“Seven days ago one of my satellites over Antarctica discovered a pyramid.” – Alien vs. Predator
A friend tried to rope me into a pyramid scam. “Don’t you want to be your own boss,” he asked me. “No, I hate working for jerks.”
When I graduated from college, I graduated at the same time as one of my close friends. The employment market was only so-so, but we both managed to grab jobs in a town near the college. Whereas my job was, um, more rough and tumble (I was a rodeo clown at for chubby people at the Golden Corral® – my worst day was when Megan McCain and Oprah showed up together), my friend’s job ended up being at a suit and tie kind of place. Thankfully, we still were working in the same city, and we got together frequently.
One night he asked a question over Buffalo wings and too many beers: “Where did they go?”
“What? Where did who go?”
“All the old guys. I mean, I go to work, and I see that there are dozens of people less than thirty. Then, maybe twenty percent are between thirty and forty. After forty? It’s a wasteland. Hardly anyone but upper management is over forty.”
I thought about his question. Where did they go? The company I was working at (and most of the companies I’ve worked at since then) had a similar pyramid shape. Some have been steeper, and some shallower, but all have had that shape.
I have a good construction joke, but I’m still working on it.
So, where did they go?
Well, they didn’t retire – not from the company they were at – they didn’t make nearly enough to retire at 27 and live on the island with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Robert Johnson.
Nope. The vanished people were gone. Where? Somewhere else. Some other industry, some other career. It was uno, dos, and then they vanished without a tres.
Probably the biggest reason for that pyramid shape is that younger people cost less. Do they know less? Sure, but inexpensive is an attribute all of its own.
But any hierarchical organization has fewer slots for leaders than for followers. The armed forces are a similar example. I once made the acquaintance of a (no kidding) Captain Kirk. Now, this Captain Kirk wasn’t in Starfleet®, he was in the United States Army. And he was sweating for promotion.
Captain Kirk was denied promotion. I’m thinking that someone the Pentagon saw that Captain Kirk was trying to be promoted to Major Kirk, and that there was no way that the Army would ever give up the numerical superiority they had over the Navy in their number of Captain Kirks.
No, not this Kirk.
The armed forces are a classic example of that pyramid structure: there are fewer generals than colonels, and fewer colonels than majors. And, if officers (in a certain range) fail to be promoted a certain number of times?
Well, there’s the door. So, Captain Kirk soon enough was in the private sector, and I lost track of him from there. I think he got lost somewhere in the Veridian System.
Most (but not all) companies are built upon this pyramid model. I’ve seen high-end consulting firms where it’s a paradise for everyone born in the Eisenhower era, but those are the exception, not the rule. Plus, they charge enough to pay for the most expensive video-streaming service ever: college during Corona.
So, the rub is that for many, the rule is up or out.
What to do?
Invest in the one thing that can never be taken away from you: your skills.
My poor reading skills cost me a career in sex-worker management. On the bright side, now I own a warehouse.
In 2017 I would have given a completely different list of skills than 2021. It would have been far more dull and predictable. But 2021? 2021 is like a tarot card reader’s business: unpredictable. Part of it will come down to plain dumb luck and good timing.
I’d suggest:
- Have general skills. General skills are widely applicable and get a job quickly in lots of different locations. Teacher. Tom Brady’s tooth polisher.
- Or, have skills that are so specific that they are nearly impossible to replicate. (Specific skills require a time and a place. I’m sure that all of the folks working on the Keystone XL pipeline had great skills. Until those skills aren’t needed.) If you want a great choice for the Biden year, I’d suggest a carbon-neutral way to turn cash into Democratic votes. Oh, wait, they’ve got that figured out.
- Protip: growth industries will be the ones that the Left loves for the next two years, at least. If it’s green and fuzzy, the Left will fill it full of money. I’m thinking of investing in pool tables.
- Have skills that can’t be done remotely from a foreign country. Right now, that includes teaching. I’m sure there are more, but I’ve been at a loss since Biden figured out how to be the president from China.
- Have skills where a certification that a foreigner can’t get are required. Top secret clearances are nice. I’m working on a top-secret project to ferment honey to make ethanol for cars. The project is all on a mead-to-know basis.
To be fair, I had an addiction to stealing traffic lights. But I could stop whenever I wanted to.
A lot of the suggestions above would have made the 2017 list.
In 2021, however, I must stress that the world might get a lot more, um, basic than we’re used to. The reason that my Great-Great-Grandma McWilder (GGGMcW) did fine during the Great Depression was she knew how to make clothes from cloth, a needle, and thread. And if the cloth wasn’t big enough for a dress? It was big enough to be made into part of a hand-made quilt. Like Jean-Luc Picard, she could make it sew.
GGGMcW also knew how to raise chickens. And raise a garden. Probably 30% or more of the calories they ate came from the backyard – as he added soil to the garden, I’m sure he said, “so, the plot thickens.” But Great-Great-Grandpa McWilder was no slouch, either. He didn’t have a great repair shop, but the man fixed every aspect of his house, by himself. Roof leaked?
It was his job to fix. Ants? His to kill. Broken suitcase handle? His to fix.
Honestly, I don’t recall them buying anything much more than flour, sugar, bread, chicken, and hamburger and the occasional vegetable. I don’t think the area was friendly to corn so I think they got that in cans. They would have grown more vegetables, but they weren’t from Okra-homa.
I installed a beer tap in my house – now The Mrs. complains that she can’t take a shower.
But there was more. The Great-Greats were also tied into their community, and had been there a decade. The connections they had bonded them to the community. How so? During the Depression they raised another child from a family that couldn’t afford to feed the kid.
The pyramid is real. In many ways opportunities may diminish over time. But life goes on, so keep investing in the skills that you might need.
All of them. Because you have no idea what the future might bring.
Having skills or a niche that is insulated from the worst of cancel culture is important. If I still worked for some financial services behemoth, I wouldn’t be able to post the stuff I do online using my real name.
You didn’t really answer your initial question. Where do all of the older workers go? At the aforementioned financial services behemoths, most of the staff was in their 30s. There was one guy I could think of in his mid 50s but the rest of us were 30s-40s. Management was as well until you got to the handful of top level executives. This is true at most places I worked so where were the older people working? Where were the people in their mid-50s to retirement age? I am not sure I know the answer to that. A lot probably did what I did, got out and started a small business or two. Some ended up on disability. But most? No idea.
Don’t know where all the old guys have gone, either.
Luckily, Moderna has come up with a solution: https://www.modernatx.com/mrna-technology/mrna-platform-enabling-drug-discovery-development
Imagine modern medicine operating like Windows 10, with the added bonus of H-1B workers intent on getting rid of competent competition.
Beware the Blue Pill of Death.
Yup. It’s probably an entirely different journey – not a career anymore, but a job, wherever they can find one . . .
I was never interested in management and wanted to just keep designing and building new electronics systems. Who needs to talk to people when you can have so much fun sitting in a corner, writing computer code and laying out circuit boards? I was pretty good at it – I’ve designed and built experiments with my own hands that have flown on both the Space Shuttle and the Russian Soyuz as well as sounding rockets from White Sands. I avoided being laid off as the Too Expensive Old Geezer not once but twice. Both times I had to find on my own somebody else in the company that was so desperate for a cog to fill a slot that they had no choice but to take me. And truth be told, it was the security clearance as much as my skills that kept me employed.
Here’s the classic story in my neck of the woods of a local tech guy getting sidelined…a little long but worth reading.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-bad-luck-and-bad-networking-cost-douglas-prasher-a-nobel-prize
Ricky, my story is similar. Lots of good folks were laid off when the contracts ended. Lots of friends really improves survivability. I have been trying to convince my son to switch to contract work. Direct employment is just a scam because there are no long term jobs, but there are plenty of jobs with long hours and limited compensation.
Prasher`s story should be a standard warning to all serious professionals. Bad bosses can kill a career. Doing lame work seems to lead to more lame work, whereas significant work leads to more important work. Learn to sell yourself is likely the most important skill there is.
Keep an eye out about someone that starts trying to kill your career. Move on before they poison you. I had a manager at my last job trying to kill my career because I found a screw up he did, so I just retired. In contrast, years before we found an error by another manager. He owned, set a team to fix, and became the most respected manager ever. Wished I could credit Chuck more.
Some psychos get into management. There was a puff piece a decade ago that said 80% of managers are psychotic in one way or another. Fortunately, my experience found a lower number of at least seriously mental managers.
Bosses can be very, very dangerous.
That reminds me of the story of the engineer who realized that the Cassini/Huygens probe of Saturn’s atmosphere hadn’t been programmed to account for the dynamic Doppler shift on the data link as the probe dove into destruction. (They anticipated the RF Doppler shift, but not the data-rate Doppler shift.) So, he heroically got people to recognized that there was a problem, solved the problem with an updated radio program, got the program uploaded to the probe, just in time for The Big Event.
And then, they laid him off. The mission was done. He had been expected to spend some of that time finding a new job that needed his talents, but he was too busy SAVING THEIR MISSION to do that. Too bad. So sad.
(I’ve tried to verify this tale, but so far only got the first paragraph, not the second. The engineer might have been Boris Smeds, but it might have been someone else on the team who didn’t get as much publicity.)
Had that happen to a group I was working with – if they were helping me, they were neglecting their regular customers, so were much more likely to get laid off.
Bad incentives.
That’s a great example . . . so close to a Nobel.
All that sciency stuff is great, but learn a trade. If nothing else, you’ll have something to fall back on if needed.
Back in the late 70’s after my stint as a Radar tech in the USAF, Xerox gave me a call. I took the hiring test, but it didn’t come to fruition. After a couple of years of college, (partying), I dropped out and moved to Atlanta from the small country town I lived in.
In the first year, I had 13 different jobs. Everything from slinging fruit at the state farmers market to recapping truck tires to waiting on tables at a pizza restaurant. I sort of fell into my trade as a carpenter by accident and have been practicing it for the last 40 years.
Basic trades are good, but the illegals will edge out most of those who make decent money. Only a few will survive.
The trend will be to canned home building/repair, with plug and play components, that can be installed/repaired by those with minimal knowledge or language skills.
Best is to get yourself in a situation that is minimal in terms of overhead, with some nearby small jobs you can do for cash. Have a small amount of money available, that the government doesn’t know about. Learn how to make good alcohol cheap – whether or not you drink it, it’s barterable.
Employ locals whenever possible. It pays off in network links.
Yeah, around here, the trades are dominated by local stock. We’re too boring for illegals.
You’re right – and a lot of those trades can be practiced solo as your own business . . .
Some companies retain the old guys. I was a contractor at a NASA facility for a while and I think the average age was officially 2 years from retirement. Everytime there was a problem the newest and youngest got laid off. Eventually they had a bunch of retired guys with institutional knowledge so valuable they hired them back at super high rates and fresh graduates with nothing in between. That is not a good place to be. The pyramid is stable over time, which is why they are still around. Messing that up leads to problems. But I still don’t know where all the old guys go.
I met one couple that just installed hardwood floors. That was it. Quick and did good work.
The corporatism has pushed many to the larger firms over a few decades for security. I noticed years ago college was becoming obsolete (and to damn expensive) unless you were doctor, lawyer, accountant or engineer. The fast money I was after was available after college. Not any more the fast money is in the trades and medical. Shorter cheaper education/qualification time. I steered my daughter to nursing, opportunities everywhere and multitudes of different areas, great money, can work anywhere, take time off between contracts. Mike Rowe is an excellent supporter of this and you can be your own boss if you want to and have the mind to. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, carpenter.
And nursing can be done anywhere. Great career if you don’t know where you want to be.
I seem to be good at disappearing.
I owned a restaurant business for ten years in north California.
Sold in 1989.
Disappeared.
I was a traveling Physical Therapist for another fourteen years.
Disappeared.
2003, with enough in my Keogh to live comfortably if I ate grubs and lived under a bridge, I acquired a commercial truck to convert to my concept of an ExpeditionVehicle.
As a full-time live-aboard for nearly two decades, my income is from short-term ‘WorkKamping’ contracts.
Lately, my WorkKamping is at a small organic teaching farm near the outskirts of Eugene Oregon.
A quiet place with plenty to eat, surrounded by other semi-permanent WorkKampers in RecreationVehicles and ExpeditionVehicles, I am mostly content.
And other than a couple-three dozen chums, nobody knows I exist.
I will be 69 in a few weeks.
I am considering disappearing again.
A sailboat might be in my picture, or a SCUBA business in Belize, or maybe a one-person airlines in the Philippine Islands.
That right there is the glitch in getting old and knowing too much.
I can go anyplace and do anything.
Now THAT is an awesome story. And the secret to being who you want.
Excellent.
Flashback to a relevant comment from the old TakiMag “World famous commentariat” which that outlet suddenly disbanded a few years ago…
Bottom line, looks like adult life isn’t all Incense and Peppermints for White flower children who arrived late to the party. And their kids are pretty much effed, too, if they didn’t invent Facebook or manage a STEM degree before the H1-B explosion.
Every generation since the roarin’ twenties thinks it invented sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. But those mid-to-late boomers, a group I happen to belong to, have taken their own press releases a little too seriously. There is a suspiciously high number of “freak” deaths among my former college cohort that roughly parallels the increased mortality of the non-college educated of our peerage. Everything from snowboarding accidents to dropping dead of heart attacks either training for, or shortly after completing a marathon.
When I was graduating high school in the late 70s, less than half of my class was going on to college, since, unlike today, it was still considered something of a privilege that one earned through achievement. And not everyone felt the need to go on for more schooling when it was possible to make a living without it.
So what happened to those boys and girls from the 70s and 80s who didn’t make the grade? I can’t imagine where all those 50-somethings are today, or how they make their way in a world that is distinctly hostile to middle-aged Whites without portfolio.
When I was a boy, gardeners were White men. School janitors were White men. There were White men behind lunch counters and ringing up orders at the grocery store. Most of my neighbors were blue collars who made a decent middle-class living in the trades. Barbers, plumbers, painters, security guards, ice cream vendors.
I can’t recall the last time I was waited on by a White man of my generation in any sort of retail establishment.
We’ve become ghosts…
It happens here in Modern Mayberry. We haven’t changed as much as the outside world.
This reminded me of an movie I watched a few years ago on TCM. It was made in England between ww1 and ww2. It was about a low level church employee that was fired because he could not read nor write. He used his savings to open a tobacco shop and over several years owned a chain of tobacco shops. He was in the bank making a deposit when his banker broched the question of where he would be in life if he had learned to read and write. He answer was that he would still be working in the church at the menial job. Wish I could remember the name of the movie.
The movie in question is Trio.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trio_(film)
The most important skill to know is knowing how to learn what you don’t know.
I used that story today! Thank you!
Breaking-Gamestop is hiring. Golden Corral will be a casualty of the Great Reset Leap Forward?
People will have to cut a hole in multiple face diapers for the gorging to continue.
I will miss the wonderfall glory of the all you can eat chocolate fountain. (not really)
There are 210 calories, 20 grams of carbs, 15 grams of fat in a 2 tbsp serving of golden corral chocolate fountain.
If Gamestop issued more stock, they could remake all of their stores in marble and hire string quartets to serenade the customers.