but today, in 2011, you are not likely to find anyone who will work for a company for 20 years, never mind a lifetime. heck, if i look back at all the companies i worked for, most of them are gone. let's see:
* 1987 - financial services company (out of business)
* 88-93 - instrument controls (sold/broken up into different units)
* 1994 - bank (acquired by another bank ... shocker)
* 95-96 - instrument controls (still in business, but under different ownership)
* 96-00 - financial services (still in business)
* 2000 - dot com (trimmed to 200 employees, acquired by a consulting company)
* 2001 - dot com (out of business)
* 02-05 - higher education (still in business)
as you can see, i never had a chance of working 40 years at the same company. looking back at all the companies i worked for, there's only 2 that i would consider spending my whole life there.
in a recent study of s&p500 companies, the life expectancy of a company dropped from 75 years, in 1937, to 15.
the point here is: our "business" environment changes constantly, and so do the jobs. people who were qualified to "file" and "type" on a typewriter no longer have the skill set to edit documents, send email or organize spreadsheets. most have not re-trained themselves to the modern skills, and often will find themselves at the unemployment line. if i look back at the jobs that i had at each company, and think of what that job would consist of today, i realize that if i was still working at that job, i would have had to "re-train" myself. in the 50's an engineer had a job/skill for life. a computer programmer in 2011 had to re-learn the programming landscape of 20 years ago.
more importantly, the people running these companies must also change how the manage the business and the people, and that's not happening. the pace and complexity of the work of today is a challenge for "old" managers without modern skills.
Darwin was right. only the strong survive.
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