridiculous, but…. think of all the books I’ve written. (And read.)
LikeLike
Perhaps better to define ourselves by our experiences rather than our grievances.
LikeLike
I like Boox, though autocorrupt wants that to be “Botox”. I always called us “Generation Cleanup” as the mess those hippies left was really incredible.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s what Kate Paulk calls us.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Boox is taken. Android based e-reader by Onyx. I have one and love it. Has Kindle app, B&N app, and library installed plus a not very functional browser that at least allows me to see which book comes next in a series.
LikeLike
Definitely not created by “the boomers”. The original creator of the term, Pontell, was a “Jones” and he listed the “jonesing after” as a second or third reason. The first part was the anonymity. Joneses didn’t have the loud, public causes. We weren’t in Vietnam and protesting that. We weren’t rebelling against the square culture because we were too young. It was the lack of shared experience with Boomers (not born from WWII vets, too young for the protests and Vietnam, etc). We had different music, even though we enjoyed the music of the 60s. The Beatles, for example, had been broken up for four years before I started listening to popular music, but I did listen to Wings, etc.
LikeLike
“being run by people too stupid to realize they’re shooting themselves in the foot with the hours they set for employees and the way they run the work schedules.” -Word. The store can’t make money if there aren’t enough people to help the customers!
LikeLiked by 2 people
“The store can’t make money if there aren’t enough people to help the customers!”
Home Depot in Phoenix, about 2019, ONE (1) employee at the cash register, one (I presume) watching their back. For a whole freakin’ Home Depot. It was scary A.F.
Same trip, the Borders at the Chandler Mall. One employee at the back entrance cash register, one at the front entrance register.
Last week, the big Princess Auto store in Burlington Ontario here in Canuckistan (it’s basically a Harbor Freight clone) 2 cashiers, one guy roaming, one guy in the warehouse. Good luck finding that left-handed grapple grommet.
Stores ain’t making money. Honestly I wonder how they stay open. Money laundering?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Looters and shoplifters are unlikely to hit a Home Depot — the merchandise is all about work, which affects them like holy water to a vampire.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I read that as lobsters and shoplifters…
Wrong though. Last place I saw …. well, somewhere between looting and shoplifting was close to Home Depot. It was a lowes.
Two guys ran in, grabbed top of the line vacuums and ran out. This was Colorado. The employees were FORBIDDEN TO FOLLOW once they were out the store. This had happened, (with different people, obviously a gang) several times that week already. Always with merch easy to sell on craigslist or facebook marketplace. The store didn’t even try to stop it. The manager was fit to be tied.
LikeLike
Looters should be shot on sight. 😡
Like Vlad Tepes said, you only have to impale a few before the rest get the message. 😛
LikeLiked by 1 person
The label “Generation Jones” is well established (circa 1956-1965) but I’ve always liked to call myself a member of “The Blank Generation”. Richard Hell and the Voidoids song of the same name is my inspiration for this/
chorus: “I belong to the _____ generation, but
I can take it or leave it each time”
Hell himself was a boomer but this song captured my angst, always following in the footsteps of the Howdy Doodys and the Cowboy Bobs, the beatniks and the hippies who dynamited the US’ culture and, as it turns out, Western civ./
(fwiw, sad that I was unwell and so unable to attend liberty this year and last. your panels are always entertaining, Sarah. for reasons. (and I do *so* enjoy pulling beer. (volunteer people!)))
LikeLiked by 1 person
I did, two shifts. People weren’t drinking much, at least not before seven PM. It was unusual enough that the behind-the-bar regulars commented on it.
LikeLike
I think I might be even more risk averse than you are, Sarah. My current goal is to get the mental health to the point where I can work at the charity thrift store.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Watching Mike Rowe on a podcast yesterday say that there are ~7.5 million open jobs in the USA and ~7 million young men unemployed. Leaving aside that most of those “jobs” are probably a mirage of some kind, the thing he said that I found insightful was that the 7 million young men seemed to be getting along okay considering their lack of employment.
Mr. Rowe blames this widespread idleness on “screen time,” I presume because that’s an easy target and he needs to have some sort of explanation, because it’s a podcast.
I have a different explanation, that being the obscene level of taxation we’re subject to. If you live in “the world,” meaning you have income and assets, you give up half your income to tax, fees, licenses etc. If you’re successful, more than half.
So they look at that, and realize that a job with an income is a LIABILITY, and they find some other way of getting things done. Cash business is what a lot of young guys do. Painting, landscaping, handyman, fixing cars and selling them, none of that has gone away. It’s the unspoken reality behind “unemployment.” The ‘real job’ has to pay more money and be less annoying than the cash hustle, or nobody will do it. But since a ‘real job’ means you fork over half right up front for tax and a car, ever-increasing numbers of kids are saying no.
Don’t get me started on housing, kids are literally camping in the parks. In winter. It isn’t just tweakers and burnouts anymore.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There was a return of that “American metal working company” where they reorganized and hired 30 Haitian “temporary refugees” instead of Americans, and the owner was talking on PBS a couple of years back about how he wished he could get 30 more, they’re great.
Turns out the shop’s built around 10 hour days and pays about what cart kids get here in Iowa. Experienced welders for under $20 an hour.
There’s a lot of jobs that simply can’t pay for themselves for the worker. We’re all familiar with jobs that can’t pay for themselves for the employer.
LikeLike
My understanding is that there’s still one career road that’s supposed to work. The partner system is still supposedly intact, meaning that someone could join a firm (something like law or accounting) and work up to partner. However, I’m hearing that many of those firms these days aren’t opening up partner slots, which means that there’s no way for the juniors to advance. And given that most of those firms keep the juniors working insane hours until they finally make partner, well…
You’re basically looking at complete burnout for any hires who don’t bail quickly.
LikeLiked by 1 person