The Gen X Career Meltdown
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The "boring" days.
Anyways, I feel less sorry for myself and more empathy for younger generations.
Growing up has always been challenging, before school shootings, and online bullying..
Now you can't escape the call(s) without it implicitly being interpretted as ghosting.
/r
[1]https://www.scottsmitelli.com/articles/take-oncall-and-shove...
We have the best of both ways regarding technology. We use it and we're comfortable with it and can pivot careers with it, but we also remember a time before computers and so we're not chronically attached to and dependent on tech. We have the detached cynicism of Gen X, but it's tempered with the worldly connectedness of the millennials.
I would be hard pressed to say computers & the Internet are a net positive for the world. For me personally, they unlocked a passion & interest I haven't been able to find in any other domain. I have plenty of other interests & loves, but anything to do with computers is my passion.
For the rest of the species, where a computer is either a means to an end, a necessary evil, or a way to brainwash yourself, I don't view computers as something beneficial. The undiscerning get sucked into YouTube black holes & allow themselves to be swept up by bullshit they read on Twitter. It gave a platform to the absolute worst people among us, which would be fine if people would reject the garbage they're spouting.
Our collectively stupid ape brains aren't ready for computers. I believe we (the royal "we") moved too fast & poisoned our shared, objective reality. And that's all before I even start talking about the people intentionally making life worse with technology. Your Zuckerbergs & Musks & Ellisons, the people who use these machines as tools to spread suffering & chaos.
I'm focusing on the negatives right now because how can I not? The people who have introduced all this technology are weilding it for bad things & negatively impacting my life & many others. The negatives are currently front & center, hard to ignore or deny.
Ever-increasing centralized surveillance/control makes the world a better place? I guess one might think that if one assumes they themselves will be part of the managerial class pulling those levers of power, like the New York Times staff for previous generations. Personally, I favor individual liberty.
The post war boom needed people, was a time of great building. That had created past a peak, and we no longer were able to exploit foreign labor markets and resources with quite such abundance by Gen X's day.
But today? We had a fantastic economy. Life was expensive as hell, but at least there were economic prospects, things to do, careers that felt worth doing.
But now, we are chainsawing apart the economy. Political speech-control is forcing companies and universities to behave certain ways, to eliminaye jobs and career paths. Healthcare, sciences, and international diplomacy are being gutted, dismantled entirely. With foreign students to afraid to risk the arbitrary injustice of ICE and potentially being sent to a prison states super prison, universities will lose one of their reliable revenue streams. These are going to massively impact jobs.
This story is a good one to remember, about a change, but the horros happening now are utterly self inflicted, by people aggressively dismantling the New Deal and the post-wsr American Way of Life, eliminating enormous amounts of jobs & the career paths that started these jobs.
Us punk kids who photocopied their 'zines are doing just fine because we paid attention and moved on and then moved on again.
And the kids say: "skill issue, get gud"
Moving out’s the way to move up.
Tech never had these kinds of issues because you could simply cross-train on the next related tech stack and keep working.
That's not entirely accurate. Sure textile mills and foundries were on a downward trend in the 70s and 80s but it wasn't until NAFTA came along that the bulk of manufacturing industries offshored. North Carolina retained it's command of furniture manufacturing and the timber industry was thriving up the eastern seaboard until then.
Still kicking.
Times change, you can change with it or be broken by it. It’s a choice and people who make the choice to not grow, and then complain about it, frustrate me.
Some generations are in a messier shape than others, in different ways. Even Gen Z managers describe their own generation as the worst.
Why hire a junior when the market is flooded with people with 5+ years of experience?
A smart person might cynically write such an article, knowing the topic would draw eyeballs and thus money.
authentic = stupid
manipulative = smart
1. In Marketing you are usually either climbing the ladder and moving to management or you are out. No one can afford the experienced but expensive graphic designer, photographer, or writer. The skill-sets are too commoditized. And everyone is always looking for new fresh voices / design ideas. Agencies hire cheaper and younger talent that will put in hellish hours because they don’t know any better and don’t have family commitments. There is basically no one in marketing over 55 unless you are the owner or CMO. High burnout and not a kind career to families.
2. Marketing Agencies are a dime a dozen now and the business model is broken. You used to need a marketing agency to coordinate big media buys or to have access to the right people or equipment and the cost barrier and knowledge barrier to do it yourself was huge. So what you did was hire a really good marketing strategist and then they hired agencies to pitch campaign ideas and handle the production work, but the job moves too fast now to do that. The tools are ever cheaper and ever easier to use. Most companies have brought the bulk of the marketing work they do in house and maybe only work with an agency for a brand refresh or for a big nationally aired ad campaign.
Gen X is hitting the age where you are either executive in creative industries or you are out. Some of that is age discrimination, but some of it is just the reality that there is probably someone younger, cheaper, hungrier, and with fresh ideas looking to do the job.
I have some friends in Hollywood... they say there's nothing left, and not even a side-gig in Albuquerque left to pay the bills.
Been looking for a job, but in this downturn there's nothing available. After the economy recovers I have ageism and LLMs to look forward to. My own career mistakes as well—they were teaching fortran in school and I wanted to hack on Netscape for pay instead. ;-) Seemed like the right call at the time, but turned out dead wrong.
Submitting resumes without a referral is useless, you gotta work your network.
"exit strategy"
Like watching that game at the venue and the score is very much settled and you asked yourself:
"Where did I park?"
The revolution will not be televised.
No flying cars for us but here, takes this gadget and play Sudoku until whatever will happen, happens.
“Soon we will no longer need musicians, due to rise of AI”.
“If a director can do it with AI writing I want X, Y, Z”
A strange pattern. In all three cases, are we getting a 1:1 quality or we are so lost in age of cheap quality that those does not matter?
I for one would not buy anything or pay a subscription fee, where the photo or the music was AI generated. If the creative content I want does not have a humane touch, it is not worth to me.
Also, while we are bemoaning the loss of fields and jobs, behind the veil lurks the age of wrong incentives. In previous era, when my parents were pursuing a career, a record breaking profit meant more expansion, more investment, more debt and new pursuit of possibilities. Now we live in a moral bankrupt feudal age, where despite record profits, layoffs and merger+shutdown are performed like a crazy to maximize stock price and top level bonuses. It all is just regression of society’s feudal lords too deep in greed to care about the future.
No one thinks anymore, here is my product, it is so cool and ground breaking, we must layoff more employees to also chase that another fad which will likely fail in a year or two but I get good bonuses and move onto another place before the consequences come due but then more layoffs can be done to pay for my mistakes. But eventually if enough people are being laid off, who will buy my products? How will my target audience pay for this thing if they don’t have a job? The economy does not work if the gains are not cycled again back to society and common folks.
Also welcome to the age of media control and mass manufacturing consent(thanks to Noam Chomsky for the concept), when enough media words and campaign can be bought to tell the feudal overlords what to do and what is the new trend in societal destruction in order to maximize their billion bonus packages in short term and leave the consequences to the future.
/rant off
In terms of 1:1 quality, I think that probably is the case here, at least for what is being measured.
These photoshoots are for marketing. The yardstick against which they are being measured, is effectiveness at marketing, not critical acclaim or depth of plot.
The format that most efficiently and effectively reaches the intended audience, is the "highest quality", which yes does mean that purchasing 20 videos from assorted freelance tiktok marketers is more than "1:1 quality" with a single video that costs 20x as much.
I take your overall point but the primary purpose of marketing has always been to influence consumers. This is not the loss of some high art form.
FWIW, I'm GenX and we all saw this coming in the 90s. I'm lucky enough to happen to have interest in tech, so I'm still alive, career wise. It was ugly for non-tech people even in the mid 90s. Hopefully on-shoring will be a thing again soon. Globalization + Tech really kicked the shit out of the US workforce.
Good luck everyone.