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Looking back, most of us know we could have done a lot more with our lives. How many times have you uttered the lamentation "would have - could have - should have." You hear that a lot from investors but for most of us working stiffs, a change of wording is in order - "would have been, could have been, should h ave been." If you pluck a dozen random people from the population with the same level of intelligence, same educational level, same aptitude and same work ethic - you would expect that they would all be making similar wages... and you'd be wrong. Some of them will luck out and find a great career purely by chance. Maybe they'll get a tip from an uncle about going into plastic like Dustin Hoffman in "The Graduate." Others will just grab the first job that comes along and make a career of it and still others will find a line of work that becomes obsolete. Think of the guy who spent years honing his skills as a horse carriage craftsman only to see his job go up in smoke when Henry Ford's assembly lines started rolling out Model T's.
On average, most of us will change careers six or seven times during our working years. Some of us will do it by choice, but the more likely scenario is that we'll have the rug pulled out from under us by mergers, closures and the tectonic economic shifts that is the price we all pay for globalism and rapid technological change.
Picture: Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857
I started out as a banking software mainframe programmer in Seattle at a time when the city had seven commercial banks each with its own programming department. With the changes in banking regulations that allowed for interstate banking, all seven institutions were eventually bought out and absorbed by the usual suspects Bank of America, Key Bank, Wells Fargo and Chase. With a dwindling local demand for COBOL programmers, I went into consulting and ended up making some serious change landing contracts with some major banks around the country and abroad. I spent ten years as a road warrior but the good times lasted until the Y2K. After that, the work just dried up. New technology, outsourcing to India, more mergers and fewer banks - all these factors converged at one time and I was out of a job and a career. It happened so fast that I didn't know what hit me and, having spent two decades doing essentially the same kind of work, I didn't really know how to do anything else.
My problem was that I didn't see the big picture and didn't come to terms with my obsolescence. I was good at what I did, the job paid well and it got easier with every passing year. It never occurred to me to do anything else. I spent a few more years working as a programmer outside the financial industry at about half the wages I'd been accustomed to. Nobody likes to take a pay cut especially when they've become accustomed to getting a major pay hike every year.
I should have seen the writing on the wall because it was scribbled in big shinny letters. But I was in denial and way too comfortable. Fortunately, I didn't have to look for a new career because I'd saved enough money to dabble in real estate and made a little on the side from stocks and freelance writing.
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