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People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35, Study Says (bloomberg.com)
Older workers tend to be more unhappy in their jobs than their younger colleagues, according to a survey of more than 2,000 U.K. employees by human resource firm Robert Half U.K. One in six British workers over age 35 said they were unhappy -- more than double the number for those under 35. Nearly a third of people over 55 said they didn't feel appreciated, while 16 percent said they didn't have friends at work. From a report: There's the stress of being in a high-ranking position -- or the disappointment of not making it far enough up the career ladder. True, salaries are higher, but life starts to get more expensive. "Work-life balance" starts to mean taking care of children, rather than just personal stress management. "There comes a time when either you haven't achieved success, work has burned you out, or lived experience tells you family is more important," said Cary Cooper, a workplace researcher at Manchester Business School. "You ask yourself: 'What am I doing this for?'"
As people age and have a lot more responsibility and less flexibility in their social, mental, and emotional lives, they start enjoying work a lot less and start treating it as more of an obligation! How much did Robert Half spend on this?
Software development is a fun hobby but a shitty career.
"Oh yeah, I have bills to pay, and they pay me to do this."
If you sincerely love your job and love coming to work each day, you are one of the lucky ones. I'm pretty neutral on my job, so I consider myself pretty lucky.
I live outside CA, and have not experienced this. Cult of youth is not everywhere.
"There comes a time when either you haven't achieved success, work has burned you out, or lived experience tells you family is more important,"
That is if you or those close to you aren't divorced or about to.
Look, there's a fundamental problem with how we in the west handle matters. The [senseless] need to "achieve" burns many out. When coupled with debt, things go south pretty fast.
Between 25 and 35 the world is your oyster and the sky is the limit. From 35 to 45 fast living is catching up with the demands of family, you may have teenagers, and possibly overspent your credit cards. The mortgage on the house is feeling heavy. From 45 to 55 you settle into reality and just plough on, or reinvent yourself with a career change. From 55 to 65, your planning your exit strategy.
Well, really... I think people just start to get bored by that time. They were really excited to get their job 10(+ or -) years ago, and now they're thinking, "is this really it? Come in every day and do the same thing every day for the rest of my life?"
I would bet people who (willingly) change jobs every so often are lot happier, and I would guess that if your job has a variety of things to do so that you're never doing the same thing for a very long time, you might be happier. I also think if you get to see the results of your work - the non-financial payday resulting from your work, something you can be proud of, then you might be happier.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
This is kinda curious, cos I've hated pretty much every job I've had (at least once the first year honeymoon-period has been up), UNTIL I turned 35. Or 37 actually, but who's counting. By that time I'd had many different jobs that each sucked in different ways, so I was able to ask the right questions at interviews to establish, whether the workplace, the boss and the role was for me. My own vetting just got a lot better = increased job satisfaction.
Then again, I'm not shooting for management, so that might be why I'm not getting disenchanted with the whole thing. Would I prefer being independently wealthy and not employed per se? Sure. But really who wouldn't.
it's not fast living. The cost of living (Healthcare, housing, transportation, food, and above all education) has rapidly outpaced earnings. Massive productivity increases mean less demand for wages (I've read that if minimum wage kept pace with productivity it'd be $23/hr). Rampant outsourcing and 'insourcing' (e.g. work visas) compound the problem.
Folks aren't living outside their means, they're losing ground. Rapidly. That's why you're seeing crap like what happened in Charlottesville. Folks don't know what to do.
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As people age, they tend to collect responsibilities outside of work. That's (IMO) what makes people hate their jobs more -- it's stress, and the feeling of being trapped no matter what path you choose:
- Places to live where technology professionals congregate are too expensive for most families to survive on a single income. This means both parents work, adding to family stress, as well as having a large amount of monthly expenses even if you aren't spending way above your means.
- My wife and I are constantly trying to balance our jobs and our family life. Some people don't give a crap or just give up trying, but actually caring adds a lot of stress onto your plate as you try to juggle different priorities.
- Around 35, if you haven't been saving for retirement, you should be feeling the Grim Reaper tapping you on the shoulder inviting you to a future of living on Social Security alone and eating Spam...because it's almost too late to start unless you get a really good run of stock market luck. More stress.
- If you have kids, saving for college (should be) a priority too...stress.
- As you age, unless you've stagnated for a decade or more, you're probably in a more responsible role, and less shielded from typical corporate political nastiness. You get to see how the sausage is made...and in my personal experience that's a contributor to stress too.
- Because you have all these responsibilities eating away at you, you're often less likely to just rage-quit and go find somewhere else to work unless you're really well-off...hence the feeling of being trapped.
And, it doesn't matter what career path you've chosen either:
- If you're in management, and you're not 100% suited for the job, I can totally see why people would hate their jobs. You deal with so much, and companies are always looking to "delayer," so the key is to scramble up the middle management layer as quick as possible.
- If you've chosen to remain technical (like me,) there are _so many_ pressures. Outsourcing. Offshoring. A constant deluge of new shiny things to learn if you want to stay useful. MBAs waiting around every corner to question why you're being paid so much in their eyes. Balancing home life with having to stay current. Staying productive enough to keep up with the 24 year olds who don't know enough to not work 100 hour weeks for free. You name it -- we techies pay a heavy price to keep using our brains for work.
- If you've chosen something like a civil service job, then that "trapped" feeling probably sets in early. I know lots of people who work for the state university system and in state government -- getting a bad boss in a CS position who will never be fired and having to stay in a very similar position so you're never fired must be confining, and people have confirmed this. The only cold comfort is that your retirement and usually your job is secure, so that's one less degree of stress.
The take-away is that the grass isn't greener in most cases - life is just more difficult as responsibilities get layered on top.
Yep. When I was younger I was told the old saying "Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life.".
Now that I've gotten older, when young people ask me for advice I always say: "No matter what you love, if you have to do it every day for a living you'll learn to hate it. Pick something that pays well and if you can avoid it, don't turn a beloved hobby into a chore.".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
My dad put it this way when I asked him why he didn't make a job of building furniture (which he loved to do):
"If you make your hobby your job, you won't have a hobby."
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I turned 40 this year. I've been doing the "responsible" things for some time as I have 17 to 19 year-old kids, and own my third home now. The wife and I joke (or long) for the day when we can buy an RV and go full-time RVing. Not sure that we really want to do that, but it looks tempting. It's that time of life when huge bills are mounting (multiple kids need all wisdom teeth pulled? College of course. Major appliance dies. You name it.).
Some days are good, even great, when I get to do something I enjoy or "conquer" a problem. Some days suck - like when I'm doing boring reports or crap I think is the total wrong direction, but my boss said we need to do. Some weeks or months are stressful, like when preparing for an audit, or being interviewed by audit panels of a half dozen people. Last audit took me 2 months to decompress from, and I did a bit of camping.
It's all about finding the joy in the day, and learning how to de-stress. On really stressful days, I take 2-3 walks for 20-30 minutes over to and around a local park. I wear earbuds and listen to music I enjoy, even while doing lame reports.
As far as "risky" stuff - well, I bike to work. That's a ton of fun getting to push myself on the way to work and on the way home. How fast can I go, how close can I cut corners, etc. I've a nice bike trail 80% of the way, and the 20% on the surface streets I enjoy racing cars (ebike). I nearly crashed yesterday, making a narrow turn right to go up a hill back to the surface streets, which I usually swing wide left first - except there was on oncoming bicyclist that prevented me from doing so, and I hit the dirt and gravel just a few inches off the paved path, tired went fishtailing (bike bag on the back and accelerating ebike motor), but I managed to pull it off. Sometimes I don't, and my bike and I have a few dings and dents to show for it.
I also kayak and go shooting at my local range. Kayaking is fun and some risk (mostly just getting rolled and soaking wet). Shooting is a major stress reliever, be it with a rifle or a handgun. Unloading a magazine at 200 yards and hearing "plink" "plink" "plink" is just a blast when you get things dialed in. It's also nice to know as I get older I don't have to be the biggest, fastest, baddest guy to protect my family, as Smith & Wesson have my back too.
Oh, and I find and play a cool video game here or there. Horizon Zero Dawn has been a blast, but I still won't do the final battle as I don't want it to end. At least not until November when there will be new DLC.
Find some hobbies and outside work stuff. Makes going to work not so bad. If you can, do some of that stuff daily, and especially stuff that doesn't rely on others. Yeah, I like doing things with my family and friends, but I go solo a lot of times when others don't want to or cancel. The only except to that is kayaking (unsafe solo where I go).