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?'"

Comments

Software development

[Anonymous Coward]

Software development is a fun hobby but a shitty career.

Re:Software development

[doctorvo]

Software development is a fun hobby but a shitty career.

That's why we need to convince more women to go into it!

Re:Software development

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Might have more to do with treating them like "Human Resources" rather than "People"

Re:Software development

[Stinky Cheese Man]

I hate the phrase "Human Resources". A resource is something you extract and burn, then discard the ashes.

I'm still looking for an alternative to "resource" when talking about a fellow worker. The best I have so far is "team member".

How older people are treated

[burtosis]

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.

Re:How older people are treated

[sinij]

I live outside CA, and have not experienced this. Cult of youth is not everywhere.

Add divorce to it...

[bogaboga]

"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.

Its called: Adulting

[peterofoz]

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.

Re:Its called: Adulting

[AmiMoJo]

A lot of people haven't even left home by 35 these days. Property prices and rent are insane in areas with jobs. 35 is when you realize your life is going to be a lot worse than your parent's lives, and you aren't going to retire at 65, or ever...

Re:Its called: Adulting

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

Or you can plan your retirement/exit strategy a whole lot earlier. I had three retirement accounts by my mid 20's.

I've seen altogether too many people use the plan you mentioned, and then suddenly at age 55, they start planning, often in a panic.

I retired at 55, while most people are only starting to think seriously about it. And can report that while I loved my career, retirement is sooooo much better.

Do these people settle?

[HalAtWork]

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.

Re: "You ask yourself: 'What am I doing this for?'

[gfxguy]

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.

You're doing it wrong?

[Krakadoom]

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.

The employer yes, the work, almost never

[unfortunateson]

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.

You're being needlessly cruel

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:Absolutely shocking

[Austerity Empowers]

start treating it as more of an obligation

There's no treating, it IS an obligation. At about 35, if you are "typical", you will have a wife and family. Both will depend on you to one extent or another for your income, and sometimes also health benefits. Suddenly work isn't for fun, you can't take the risks you used to take before and have to play it straight, which IS utterly dull. You also start to realize that the fun money you blew on hookers and blow (or your favorite equivalent) should be invested in life insurance, and college funds, and also shit retirement is still a ways off but how the hell do you save for that with these others things? So you start to take more aggressively stupid jobs (management, for example, or technical jobs in lead roles) that pay bigger bucks. And soon, probably while working on a spreadsheet to enumerate fun work for other people to do, or perhaps while giving a power-point presentation on a project post-mortem, highlighting things that could have been done better, but will never be done better because upper management has tightened its sphincter, you realize you hate your job. You may think about a change, if you know your present employer isn't one of the best...and that leads to a series of events that is uncomfortable. Or, you are already in the very best employer in your field, and you get what I think is the worst feeling: shit, this is as good as it gets. And you hate your job more.

I often fantasize about winning the lottery even a small one just enough to reset me to 25 again. I kid myself: I would take an immediate demotion to college intern and just work on hardware design, or coding or wherever the fun I used to have was. But it's a joke, you can't go home again, and relieved of financial pressure I would probably not be fit for corporate employment. Having spent time in management, and knowing the things I know about how decisions are made, who makes them, and how very wrong the usually are, I would probably never be able to do that work again in a way that wouldn't get me asked to leave. This is what genuine overqualification means (not that HR shit). That is perhaps the MOST depressing part.

It's a combination of things

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Tell me something I don't know!

[mfnickster]

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!"

Re: "You ask yourself: 'What am I doing this for?'

[MBGMorden]

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.".

In order to maximize productivity

[PortHaven]

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.

Re: "You ask yourself: 'What am I doing this for?'

[Shotgun]

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."

This is because...

[AmazingRuss]

... 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.

It's not

[rsilvergun]

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.

It actually was the answer

[rsilvergun]

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).