Posted on 09/03/2007 11:07:38 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Every time John Remore steps up to his workstation to form a piece of sheet metal, he brings an intangible asset to the job: 42 years of experience, dating to lessons from his father.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Yep. He blistered his hands for two days, before I introduced him to the ditch witch, and let him make some money.
Lesson learned, I guess. LOL.
(I am a mean dad...LOLOLOL)
Yeah, there is no point solving the opportunity problem for defense engineers under 50. We don't need new weapons going forward. The world is at peace....
I do work for a consulting company. It's a geriocracy like all of engineering.
Oh I am not unhappy, just telling what it was like for engineers in my arena. I have a bird nest on the ground in my company and as you state , if I am willing to travel, a job just about anywhere.
Stay safe !
Look, it's sector wide, the small, the big, the medium companies are top heavy with older management that will have to die or retire before the "junior guys" get promoted.
And they ain't retiring--according to this article, companies are trying to retain them at the expense (quite literally) of the younger guys.
I’m curious to see what happens to these companies once the old boys retire. They still have to pay their fat pensions, and there is no one underneath.
A relative of mine is in the utility business. They cut costs by not hiring new engineers, or training tradesmen for the last twenty years. Now as people retire they are desperate and in some cases beyond desperate. Some work is simply not getting done because there is not enough people.
And here is another problem; they are so accustomed to bringing young engineers in for low wages.. those engineers just happy to get a job.. that they are offering low. Like 70k a year. The engineers with some experience come and see the offer and the average home at 600k and laugh. And going to the private sector, where wages are gapping up.
Thats the danger for your company not giving you big money, smaller more nimble companies win a contract and are willing to pay whatever it takes to get people with skill. Big companies and governments have pay scales that virtually can not change. Any sudden change would upset people making less and higher up.
Hey, I can’t spell in six languages.
Or any of them, for that matter.
Does that make me a loser?
This is not an economic or demographic catastrophe.
What can you do? Well, Dude, I think as an engineer you might think about that problem yourself rather than waiting like some kind of vulture wishing for a body.
I think it would take very little for you to start recommending some kind of genocide. Get a grip.
Whaaaa? You're kidding, right?
'sides, I didn't realize that old white boomer engineers were their own 'genus' that you could commit 'genocide' against.
Maybe a pogrom....
They stopped bringing in product, then they got our supplier to ship the customer orders right to a delivery service. That way they did away with drivers and warehousemen.
The older I get the more I think I better just go to work every day. I don’t think it’s a good idea to job hop any more. It’s just good to have a job and the alternative is abhorrent. Maybe that’s why older workers are better. We know we’re not bulletproof and indispensible like we thought when we were younger. Also, we have more to lose and far less time to start over. I’m in my late forties, and I figure I got one last good career push left in me so I started grad school this fall. I’m starting to wonder what I got myself into.
Okay, that works. I was thinking in terms of outsourcing warehousing to, say, India. That might be kinda hard.
“The older I get the more I think I better just go to work every day. I don’t think it’s a good idea to job hop any more.”
Harvard Business Review did a study that said you should job hop every five years until you reach 40 {I forget what the age cutoff was...) and after that you are better of sticking where you are.
Gen X in Senior Executive Services
They call it The Gray Ceiling:
"This is further compounded by what is termed the “gray ceiling” – promising Xers in their 30s and early 40s find themselves stuck, unable to move up because the pathways to advancement are blocked by Baby Boomers postponing retirement. Much has been made of the impending “retirement tsunami,” particularly in the senior leadership ranks in the Federal sector, where some 70% are eligible or soon eligible to retire. However, “eligibility” to retire does not mean “able” to retire."
Well, if you are going to be a grammar NAZI{ there, I capitalized it for ya}. I thought that doing a job, doing it well and never calling off sick was going to get me pat on the back instead of a knife in it.
And, by the way, you have some balls calling someone you dont know a loser. I bet you are some over-educated person who was in their 8th year of college with a major in mid-evil basketweaving and a minor in space exploration.
Well, if there was a way outsource to India, they would have found it.
>>The new hires don’t last long, and it has been that way since we’ve owned the business (15 years). They don’t want to learn and they aren’t dependable. We just soldier on with fewer and fewer people.<<
I’m curious, since I’m one of those dependable people who just frankly enjoy learning to do new things, what would you pay a young person, and what potential for growth does that workplace offer?
I’m a telecom manager in a large company that provides disaster recovery and technology outsourcing services in the U.S.
We hire College interns every semester - by far the Interns with the best work ethic are older students. They show up, are eager to learn and don’t have attitudes.
We’ve got an intern working for us now that I really wish we could make room for. One of the top 3 we’ve ever had. Smart, good common sense and energetic.
I get really offended by the X’rs whining, that the boomers busted the bank.
Born in ‘62, I am paying for all of your silliness, and my parents, and my grandparents...
Used to fight like crazy with my Grandad. I was really offended by the idea, that the Fed was taking thousands out of my pocket every month, and putting it in his. He was fairly well to do, while I was trying to feed three kids on a victory garden.
The system sucks. It is a dang ponzi scheme.
But you are not even near the one holding the bag. Heck, you aren’t a quarter to the one holding the bag.
Look at the actuarial tables - 1962 sucks. You pay for everything, you get nothing.
So when X’rs whine, I want to slap them silly.
Yeah, it's true. I was born in '68.
I guess technically, you are a tail-end boomer, but closer in attitude and experience to the Xers....
I'm not whining, I'm looking at my profession and realizing "Holy Cow! Somebody's gonna hafta start dying or retiring to get a promotion around here!"
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