Work peak and professional decline (2019)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Yes, it's sort of clickbait-y. You don't need to feel like you're about to wither and die because you just turned 44.
Yes, it's deeply anecdotal. Lots of older people are incredibly successful in their fields. That 65-year old engineer you know is great!
But frankly, it doesn't matter who you are, or what you do: you will begin to get worse at it some day. And if you define your value by how good you are at this thing, you're gonna feel pretty shitty when you can't do it any more. For a forum that is defined around the development of technical and business skills, I would think that would resonate a little bit.
It doesn't seem like such a crazy idea to me that we need to redefine our own self worth as we age and change. And I think the author provides some excellent advice in that respect, particularly in his exhortations to Serve and Connect.
i'm only in my 30s and already started my retirement hobby (wordworking)
i'll take this career as far as I can but you never know when the day will come that you've had enough and can't bare to go to work anymore -- it gets harder to just leave a job for another one if you don't like it when you're in your late 50s.
Ten years ago I picked up biology and recently added to it ageing research as a hobby, we'll see if it pays off eventually. In mice ... many things one wouldn't believe are possible.
Maybe it's the nature of scientific progress - to provide fantastic life-changing results in rodents, often failing to translate to humans in a clinical setting.
I don't remember these on/off days in my 20s, however, I wasn't paying attention at all, instead chasing girls, adventure, and other unmentionables. So I may of had them then too, but I'm inclined to thing they're more pronounced now.
It's also HIGHLY exercise related. The more exercise I get, the better everything works. Someone else mentioned their grandfather says 'keep moving' - This is by FAR the best advice for growing older. Keep going.. when you're a kid you don't need to do that as much, your body is going anyway..
Later in life it takes determined effort.
The gift of aging for me (late 30's) has been the appreciation that an inability to get into flow is usually because I've got buried reservations on a design/approach, and that I need to spend some time trying to surface them.
Biggest difference I noticed in mental decline was % of sedentary time.
COVID has been a good control since the gyms are closed and I'm in Canada, so the winters forced me inside. Night and day difference between last year or the years before.
However now I'm much better at enjoying things outside of work and sport. I cant imagine what having that realization at 40 or 50 would be like. It would probably feel like the majority of your life was a lie.
But in the end, the ability of one person on the backdrop of the planet and the universe where it reside is minuscule. I've felt content to just marvel at the surrounding, satisfying my own curiosity, and the world has never been a greater place for that. So much knowledge available over just a click, and so much more to come from talented researchers all over the globe. This is how I will feel peace - when my inevitable decline arrives.
Being an observer is also a lot of fun. I love writing rng based simulations for the same reason.
Similarly, my 85 year old grandfather still doesn’t own a wheelbarrow and will move stone, dirt, etc every summer. His motto is “keep moving”, I don’t think there’s really anything else to it. Yes you will slow down, but stay engaged and motivated and frankly you’ll outperform anyone because you’ll also have experience.
Some people flourish with age; some don't. Each individual's situation arises from a confluence of factors, some within their control (lifestyle, attitude, attention to professional development) and some outside their control (industry changes, ageism, health).
To contribute an anecdote from my own experience: I once worked at a consultancy with a large number of recent grads and one engineer who must have been in his 60s. Through a combination of hard-won expertise and a soft-spoken humility and sense of humor, he had the quiet admiration of all the young people in the office, to the point of coworkers privately raving to me about how great he was to work with.
Keep learning, keep moving your body. When you're 15 this is easy, you don't really have a choice. When you're 40+ it starts to become more of a deliberate act.
When I visited a hospital recently, the healthiest-looking person in the 106 years old. I know it because the nurse was super excited talking to her and asking if there is any special secret to staying healthy that long. Statistically, though, the health does degrade with age.
Outliers and anecdata are good for storytelling and inspiration, but the type of data you want to use for decision making is relative probabilities on a statistically significant set.
Traditionally, when you were too old to work the farm or prove the theorem (sorry, cognitive decline is a well-documented thing, and tends to coincide with physical decline[1]), you would "retire" to a productive life in less-demanding pursuits: caretaking of the grandkids, woodworking, food preservation, writing, etc.
It's important to maintain hobbies in your youth such that when the time comes, you can turn those hobbies into productive and enjoyable enterprises. Certainly many would disagree, but such a path seems somehow "better" than popping Metformin in front of a television in a Boca Raton retirement community or tooling around the country in an 8 MPG RV.
[1] Yes, I'm aware that people like Dave Cutler are the exception to the rule. But they are, to be sure, the exception.
Not really. The idea of old people who could no longer work effectively but still had many years of their life ahead of them is not a recent invention.
The notion of an old age pension -- whether paid by a company or a government -- that "everyone" got is relatively new. But that doesn't mean "retirement" is new. It was just paid for by individual families before. Go read literature and it is chock full of grandparents from the pre-modern era just hanging out at the multi-generational home not exactly doing a whole lot.
People who say retirement is a new phenomenon point to phrases like "In 1880 the majority of men older than sixty-four toiled in the labor force".
But this statement hides a truth: 25% of men over 65 didn't toil in the workforce, so clearly retirement had already been "invented". And, of course, there is the entire other half of humanity -- women -- who also weren't in the workforce. So the reality is that over 62% of people over the age of 65 didn't participate in the workforce in 1850.
What on earth? To think the entirety of women of any age group in 1880 did not work is very "not even wrong" territory. They worked all kinds of jobs, inside and outside the home, from a very young age to old age. Many industries employed more women than men.
Flip to page 208 if you want a table.
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/women/...
But were they retired by choice or were they just too frail to work?
> And, of course, there is the entire other half of humanity -- women -- who also weren't in the workforce.
Kind of true, but not exactly retirement either, and most of them weren't not working, they were working inside the household.
Even though retirement has been "invented", 60% of grandparents provide childcare in the US and 27% of people over 65 are still in the workforce.
There's clearly been some change in the past ~100 years, would be pretty weird if there hadn't!, but I'm not convinced there's really a bright line of "retirement was invented, before and after".
The person who doesn't pop Metformin will obviously have retired earlier and be in that retirement community earlier.
> tooling around the country in an 8 MPG RV.
Once again the the person who doesn't pop Metformin will be crippled sooner and mentally declined sooner. (Assuming you are degrading tv and RV's)
So I have no idea of the point on this bit.
I also think you romanticise what happens to people "too old to work the farm". You can go check it out today in many developing countries.
I suspect I will be doing this until the day I die. Hopefully in my old age I can work on things I want to though.
It’s been posted to HN before, and led to interesting discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10967206
And because of the high fuel consumption of RVs, you’d get greater cost/energy advantage with electric than you would for a small efficient commuter.
Tangent: Are these actually low efficiency? Sure, 10 mpg (this is a more typical average, BTW, not 8 mpg) is terrible gas mileage ... for an average car. But a portable house that can drive down the interstate isn't just a car. Per pound, it doesn't seem that bad.
Unfortunately the RV industry is one where products are built to be sold, not to be used, and what's under the hood is not a selling point compared to how fancy the interior is.
When reading a review of Ford's new hybrid F-150 a couple months ago, one of the comments at the bottom of the article really stood out to me - "Ford needs to get this in their RV platform ASAP". I tend to agree that that's actually a super clever idea - most RVs already have a standalone generator separate from the drivetrain, and rolling that into a hybrid system makes a lot of sense.
The average 2017 car in the US got 25mpg. So with a 15+mpg difference, you'd need to either drive 5 miles or less per day (0.3g difference), OR average 100 miles per day and have the hotels wash the laundry 20x as much.
Also, retirees roaming around the country in an RV generally sit in one place for a week or two at a time.
Otherwise the argument becomes "Staying at home is better for the environment than traveling", which is true, not not really a fair comparison.
Some people literally live in hotels.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-...
"In addition, Sivak suggests carpooling, as having three or more person in a vehicle “completely” changes the comparison with flying. Indeed, with a few people in the car, “driving becomes less energy intensive than flying (even after taking into account the increased weight that the vehicle needs to carry).”"
Edited to add quotes.
The laundry footprint is a large factor when considering hotel stays. If we add up both the carbon costs of the hotel stay and airfare added together it seems like it adds up to more than the RV option. That's all I was trying to highlight, I haven't done a research paper on it, just my perception.
I get that corporate shipping industries would benefit but a lot of delivery vans are the same platform as an RV. I think a Ford F350 is the size of those 25 ft uhaul rentals - about same size as a decent sized RV.
RV's typically park somewhere for days, campgrounds could be good places for charging stations. If you have a stay booked for 5 days, it could even slow trickle charge over that time.
The travel patterns of many RV'ers means they need big (and expensive) batteries -- drive 200 miles, then spend days or weeks in one place, but since they are driving at highway speeds in a non-aerodynamic vehicle they burn a lot of energy just pushing through the air and don't get to recoup much in regenerative braking like a delivery truck might.
Even though many campgrounds are wired for 50A service, they may struggle when they have 100 RV's all trying to charge at the same time at that rate.
1) EV has been very expensive until relatively recently + RVs are a relatively low volume market => slow to re-design all vehicles. Yes, they re-design the stuff on top fairly often, but not AFAIK the chassis itself. I'd definitely be interested if I'm wrong about this though, rapid chassis evolution would probably be interesting to read about.
2) RVs are often used for long-distance and far-from-Civilization™ trips, which very much does not fit well with the (lack of) charging infrastructure. And even when you do go along highways, the charging time (due to higher power use + storage) is going to be substantially longer than on cars, which are already quite lengthy.
re 2: Driving to somewhere with RV hookups would mitigate that a lot, which honestly would cover the vast majority of how many RVers I know use their vehicles. Charging overnight or longer is probably fine... but campgrounds will definitely not like you (and a bunch of other RVs) drawing that much power, they're simply not wired for enormous load. It'll take time for that stuff to be rebuilt.
Box-shaped vehicles are just going to have massive energy demands above 45MPH or so due to physics. On top of this, the engine just doesn't mass that much more (in absolute terms) than a car engine, so the mass savings for an electric motor are not increased that much. All this means an electric RV with any reasonable range is going to be heavy.
Hybrid technology might makes sense though as they already have demand for a large-ish battery, and dynamic braking could really reduce wear on the brakes.
Many RVs are already making compromises with furnishings, water (fresh, grey, black), electrical (non-motive, but often much of lighting, electronics, heat, cooking, hot water, cooling), and gear.
Add 100s or 1,000s of kilos of batteries, and further compromises are necessary.
That's really the biggest issue with electric towing right now. To get a reasonable range while towing a travel trailer, the EV needs four times the battery capacity, maybe more. This is a pretty big capital investment, and then you're toting around an extra few thousand pounds even when not towing.
We will get there eventually, but I expect that tow vehicles will be amongst the last personal vehicles to be successfully electrified.
That's circular reasoning; carrying zillions of kilos around with you is the part that's inefficient.
That's like the drunk searching for his keys under the streetlamp rather than where he dropped them. Does that mean it's somehow environmentally friendly to drive an 18-wheeler on a road trip rather than a motorbike, because the per-ton fuel efficiency is higher? The fair comparison to an RV trip is an equivalent vacation experience, and while we can argue about the details of what that means, it's certainly not just an equal tonnage.
> Whether someone should stay at home instead of travel in their RV, that is a moral thing. And I'm pretty sure that just about 0 people have an unassailable record of life choices.
Ideally I'd like to set a carbon tax at a level that fully covers the costs of repairing the damage, and take the moral element out of the equation - then we can just say that x litres of petrol costs y, and it's up to you whether that's worth it or not. But given that we don't have such a thing (and these people are presumably not offsetting), I'd say that you should at least make sure the fun you're getting out of something is proportional to your emissions; if you're doing something that's marginally fun but extremely polluting then I do think it's fair to judge you for that.
A portable house and essentials weighing probably 5kg can go on your back.
For every choice you make, I guarantee someone can point out how you could have been more environmentally friendly. Let's not go down that path.
Not much left to better the community when keeping yourself fed and clothed[1] is two full-time jobs. And that's for free-persons, who aren't serfs, slaves, or indentured labourers.
[1] Prior to industrialization, it took something close to ~3,000 work-hours a year[2] to keep a family barely-clothed. Add another thousand or three if you wanted to have a change of clothes for Sundays.
[2] https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t...
My point was, back then, your two full-time jobs benefited the community in and of themselves.
I'm not trying to argue that we should go back in time to the dark ages (I like modern medicine and technology), but am just suggesting that workers would have been far more likely to find intrinsic satisfaction in the work they did back then because they both had more autonomy/personal input and could also directly see their labour benefitting the people they cared about.
Also, by your logic it wouldn't be enough for people to work around the clock just to survive in hunter-gathering times
The problem with being a hunter-gatherer is that your agricultural neighbours move in, settle down, work their asses off, have lots of children, and then war with you until they push you off your land. And nine times out of ten, they win this war, because their way of life supports a lot more people per acre of land.
This is why the world is full of agricultural societies, and the few remaining hunter-gatherers have been pushed into unproductive, fringe territories.
I like being out in nature, but I also like having a comfortable bed and a kitchen (with refrigerator) where I can prepare full meals. The cooking part is why I like having an RV - while it's possible to find a hotel with a kitchenette, it's still a pretty limited kitchen (often without an oven) and you have to find a way to schlep your food around from hotel to hotel if you're on an extended trip.
Plus, it's nice to have your own bathroom, especially during a Pandemic.
Nice to have a reasonable bed after an exhausting day canyoneering.
Nice to have a heater for that sudden snowstorm in June.
It isn't going on the backpacking trip (but could be a great mobile base for punctuated backpacking!) but it can facilitate a lot of great experiences (and can broaden the experience of people who wouldn't go on that backpacking trip...)
In short, if you were good in your 20s and like your job, you’ll still be good (possibly far better) with 70% raw intelligence but lots of experience and specialized expertise.
Much of the data, Adam argues, is also conflated with people realizing other things are important in life for a time. But many people revisit successful careers after kids move out etc.
1 - https://www.ted.com/talks/worklife_with_adam_grant_career_de...
What do we see in [1] and [2]? A very prominent downward trend ( https://i.imgur.com/avKUvTd.png ) on all but a single cognitive test, which is verbal knowledge. All the important cognitive abilities related to thinking and understanding seem to decline severely with age, by as much as 1.2~2.0 s.d. from the peak. This is 18~30 lost IQ points on a typical 15-s.d. scale. For some people, the naturally gifted (starting point of +2.5 s.d. from the mean) this decline may be merely sad and inconveniencing, but for most of us this reality poses significant challenges to our daily life and autonomy as we approach our late years. I really don't see how this point may be overstated or talked away.
By the way, if we try to delve deeper in our research exercise we can find pretty specific biological mechanisms associated with the cognitive decline, such as cellular senescence, vascular degeneration and BBB breakdown, loss of mitochondrial function, loss of white matter integrity.
In my opinion, as adult human being approaching middle age, this cognitive ability decline due to age cannot be ignored, or cheered away with the usual gung-ho or wished away with wishful thinking. Instead we should acknowledge the obvious process happening to our older relatives and beginning to happen to us, and push our representatives to fund more targeted research grants and biotech investments, to find some remedies.
Some of the necessary research is already happening, if you know where to look [3], but it's really a tenth to hundredth of the effort we could muster, if we cared. If we believed.
1. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.167...
2. http://www.iapsych.com/wj3ewok/LinkedDocuments/McArdle2002.p...
3. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13296
Still, it does not make decline disappear into statistical insignificance, just lowers its magnitude to 0.8~1.0 s.d, which is still large, thus sparing the qualitative reasoning in my interpretation. It should also be noted, that the Flynn effect has ended somewhere in the 1990s-2000s, at least in Norway[2], so it is likely that long-term it ceases to be a disturbing factor for between-cohorts comparisons. Test-retest gains will still be an issue though (and there is a viewpoint that a large part of Flynn effect could be explained as a large-scale environmentally-driven test-retest effect acting on the population).
I also like the review[1] of paper you posted, suggesting several measurable histological/neurological/physiological correlates of cognitive aging, aptly summarized on this graph: https://i.imgur.com/CpQ6Upc.png
If you are interested in discussing these papers, or joining a community of like-minded people, feel free to ping me via the email in my profile.
1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19231030/ (sci-hubbable) 2. http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/Sundet2004.pd...
While I haven't seen it formally studied, I'd expect software salaries to keep pace with the scale/value provided by the technology and how influential an engineer can be on a given software stack.
It's not rigorously backed up by robust longitudinal studies either. Fine, a lot of interesting ideas aren't. But the idea of preparing for a graceful change into a different future self -- maybe not weaker, but definitely not "the same but more", which is how I think we usually imagine a different future self -- seems under-explored to me in modern media. So I like this piece for trying to talk through it a bit.
The vast majority of people I know in mentally demanding labour tend to split 50/50 wanting to scale back, and wanting to continue as-is. The latter group tend to resent mandated ageist laws, which is understandable. The former, see them as an unimpeachable way to get off the train.
I know that my motivations in work have changed since I past 55, and as I approach 60, they are most definately not about doing as much, or the same kind of work.
I have perfectly adequate superannuation, and I don't expect to struggle. I also attend financial planning sessions from my funds, and get guidance on realistic income expectations post-work. FIRE is (in many ways) based on the same kind of information: when you do step back, after some intial bust of enthusiastic recreational or debt-clearing spending, most people reduce their core spend (but in the case of aged people, increase their health spend).
Doing nothing is fatal. Hobbies are not "it" for many people, volunteering, or some lower intensity part-time work is a perfectly rational thing to do, even if basically wealthy (I mean in context, having adequate income from your retirement planning. Not, being a FAANG class retiree)
Travel is often best done when younger. Its tiring. Young eyes need experiences. Old eyes can handle mostly memories and a few less intense ones. If you are an adrenalin junkie, none of this applies to you, and keep sky-diving as much as you can.
I definitely feel superceded in the workforce. I have a good position and respect (declining!) but I feel its time to step into a role which lets younger people come to the fore. You need to make way. You even need to let them make mistakes.
I've been in a transitional state career-wise, partially by choice, but I think there's two major factors not really mentioned by the article, and in fact, factors I think the article reinforces.
The first is ageism, like you say. But I think ageism is a lot more subtle than other things, because it's not only an assumption of age-related decline, but more generally an assumption that people can't change. So if you become known for X, it's hard for people to see you as anything but that. You get typecast, and those assumptions become societal constraints. It's like there's career "rails" and if you go off the rails, people don't know how to process it.
The second is a sort of lack of recognition of how much randomness and fads plays a role in certain fields. What I mean by that is that the reasons some people attain relative notoriety and status is often due to butterfly effects or societal viccitudes, and these become revealed only over time.
I think in general, there's a very superficial way we process people and their potential for change or new work. Even when they're capable of it, they're often prevented from doing so because of assumptions and stereotypes.
Sure, cognitive decline happens, but it's not as dramatic as it seems in this article.
Sometimes I feel as I've gotten older it's just a process of seeing more of the wizard behind the curtain. I read articles like this and get depressed only because it perpetuates the societal ills that lead to the problems in the first place.
This line in the article is quite revealing and strange, contextually: "Maybe not. Though the literature on this question is sparse, giftedness and achievements early in life do not appear to provide an /insurance policy/ against suffering later on. "
I personally have 2 rare neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system and I require an orphan drug, a blood product, that was covered under Medicare Part D when I lived in America. If I only had traditional Medicare in America, I would be liable for Medicare Part D Catastrophic Coverage Limits, and I would be forced to pay $50,000+/year total for all of my medical care under Medicare.
Technically, yes, I can get a Medicare Advantage plan, which has an out-of-pocket limit. The problem is that the vast majority of these plans are HMOs, and that does not go well with rare disease. Also, one of the rare diseases that I have is very rare, with case reports and cohorts at best in the medical literature. So, if I want to stay alive (like it is a choice?), I really cannot be on an HMO.
By the way, 7-8% of the general population collectively has some sort of a rare disease. There are about 8,000 or so rare diseases. So, it is not uncommon to have a rare disease.
Also, if you have cancer, or are likely to get cancer (elderly, perhaps?) having an HMO via a Medicare Advantage plan is not a good idea if you likewise want to stay alive.
The problem is that once you are on a Medicare Advantage plan, you basically cannot go back to traditional Medicare. This is because Medigap plans (Medicare Part B Supplemental plans) allow medical underwriting even after the Affordable Care Act went into effect, unless you live in 4 US states! So, you basically can never get a Medigap plan again after switching to a Medicare Advantage plan. It is, quite literally, a deadly, but not well known error that Americans make when they are on Medicare.
This is one of the top reasons why I left the US and never plan on living there ever again, even if I have to file and pay taxes as a US citizen. I naturalized and acquired another citizenship over the US healthcare system.
This is a totally ridiculous statement. Medicare-assisted drug costs are absolutely NOT going to bankrupt someone who has very wisely saved "millions" for retirement.
I have watched both my parents now pass, and I actually helped them both work out which Medicare plan to select based on their specific medications by creating a spreadsheet and carefully going thru the documentation of each plan and doing the math.
2 million dollars can rather safely throw off 3% after-taxes, so thats 60k/year not counting the odd 1800 that the federal government pays everyone with Medicare "benefits", that that is 6800/month someone who has saved "millions" has for income, and that's not even touching the principle nest egg.
There is no possible way someone's monthly drug costs are going to be anywhere even CLOSE to that number..I think each of my parents spent around 1200/month for what seemed to me to be way more "medication" then they could possibly need.
Unless you somehow come up with numbers that are way, way different than mine, your assertation that drug costs could bankrupt someone with "millions" saved is rather laughable.
But that kind of omits the fact that in our modern day and age, the elderly have a lot more technical help available. For Darwin, it was a decision of leaving his family behind to go on a months-long trip. Nowadays, it'd be a 6 hour flight and you can call your friends while you're on vacation.
So the risk/reward tradeoff has massively changed since Darwin's times.
The section on Darwin was an eyebrow raiser. It makes sense to include someone like Darwin (very interesting and well known), but he's not a great example to compare to "normal" people (like the couple mentioned in the opening paragraph).
A 50 year old in the 1800s whose job was catching a ship to the other side of the planet is a little different when compared to a factory worker, software engineer, doctor, etc.
Also, what the fuck is this off-hand remark:
> Unfortunately, Mendel’s work was published in an obscure academic journal and Darwin never saw it—and in any case, Darwin did not have the mathematical ability to understand it.
This part is true. Not sure about Darwin's mathematical knowledge.
> and in any case, Darwin did not have the mathematical ability to understand it.
In the Age of Trump, however, it really has just descended into blog-caliber clickbait. The effort at introspection and critical thinking skills just isn't there anymore. Today, the publication just feels like a collection of opinion essays aimed at pandering to Twitter culture.
This month's cover story is titled "Private Schools Are Indefensible" (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private...). The author starts off recalling anecdotes about her experience, teaching the children of hedge fund managers at an elite private school catering to the ultra-wealthy.
In the old Atlantic, you would skim through this sort of thing, waiting for the "meat" of the article to begin. References to hard data, facts and figures. Comparisons and contrasts between these ultra-wealthy private coastal schools, and the mundane private schools accessible to middle-class families in cities and towns across the nation. Perhaps even some interesting counterpoint, about minority families being more likely to choose charter or private school when having the option.
In today's Atlantic, though, you never get to that "meat". The introductory anecdotes simply ARE the article! The author hated teaching the children of multi-millionaires at her elite private school, and thought the school was terrible and twelve kinds of racist accordingly. There is zero effort to tie her experience at this school into the broad "Private Schools Are Indefensible" title. Because if you're in the in target audience these days, then surely you already feel that way, and simply want some fluffy opinion content to reinforce your feeling. Right?
I've held on longer than I probably should have, but I don't believe that I'll be renewing with my current subscription expires next year. Which is terribly depressing to me.
But it does remind me of a few chapters within Yuval Noah Harari's "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" book which I'd recommend everyone read. But essentially he talks about how we're currently seeing a large influx and requirement for digital or technology related jobs, which will over time take some but not all jobs from traditional jobs (not up for debate). Now many of the people who have worked in traditional jobs such as check outs, clerks, factory workers etc will likely be higher in age and will struggle to reskill to other jobs, not just due to the change in technical requirements but purely due to age and our ability to learn completely new tasks.
Fast forward and the discussion talks about how the current and new workforce might be expected to change jobs many times more than previous generations due to such a rapidly changing world. He therefore raises the point that we all may need to reskill multiple times during our lives and will require significant cognitive strain on older people who may have previously been able to master their professional for decades.
Maybe we need to usher in retirement at a much earlier age, 55 perhaps. Of course you can keep working but could also retire if there is that desire.
My view is we are all going to be out of work soon enough. Sam Altman agrees with me. Probably in the next 2-3 decades for sure.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/17/openais-altman-ai-will-make-...
I think the mistake most people make is to deliberately slow down as you get older. Never slow down and you'll keep pulling ahead.
The only thing I lack these days is an intense desire to constantly code - I find there are all kinds of interesting aspects to the creation of software beyond hammering out code.
(I cut my teeth with Fortran 77 on a VAX 11/780).
https://www.aei.org/articles/counterpoint-unions-are-irrelev...
"A one-size-fits-all union-type compensation contract with pay determined mostly by seniority and not merit is no longer desirable or relevant for the workers of the 21st century."
Oh please.
At 43, I get interview requests for FAANG-level companies several times per year without a LinkedIn account or a résumé. The main things I have going for me are I don't look 43 and I date college girls. Maybe that helps keep me from seeming coasting, declining, and/or stogy. I can't type as fast as I did at 20, but I pace myself (I gave myself RSI from not working-out enough and typing too much without breaks.)
I never want to "retire" but move to different roles and/or fields before either I or the field declines. To me, retirement is death either by boredom, distractions, idleness, or decline.