Like I said, the Agile, flexible company is just like the movies. Look
to the independent, low budget, poorly paid labor movie companies
for your future. How about dreaming another dream?
Come out
and live on the edge with no wealth, no retirement, only the Veteran's
Administration for your health care and spending your bank account
empty every month just to pay the basics. But it is exciting and
at 57 you really understand that the only inheritance your child will
have is the Intellectual Capital you insist that she get.
People say things to me like "go back to college" but no one will hire you in
the regular job sector once you graduate and the government is raising
the retirement age for social security to 70.
So the only choice is to
be creative, give up the dream of house and car and meet the world with
no expectations and no fear. Come on in the water's invigorating but
don't forget that you have to take the Orca for your totem.
REH
Cordell, Arthur: DPP wrote:
> GETTING OLD AT A YOUNG AGE
> In the old days, executives who had gone as far as they could go were said
> to be "on a plateau"; now, in the new economy, executives in that condition
> are on a ledge, as corporate America faces a new era, in which age 40 is
> starting to be considered old. In a non-hierarchic, dynamic, high-tech
> world, companies prize flexibility, energy, and "new ideas"; they tend to
> place less value on experience and judgment. So companies have less and
> less tolerance for the idea of paying older employees twice what they are
> paying for younger ones. So out go the old and in come the new. The
> half-life of computer engineers, for example is getting increasingly
> shorter, and the head of IEEE-USA says, "It used to be that when you talked
> about age challenges in employment, it was people age 50, 55, or above.
> Now, well, I've had people in their late 30s tell me they've had people look
> at them and say, 'Wow, you're kind of old for a programming job, aren't
> you?'." An AARP study confirms this gloomy situation in these words: "The
> traits most commonly desired for the new world of work are flexibility,
> acceptance of change, and the ability to solve problems independently --
> performance attributes on which managers generally did not rate older
> workers highly. The message is consistent: managers generally view older
> workers as less suitable for the future work environment than other segments
> of the work force." (Nina Munk, "Finished At Forty," Fortune 22 Jan 99)
