General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: This, my friends, is far too typical for my generation. [View all]DFW
(53,930 posts)My wife and I are both boomers from completely different backgrounds. My father came back from World War II and went to Columbia Journalism. He got a job with a small newspaper in a one-horse town up north (as in Canadian border), became their one and only Washington correspondent, and stayed with them all his life. He still managed to make enough to put all three of his kids through Ivy League colleges. My wife's father came out of World War II barely alive and minus a leg he left in Stalingrad. He had been a farmer, but had to learn for a desk job after the war was over.
After college, I became a gypsy for a year, living off of music gigs and avoiding my mom's exhortations to go to business school to develop some aptitude she was sure I had. My wife, in her country, studied social work, knew America was "there," but never gave it much thought otherwise. I got lucky, workwise, invented a position that basically only I could do and found the right outfit to put it to use, and thus invented my own job security forever. That kind of thing CAN still be done today, but I think it is as much luck as anything else. I know a 30 year old guy in Dallas who makes a million dollars a year (!!) in a nitch job that he found. He could do it for maybe 5 companies on earth, and otherwise he'd be driving a bus from Irving to South Dallas and back (talk about luck).
My daughters both have jobs, and have both USA and EU citizenships.
One is now 30, chose to live in the USA (for now). She gets little vacation (9 or 10 paid days), works for near slave wages by the standards of her location (she lives in Manhattan by choice, and walks to work), and has a fabulous time. She is good at her job, which she convinced her employer to give her even though she didn't have the experience the job description said she required for it. She is jealous of her sister, but only for her sister's salary and vacation time. She wouldn't leave New York City for her sister's salary OR vacation time, though. Her choice.
The younger one is 28, went to college and law school (majored in international law) in the USA, but graduated in 2010, when even the good positions were put on hold for a year, and the others had evaporated into thin air. She saved up, and on her own initiative, went over to a job fair for legal positions in Germany. She interviewed with the German arm of a big British law firm who was looking for someone fluent in German with a US bar admission. My daughter liked them and said here I am. They took her, and she now makes a comfortable 6 figure salary, and gets 6 weeks paid vacation, which her firm makes their employees take to avoid burnout. She gets the German health care package that her firm offers. She also pays 50% in taxes and gets worked mercilessly when not on vacation. Her boyfriend goes nuts because he sometimes barely sees her even when she is not on foreign assignments, and they live together! She has to live in Frankfurt am Main, not exactly Germany's most exciting city. She likes her job and her firm, but is insanely jealous of her sister's fun-filled social life in Manhattan. She is also the object of aggressive head hunters from other (mostly US) law firms offering a LOT more money but less job security. She hasn't taken any of them--yet. The temptation drives her nuts, but the job insecurity is a big red danger flag. Again, her choice.
You can't have it all, it seems. After nearly 40 years with the same outfit (and in all that time never a dull moment), I'm quite ready to say I lucked out, and if my daughters don't think they have lucked out, at least they have jobs that are (for now) secure with employers they like. Neither of them got their jobs by snapping their fingers (or by any family connections). They went out and made their own luck. Not everyone can, and my heart goes out to those who don't have the solid family to fall back on that my wife and I made top priority for our girls. Like the OP said: "take care of your children." We did, and we like to think it paid off. We have no patience for those who have a "lack of sympathy and concern" for job seekers. You make a far better impression if you have the attitude of someone with some solid emotional pillow to fall back on if things don't work out. Not everyone with great qualifications or a solid work ethic gets a job they deserve, and not everyone can invent one that has no competition. I'd like to say to everyone looking for a job that somewhere out there, that to some employer somewhere, you are just what they're looking for. But it just isn't so for everyone. It wasn't so when I was in my gypsy phase after graduation, either.
I think that some of us, whatever the generation, will luck out, some will make their own luck, and some will never find what they're looking for, and due to nothing other than cruel fate. Not exactly encouraging, is it? The only thing I think I can offer in response is the fact that even today, you CAN still luck out. You DO have a shot at finding something that both pays a fair wage and offers you more than poverty and drudgery. That hope has to be what spurs you on, because the alternative sucks.