My dad had a private office, and his secretary had one too. Both offices looked out over a lake, and were large rooms. My dad had an informal sofa area by the window, and the secretary's office was slightly less grand but still had plenty of space. He earned about the same as me inflation adjusted. His secretary obviously far less, though they both got a gold-plated final salary pension on top.
What are the chances of that happening today for anyone not in the C-suite?
I never had a private office until I started working from home. My pension comes out of my salary and all the risk of markets falling etc falls on my shoulders.
Right, as a percentage of the total employed population, the benefits of your dad's job were much more rare than yours are today. Remember how many more people were working in manufacturing and agriculture at that point. This is a flattening. I'm also betting you make significantly more dollars, inflation adjusted, then he did.
My first few white collar jobs were miserable experiences - stress, temperamental bosses, lack of agency, etc. It got better but that took years of effort, at which point I was already thinking about leanFIRE, compelled by AI (this back in 2018) and climate concerns.
It's cyclical. Socioeconomic status is relative, so when we experience absolute economic growth, we expect socioeconomic growth too, but that can't happen without kicking others out. This is called elite overproduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction.
Twenty five years ago, if you had a 40" TV, a 200 horsepower car, and a convection oven (now usually called an air fryer) you were well off, but those are all baseline now. Fifty years ago, if you had a 1,200 square foot home with two bathrooms, and a two-car garage, you were doing very well, but the median newly-built housing unit is now over 2,000 square feet. One hundred years ago, if you had a refrigerator or even a radio, you were super rich, and even having electricity in your household made you better off than almost half of the country.
You can work as a grunt and get what your parents only dreampt of as children, and be socioeconomically well below average. An organization cannot operate with most of its members in top-level positions. If successful, it can pretend to, but most of the upper-level positions will be meaningless, and its liable to be outdone by a competing organization that isn't top heavy. After periods of sustained economic growth, we play along as though there's similar socioeconomic growth, but that's definitionally impossible, and the upper socioeconomic rungs will redefine themselves.
The only option is to not base your happiness on high socioeconomic status. Half the population isn't even average, let noticeably above that, so even though it's a worthwhile goal, if doing otherwise makes you unhappy, chances are you will be unhappy, with no innovation or policy able to make it probable that you will do otherwise.
In the 80s, after you graduated from college and got a white-collar job, you probably didn't have much in student loans, and if you did, you could be assured you'd pay them off in a couple of years. Then you'd have money saved up to put down on a house. If you wanted you could get married and have kids. Take two weeks vacation every summer to the shore or the mountains. You expected to be able to afford to put your kids through college, and after 35 years or so of service, you could retire with a pension and a gold Rolex as thanks for your service.
Where there ever pensions in the tech business? Maybe ibm in the 50’s or 60’s…. Did DEC have pensions? Large, old employers like governments or pharma or union-supporting companies had pensions, but the rest had “defined contribution” retirement instead.
Computers blew away the pink-collar job fields which took away much of the non-tech employment. Hard to assemble a 2 tech family with children due to the lack of remote work and the lack of affordable housing where the job-islands are. And a house then was way, way smaller and less featureful than what people want today an and toys were also way cheaper and simpler.
what the market delivers and what people want aren't always the same. imo demand is there for smaller dwellings, it's just not profitable enough to get delivered either because of the margin on large spaces / needing to overcome high labor & overhead. i would love to live in an ADU were it to be cheaper than a 1 bed or well sited / modern.
I started a job in summer 1998 and I had a pension until they were acquired in about 2011 or so. It was so invisible that I forgot all about it until I switched to another job and they contacted me to decide what to do about the pension now that I'd left.
I did not distinguish pensions per se from other programs run and, most importantly, guaranteed by the employer. In all cases the employee could be assured of a minimum retirement income based on years of service and salaries. This is in contrast to 401k and similar investment schemes where, at best, the employer will partially match employee contributions but at the end of 35 years the actual value of the funds is subject to the vagaries of the stock and bond markets and may not be sufficient to live and could even be zero. The point being: risk and responsibility for retirement is entirely on the individual.
It's my understanding that pensions were quite rare, certainly much more so than 401ks, so at least that expectation might be a bit more rosy than reality.
For me, the first noticeable encroachment of bleakness was when we stopped having offices and started having to work in cubes.
My dad had a private office, and his secretary had one too. Both offices looked out over a lake, and were large rooms. My dad had an informal sofa area by the window, and the secretary's office was slightly less grand but still had plenty of space. He earned about the same as me inflation adjusted. His secretary obviously far less, though they both got a gold-plated final salary pension on top.
What are the chances of that happening today for anyone not in the C-suite?
I never had a private office until I started working from home. My pension comes out of my salary and all the risk of markets falling etc falls on my shoulders.
Right, as a percentage of the total employed population, the benefits of your dad's job were much more rare than yours are today. Remember how many more people were working in manufacturing and agriculture at that point. This is a flattening. I'm also betting you make significantly more dollars, inflation adjusted, then he did.
For one thing, the rich were as rich in proportion as today. That alone would need to be reversed.
Looking at the early scenes in the matrix, I think it must be nice to have a little cubicle, rather than the hot desk situation we have now
My first few white collar jobs were miserable experiences - stress, temperamental bosses, lack of agency, etc. It got better but that took years of effort, at which point I was already thinking about leanFIRE, compelled by AI (this back in 2018) and climate concerns.
You mean the 80s?
I also miss smoking my pipe in the office, surrounded by rich mahogany.
I don’t know if bleak is the right word, but keeping up with the pace of change with LLMs is exhausting.
Same, which is why I just go with my own pace and stop being FOMO. Fortunately my org is not that gung-ho about pushing AI.
It's cyclical. Socioeconomic status is relative, so when we experience absolute economic growth, we expect socioeconomic growth too, but that can't happen without kicking others out. This is called elite overproduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction.
Twenty five years ago, if you had a 40" TV, a 200 horsepower car, and a convection oven (now usually called an air fryer) you were well off, but those are all baseline now. Fifty years ago, if you had a 1,200 square foot home with two bathrooms, and a two-car garage, you were doing very well, but the median newly-built housing unit is now over 2,000 square feet. One hundred years ago, if you had a refrigerator or even a radio, you were super rich, and even having electricity in your household made you better off than almost half of the country.
You can work as a grunt and get what your parents only dreampt of as children, and be socioeconomically well below average. An organization cannot operate with most of its members in top-level positions. If successful, it can pretend to, but most of the upper-level positions will be meaningless, and its liable to be outdone by a competing organization that isn't top heavy. After periods of sustained economic growth, we play along as though there's similar socioeconomic growth, but that's definitionally impossible, and the upper socioeconomic rungs will redefine themselves.
The only option is to not base your happiness on high socioeconomic status. Half the population isn't even average, let noticeably above that, so even though it's a worthwhile goal, if doing otherwise makes you unhappy, chances are you will be unhappy, with no innovation or policy able to make it probable that you will do otherwise.
Here's an excellent book on the topic: https://musaalgharbi.com/we-have-never-been-woke-available-n...
Thank you - I completely agree. We have so much more than our parents did.
Alain de Botton's book "Status Anxiety" is excellent about this topic, too.
In the 80s, after you graduated from college and got a white-collar job, you probably didn't have much in student loans, and if you did, you could be assured you'd pay them off in a couple of years. Then you'd have money saved up to put down on a house. If you wanted you could get married and have kids. Take two weeks vacation every summer to the shore or the mountains. You expected to be able to afford to put your kids through college, and after 35 years or so of service, you could retire with a pension and a gold Rolex as thanks for your service.
Where there ever pensions in the tech business? Maybe ibm in the 50’s or 60’s…. Did DEC have pensions? Large, old employers like governments or pharma or union-supporting companies had pensions, but the rest had “defined contribution” retirement instead.
Computers blew away the pink-collar job fields which took away much of the non-tech employment. Hard to assemble a 2 tech family with children due to the lack of remote work and the lack of affordable housing where the job-islands are. And a house then was way, way smaller and less featureful than what people want today an and toys were also way cheaper and simpler.
> Where there ever pensions in the tech business?
Superannuation schemes in Australia, Singapore, etc.
Mind you these kinds of schemes provide pensions for all workers across all industries and aren't limited to the tech business.
what the market delivers and what people want aren't always the same. imo demand is there for smaller dwellings, it's just not profitable enough to get delivered either because of the margin on large spaces / needing to overcome high labor & overhead. i would love to live in an ADU were it to be cheaper than a 1 bed or well sited / modern.
I started a job in summer 1998 and I had a pension until they were acquired in about 2011 or so. It was so invisible that I forgot all about it until I switched to another job and they contacted me to decide what to do about the pension now that I'd left.
There aren't many, but they are out there.
I did not distinguish pensions per se from other programs run and, most importantly, guaranteed by the employer. In all cases the employee could be assured of a minimum retirement income based on years of service and salaries. This is in contrast to 401k and similar investment schemes where, at best, the employer will partially match employee contributions but at the end of 35 years the actual value of the funds is subject to the vagaries of the stock and bond markets and may not be sufficient to live and could even be zero. The point being: risk and responsibility for retirement is entirely on the individual.
It's my understanding that pensions were quite rare, certainly much more so than 401ks, so at least that expectation might be a bit more rosy than reality.
Bob Cratchit had a hard time as a clerk.
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