Filene's Talent Basement

"Optimism sometimes does require a bit of grace and I'm the first to admit that sometimes I'm clumsy." - David M. Bailey

WIIFM

If you're a smart person, somewhere between 20 and 55 years old, you'll want to be diligent about planning an exit strategy for your career. Whether it's the career you think you want or the career you have, makes no difference. It'll end, either on your terms or by the decisions made by other, probably younger, people. If your plan is the former, here are some things to think about.

I wrote previously about a strategy for dealing with problem employees commonly used by technical managers steeped in the factory model for management: The Retail Rule for Dealing with Consistently Under-Performing Employees. There's another type of "problematic" employee that is handled with a related retail strategy. Problematic not because of any particular personality trait, aberrant behavior, or lack of competence, but because they have drifted across a line into a category on the Venn diagram of Employees labeled "old."

In my youth, I witnessed a wide variety of ways management massaged policies in order to push employees into the "old" category and out of the workforce. The tactics were so transparent I could calculate the shelf life of a better-than-average software developer: About age 35. This was the tipping point where savvy software developers recognize it was time to begin making a transition into management or become increasingly at risk of being laid off. Those that kept coding were subjected to a progressive discounting of their value in a way that was painful to watch. This slow process reminded me of the way Filene's Basement department store made use of an automatic markdown system:

"... every article is marked with a tag showing the price and the date the article was first put on sale. Twelve days later, if it has not been sold, it is reduced by 25 percent. Six selling days later, it is cut by 50 percent and after an additional six days, it is offered at 75 percent off the original price. After six more days—or a total of 30—if it is not sold, it is given to charity."

Bean counters don't have a column on their spreadsheets for "company wisdom" or "system experience" or "domain knowledge" or "mentoring." They're bean counters, not systemic thinkers. What they see is that they can get a younger coder for less than half the price of an experienced older coder. In their view, all software developers are analogous to line cooks. All they have to know is how to flip pancakes and scramble eggs, right? Everything is built according to standardized recipes (requirements) and repetitive tasks (clickety-clacking fingers on a keyboard.) I could swear I've seen thought bubbles hovering above the heads of a few of them that say, "Why else would we be paying out claims for carpal tunnel syndrome if they weren't repeatedly writing the same code over and over?" Of course, that's never the official posture from bean counters and HR wonks.

Ageism was just as prevalent then as it is now, only more so. "OK, boomer" gets you promoted. "I don't care about your pronouns," gets you fired. Anyone paying attention soon learns the only constant rule to the game is that the rules and the game constantly change. Like others who made the jump from coder to management, I learned to adjust to the rules and play the game from season to season and fad to fad. It was important to constantly evaluate the balance between the actual and perceived value I added to the company and adjust my game plan accordingly. In the end, the perceived value was defined by prejudicial external factors beyond my ability to influence.

The thing is, I'm apathetic about this shift. There are several reasons for this.

"Frame your thoughts like this - you are an old person, you won't let yourself be enslaved by this any longer, no longer pulled like a puppet by every impulse, and you'll stop complaining about your present fortune or dreading the future."

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 2.2

First and foremost, history has been my constant teacher and confidant. I kicked this career thing off by working in nursing homes during high school and college. The experience left a clear picture of what the end game might look like. The old folks I took care of fifty years ago talked story in a way that made it clear end-of-career transitions have been a kludgy process going back more than a century now.

Among the numerous painfully rocky experiences I heard tell, there were a few examples of folks who'd done it with grace and dignity. I choose to listen to their lessons, follow their examples, and prepared to be self-reliant and resilient. Looking back, I can say it was a valuable lesson. I had a forty+ year career during which I could repeatedly look back and observe trends and identify patterns.

Early on, more often than not, things didn't go my way. But every time they didn't, I made it through and emerged a better person - more experienced, more knowledgeable, more confident, more capable, more connected, more resilient, and maybe even a little wiser. These days, more often than not, things go my way for the simple fact most of my actions focus mostly on getting out of the way of people intent on doing damage. They're easier to identify now than they were then.

That the younger generations assume the positions and responsibilities held by the aging generations is the natural order of things and I'm more than happy to let go. When this goes well, it's a passing of the baton - a cooperative transition of the baton from tired and spent runners to the rested and ready runners. The baton, of course, can be anything - a project, a recurring event, company leadership, or perhaps something as abstract as culture.