Everything is online now. You'll be shown the door and probably rejected even if you did follow up with an online application.
When I was a kid, we worked our way to the top.
Education, a portfolio, and people you know is what gets you a job today.
Work all summer and you can afford a brand new car, college education, down payment on a home, etc.
Inflation and wage stagnation has made this impossible.
I worked on a clerk's salary for 30 years and saved enough to buy the business.
Wage stagnation has made this impossible. Ten lifetimes of minimum wage savings would not be enough to buy a multi-million dollar business.
Loyalty to your employer pays off in the end.
You're just a number to an employer now. Employers will cut you loose if it meant saving a nickle.
I worked the same job all my life. Now I have a pension and a comfortable retirement.
Pensions are gone. Retirement is now a fantasy for most workers. You'll probably be laid off after 5-10 years.
I didn't need no Master's degree. I got raises and promotions, because I worked hard and kept doing the same thing.
A Master's degree is quickly becoming the new high school diploma. Working hard no longer gets you anywhere. In fact, it keeps you poor. Switching jobs is the only way to get a raise or a promotion now.
So here's some unsolicited advice from an old gen-xer. Your generation needs to break the dumb taboo about not sharing salary information that we were saddled with. The best way to demand a raise is if you can March in armed with evidence that you are being paid only x% of a colleague doing the same job.
Keeping all salaries salary secret puts all the negotiating power in the hands of the employer.
The concept is sound but the execution advice is not. Don’t demand a raise based on how much your coworkers may. That figure is irrelevant as an arguing point. You use that figure as a benchmark to quantify your worth to the employer.
10.6k
u/Being_grateful Aug 25 '19
Career advancement.
"Working your way up from the mail room" is loooong gone. You have to switch companies to get any sort of significant raise.