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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.
If you aren't in management then you start to get dumped on around 35. Just look at who is hired after 40 with a good resume and lots of experience vs a ok resume and little experience at 25. Perhaps if management, in general, didn't crap all over thier employees this wouldn't be nearly as pronounced.
"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.
"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.
Are these the same type of people who get stockholm syndrome working for shitty people and under horrible policies?
The people you work with and workplace culture have a lot to do with happiness, I've convinced my wife and other people in my family to keep looking for something better even though they were making enough to be comfortable, simply because they were unhappy at work. Most have found something with equal or better pay and much nicer bosses/coworkers, and it made all the difference in their lives. No longer coming home feeling like shit and ready for a drink, too anxious to sleep well at night, etc.
Don't settle, if you're not happy then keep looking.
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Not my experience, either.
I'm not sure the author reached the right conclusion. Trying to make sure I got all my work done when we were having kids was difficult, to be sure, and extra stressful - but then the kids grew up a bit and required less of me; they were in school all day. Now they are late teens, and while we still spend plenty of time together, I don't feel stressed about having to take care of them.
Maybe people just start getting really bored with the same-old, same-old. Maybe that's around the time people start facing midlife crisis. I know my career has turned and twisted and doesn't resemble anything like when I first started - I've never been bored at work, and I actually really like my job because of it. Always new stuff, always new challenges. If I was a desk jockey, I'd probably have been hating my job since long before age 35.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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.
The do what you love and money will follow is pretty much:
https://xkcd.com/1827/
I will say I have been fortunate in this regard personally, but statistically speaking, doing what you love will leave you broke.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
An IRA or 401k plan is far better than any pension plan. The only problem with them is that they take some discipline to make the contributions instead of letting the company be your Mom.
It's not you, it's them. You have blinded yourself to a pattern of corporate decay because it came about so gradually. People used to celebrate your achievements, have fun office parties and offsites, pay attention to your needs as a human being. And now it takes a year to order a new laptop and your boss shoots absentee e-mails asking you to attend a cross-timezone phone call at 10pm right?
You will feel so much better when you move to a place that doesn't suck. In the meantime, all your experience is worth a fat pay raise, even a cross-ladder promotion.
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.
People in the work force for 20 years tend to have figured out a significant portion the mistakes by incompetent managers / co-workers wasting money and catering to petty egos and every trick in the book to pay you less.
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I'm in my 50s and I never have hated the work to be done: I'm lucky enough to be in an industry with near-constant change in technology, and have carved out positions for myself where I'm nearly indispensible, and become the expert. (Yes, I'm being vague)
That's obviously not easy for anyone to do, but it's been very satisfying for me.
On the other hand, I've hated my employers at times: companies that don't support their employees, don't enable them to do what's best for the customers or the company, and in one case, kept me hanging by golden handcuffs for most of a year with almost no work to do.
Design for Use, not Construction!
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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I didn't wise up about work until I reached my early 40s, so I am a bit of late bloomer. Until then I previously held a series of post-college crap jobs until I landed my first (and only) "real job" when I was 33. For the first few years I was enthusiastic and truly enjoyed the work. But enthusiasm slowly turned to ambivalence which then became disillusionment and finally active disengagement. I became the living embodiment of Wally, Dilbert's slacker co-worker, as I no longer gave a shit about the company and the job. Ultimately, I got laid off along with several others in my department and now I'm enjoying a phat severance package as well as making some money from my dividend investment portfolio.
My point is this: Don't work for the sake of working. You can always make more money but you can't make more time. Early retirement should be your overarching goal. It can be done, as many people have proven it. Just research FIRE (Financially Independent Retired Early) and your eyes will be opened to what's possible. When you no longer *need* to work and are in a position to do the work you *want* to do, the world becomes a lot more brighter.
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.
Anyone who doesn't know this already has never had co-workers over 35.
Drew Carey put it best:
"Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? You know there's a support group for that... it's called EVERYBODY."
"They meet at the bar!"
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
I would bet people who (willingly) change jobs every so often are lot happier,
Not so sure about this, because even if you're changing jobs you're probably doing roughly the same things for a different company. Simply because if you have 10+ years experience you're not very likely to start over in a junior position doing something completely different. As long as it's not becoming a lock-in where that employer and that job is the only one you'll get I don't see a problem staying if you have no major complaints. Though I know one COBOL programmer who now issues parking tickets, having only obsolete skills is not the best way to finish your career.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Family? What family? I'm just over 40 and I'm finally feeling like a success both personally and professionally. I have pursued my interests, have developed my technical skills and have invested in my future. The only problem is that I have spent all of my time working on improving myself and almost no time on relationships with the opposite sex.
Now I'm faced with potentially having no heir to all the wealth I will have accumulated. I never imagined it would be as difficult to meet people at my age as it is; I guess it was a bit foolish to have expected the college life to last forever.
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
American corporations have slashed benefits...
- Healthcare now costs us a few hundred a month, plus thousands in co-pays and deductibles.
- Vacation/Personal Time, many of us are in our 40's and find ourselves with 2 weeks of vacation. We have less vacation, personal, and sick time today then we did when we were 20. Difference is, now most of our times goes to medical appointments.
- We don't have enough time to address medical needs, so we work with ailments delaying treatment by months or years.
- Management has grown inflexible again, kind of like the 1960's except without the great benefits and pension plans.
- We're underpaid. But what can we do about it, they will just import more H1B Visa holders.
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
... by that time, you have most likely developed some competence, and you can see the vast array of morons and fakers that surround you. You're confronted with a choice: Scream at them until they do the right thing, or just let things fall to shit. Either choice pays the same, so to shit things will go.
but nobody's giving them any answers. For all I've heard from the last few weeks about Hate this and Racism that I've heard almost nothing that addresses why these people felt they had to turn to Nazism and the KKK. I'm guessing the media at large isn't allowed to talk about economic issues, especially given that they're owned by billionaires that benefit from the working class's worsening situation.
There's alternative media on Youtube. Look for the videos pushing Bernie Sanders and the like.
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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).
the drop in population combined with wartime economies and a massive spike in new technology to feed the war machine is what got us out of what was looking like a perpetual recession/depression. Having to rebuild Europe helped to. Most of history has been about prying enough money away from our ruling class for civilization to proceed despite their best efforts (since if you're rich the last thing you want is anything upsetting the apple cart, seeing as how you own the cart and all the apples).
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