I don't know anyone who's slaving away with the expectation of retiring to a permanent vacation. If that was a pervasive mentality, it must have been a regional, industry, or generational thing, because I've never even encountered it.
In fact, when my peers/friends/colleagues do talk about retirement, that conversation usually begins and ends with a quip along the lines of "what retirement?".
There's 1. almost no expectation that any of us will be able to stop working until we're physically sidelined, short of making 'fuck you' money. And 2. almost no desire to stop building things, even if we get 'fuck you' money.
After all, it's not like we're retiring from the factory floor. We might not be mountain biking on the weekends during retirement, but it'd take teams of orderlies to keep us from writing software.
I sometimes wonder about the first wave of digerati that hit 'retirement'. Things like a World of Warcraft for the fixed income set seem guaranteed.
But what about the code they write? Will the elderly coders follow tradition and dismiss new technology and just support "old school" projects to the end? Will they keep on the edge but churn out solutions more geared to their current situation (less motor control, less faculty to waste on cryptic commands, etc)? Or will their code and goals not be notably different than the new generation at all?
I never claimed my experiences were normal. I just questioned how widespread belief in the Boomers' retirement myth could be in the rest of the populace, if I'd never so much as met a believer.
(I didn't mean to suggest Boomers who were 5 years out didn't believe or weren't still banking on the myth. I was talking about the younger generations.[1])
My circles do contain a disproportionate number of creatives and the self-employed/start-up types - but you're off by a generation. And maybe half have degrees; if that.
The biggest de-normative aspect is surely that my family/friends/colleagues are all in and around Detroit: where high unemployment and essentially no economic growth has been normal for a decade.
[1] You know the boomers sure complain a lot about the 'attitude of entitlement' among the younger generations. But who was it that actually mortgaged our future for their present?
I'm not even going to attempt to argue anything in favour of the boomers. As a gen X that's against my DNA and I fear I may spontaneously combust if I entertain such thoughts.
The point is this however: the boomers are the norm. By literal definition. We (that's you and me both) are not, and we wont be for a while.
The region I know was the Midwestern US, the industry was manufacturing and the generation was my father's. He worked 25 years for a big company, got a decent pension, did reasonably well on his other investments and retired at 55.
He died at 57.
Life is too short. My attitude is to live now, work now and build something of my own.
Pensions are all but gone anyway. Stocks are flat. The one real way I've seen to wealth is by building equity in one's own business.
One positive to my father's reasonably frugal ways: half that pension and all the investments are now keeping my mom from living in my basement. :-)
"I don't know anyone who's slaving away with the expectation of retiring to a permanent vacation."
I know quite a few people like that. However, they are all in "traditional" professions (law, medicine, accounting) or executives/fund-manager types working for huge organizations.
Really? I love solving problems, and I'm lucky enough to get paid to solve problems for other people. Often times the solution requires software, sometimes it doesn't.
The thing is, if I was able to quit working today I would still look for problems to solve. Sure they may be different problems, but I would still be working even in retirement.
I think you're going to see a lot of people work their entire lives because a) they really do enjoy it and b) as long as you have your brain you can keep doing knowledge work. It's not like any of us are digging coal out the ground to the point where our bodies break down.
In fact, when my peers/friends/colleagues do talk about retirement, that conversation usually begins and ends with a quip along the lines of "what retirement?".
There's 1. almost no expectation that any of us will be able to stop working until we're physically sidelined, short of making 'fuck you' money. And 2. almost no desire to stop building things, even if we get 'fuck you' money.
After all, it's not like we're retiring from the factory floor. We might not be mountain biking on the weekends during retirement, but it'd take teams of orderlies to keep us from writing software.
I sometimes wonder about the first wave of digerati that hit 'retirement'. Things like a World of Warcraft for the fixed income set seem guaranteed.
But what about the code they write? Will the elderly coders follow tradition and dismiss new technology and just support "old school" projects to the end? Will they keep on the edge but churn out solutions more geared to their current situation (less motor control, less faculty to waste on cryptic commands, etc)? Or will their code and goals not be notably different than the new generation at all?