Man, still can’t paste quotes.
TLDR version: A study finds that people over 30 are becoming less happy. This is opposite of previous studies on earlier generations, where people become happier with age in this range.
The author attributes this to the “rude awakening” - you are taught you can do anything, then fail as expected - and “economic insecurity” - due to poor job prospects.
If you ask me, both of these factors feed one another.
I believe it, Not 30 yet but I see a lot of people I went to HS & College with working dead end jobs complaining al lthe time. Partially due to them picking a shit field, and partially due to us being told it didnt matter what you majored in back when we started school.
I find it odd that working my hacksaw BO job I am in a much better position than most of the people I went to HS/College with still, which I find sad. There is so much slack in the economy and I am not sure we will ever really be able to get to a full employment again as technology is making so many careers irrelevant. So many people with degrees working part time retail its sad
over 30 and less happy is most likely some combination of an entire generation starting off the tails of a big recession (so many early 30’s folks have probably been laid off 1 or 2x already), taking on massive debt for college which is stil being paid off or really set people back building a stable finance base, or living with parents, and being lied to about college being the “way to go” instead of a trade that can’t be outsourced, like plumbing.
BO finance isn’t bad. it’s a decent job that pays well for what it is, and you’re not hugely stressed or killing yourself or fretting on bonuses so much. it’s not what ppl consider “making it” in finance, but compared to taking out huge loans to study art history with 120k in debt and now working as a barista… it’s way better
I see this as a two part problem, the first part structural and the second cyclical (I hope):
Technology allows greater control and micromanagement by senior corporate executives in today litigation happy environment so the vast majority of employees are given very little real responsibility or role in decision making. I experienced this ad nauseum as I worked my way up from internal reporting for a corporation (not even as BSD as basic accounting work) through revolving credit management for a corporation and eventually through the mid office to where I am now. Everything goes up the pipeline and requires fifty sign-offs along the way so most employees are left generating reports until a consultant can come in and find a way to automate it. No real skill or career development.
The excessive corporate cost control and EPS management through debt funded repurchases in response to persistantly weakening global demand has hurt both job growth and financial gain with any real increases to average or aggregate household income really being siphoned off to the top 1% or so. It is increasingly more impossible for people to form households in this day and age. Everyone I know is either struggling openly or my non-struggling married friends tell me they can’t envision themselves having money for a down payment on a house for the next five years at least. These are couples with dual law or MBA degrees around 30 years old. I also know fewer and fewer people who are taking vacations. This also is tied to Itera’s point about indebtedness.
TL;DR: It’s tough out there.
I also think social media causes a lot of unhappiness. People see how great everyone is doing (well at least what they show) and that makes them feel less successful on a relative basis.
I’ll also add, most, but not all, people who complain about their hapiness deserve it. These people talk about how terrible life is but they’ll spend hours on social media and tell you everything there is to know about what’s on netflix, cable, in the movies, celebrity life, and sporting events.
I watched this interview with Elon Musk and he said that if you want to be sucessful, you need to work hard. If everyone is working 40 hours, and you work 80-100, you will definately accomplish more. I was up 3 hours before I had to work this morning grinding through an oil and gas NAV model to try to learn some new concepts, not even related to work. Hardwork and dedication pays off and most people don’t have it, which honestly, makes it easier for me.
Very true, for some reason people dont realize that most people only post good things on social media. The only people who post that they spilled their PSL on their blouse that day dont realize no one gives a hoot. Im not going to post my trials & tribulations on social media, because to be honest, I dont think anyone cares that while studying last night I clipped my toe nail too close and it has been hurting to walk ALL DAY today.
But now you all know, you are welcome.
I think it’s also a function of the parents (60 year olds now) having done very well relative to their parents (90 year olds). This would have been due to economic growth, industrialization, urbanization, lack of WW2, and other things like that. Now, 30 year olds don’t have a clear advantage over their parents, and 50% will probably be “not as successful” as their parents (there are other surveys on this).
Having graduated in a poor job market is also an issue, due to the “lost generation” of wages.
I am not sure if I would blame technology for “economic insecurity”. Sure, you can no longer work in a lightbulb factory, but all those Facebook engineers still need people to construct an office, give them hipster haircut, be gym trainer, prepare food for the cantina, etc. Jobs should follow economic growth. Maybe people feel unhappy that they are the servicer of other people, not like when you build cars in Detroit and you are the center of the economy.
Although, the fact that social media makes it easy to compare yourself to very successful people might cause a real effect.
I would say technology is a very real aspect. Even those jobs you mentioned that still exist are fewer in numbers due to technology making the tasks go by quicker, and increase in people willing to take those jobs lowers wages, so in the end people are making less relatively in those positions.
On the bright side, you can take advantage of financialization, EPS mgmt, and cost cutting by investing in stocks…aka take an average job, live in a low cost area, and aggressively reinvest earnings into investments.
I think some of this has to do with the amount of debt people owe these days. In your 30’s, even if you have a stable job you like, you probably still have a crap-load of debt your paying off every month causing you to essentially live paycheck to paycheck. A few decades ago, being debt free (or pretty damn close to it) was achievable when you hit 40-45. That’s probably been pushed back a decade thanks to student loan debt, mainly.
Closer a person is to being debt free, the happier they are.
It’s all their fault for choosing a sh!t field until a roboinvestor replaces you and your CEO adds your comp to his.
I wasn’t referring to technology in the sense you meant Ohai. If you look at my post I was referring to the additional control it allows top management by creating more horizontal organizations. Essentially we have greater internal transparency, reporting and control. Thus more decisions can be pipelined to the top. As a result, responsibility and the associated pay has evaporated from the lower ranks and middle management has drastically declined, which in turn hurts the opportunities available to the middle class since they can’t all be CEO. This is a structural issue.
This strikes me as a little naive. I remember a friend who grew up on an orphanage in Africa talking about a peace corps girl from Harvard who came out to teach the nomadic tribes better efficiency and how laughable that was. Everyone’s got a plan for how people with normal incomes of $43k can go save money, but most of those people haven’t tried to really raise a family on that.
I agree with BS that the horizontalization of the workplace means that the opportunities for advancement are much more limited. Then people get to 30 and start to think that it’s time to try to raise a family and realize that the numbers don’t add up. Even at low pay, job security is nearly nil. So they get frustrated by the feeling that they are supposed to be established and if they want to have kids, they’d better start doing it soon, but how the heck to be even close to the parent they want to be.
Anyway, people here are all BSDs, so it’s really just academic.
Without going into too much personal detail, it is 100% possible, in America anyways. It takes sacrifice.
i think it has everything to do with 1) a greater degree of specialization in society and 2) social media.
i am about 100km from my closest good friend, and it certainly affects my happiness. why are good friends so far? nowadays, after college, friends scatter around the country to find good work in their area of specialization. this may be greater than in the past or it may be similar to the past but i’d lean toward greater as the number of areas of specialization have expanded and as cities have specialized to a greater degree (e.g. NYC = finance, SF = tech, Alberta/ND = oil and gas, etc). the percentage people of who go to college has risen dramatically over the past several decades so the number of people who feel like they’ve lost their social/support groups has clearly risen for this reason. i do have a wife and kids but having no friends to see on a daily basis is suboptimal.
despite being the 1st or 2nd most successful person in my 15+ person friend group and in the top ~3% of my 300+ person social network, there are always those guys who are killing it job wise and make me feel like $hit for not being as successful in that area of my life. despite the fact that i have many other things going for me that they don’t (e.g. a bunch of healthy kids, caring/loving wife), and the fact that i’m doing quite well workwise, it still feels like crap to see them travel the world on business and make huge bank.
having paid off tons of student and auto loan debt in my mid-to-late 20s, i can say that paying off the debt had minimal effect on my happiness. the loss in aggregate happiness is most likely the result of the diminishing number of close relationships in our society. i count myself as lucky w/o having much in the way of close friends nearby as i’ve got my wife and kids. for those people who have a small support system and do not have a partner, which is the vast majority of the 30 yo population, that’s pretty depressing.
I was going to write something about how the world today is structured so that you are either one of the top 100 people on the planet in your area of specialization, or all that knowledge is useless and you have a choice between Starbucks and McDonalds. It’s not quite that bad yet, but that’s the direction things are going.
It used to be that the labor force only required reasonably competent and adaptable people, which is why you could major in art history and then become a line manager at proctor and gamble or something.
Today, if you don’t major in comp-sci machine learning with neural nets, and do some other computery thing instead, you’re relegated to web design and help-desk work. The hot sub field when you get to college may not be the hot field when you graduate, because suddenly there’s a glut and you’re overspecialized for everything except a field that’s not hiring anymore.
It’s true that success generally requires a lot of hard work, and so pretty much all successful people say that you have to work hard, but that doesn’t automatically mean that working hard is going to get you success. Plenty of people work hard and end up spinning their wheels, so the market does not automatically reward hard work. Hard work is a necessary but not sufficient condition for income security.
Fortunately, we can call everyone who works hard and doesn’t succeed “stupid idiots.” Sure makes one feel good saying that, don’t it?
^ Agreed with Matt.
I am 25 and I am always thinking the grass is greener. The two biggest sources of unhappiness for me are my job and support system. I look on Linkedin all the time and see my peers with cool job titles. My job just isn’t challenging enough. In regards to support systems, one of my closest friends from high school just got married this September and I have not seen him since. Another is in Italy doing his PhD. I saw him at the wedding but it was a year since I last saw him.
I paid off my student loan 1.5 years out of school but even if I did have that loan right now, I think my happiness would only marginally increase.
I do want a family and kids in the future. My parents had me when they were in their early 30s but with the way things are going right now, I don’t think I will make that deadline. And I want kids early because when i get old, I still want enough energy to play with them.
bchad I completely agree. I think its funny how specialized we are generally. If something were to occur that would knock out the internet/power for an extended period of time most people would lack basic survival skills, but thank god you have a highly specialized, specific skill set.
I often wonder about the low cost approach. I could probably retire in some places in Canada, or live off a Home Depot job or something. The downside is you lose the ability to travel, as your low income doesn’t translate outside of your little world.