My father liked to talk about how much the world of work had changed since he was young.
Being a “company man” back then was a job for life, for one thing. And according to my father, so long as you were competent and looked the part, it was extremely secure.
Unlike nowadays. Many people aren’t sending emails to their bosses at 2am because they love their job THAT much, they’re doing it because they know how competitive it is out there.
The other thing is, people know a lot more now. We may laugh at all the cat videos, but the Internet really has made insider knowledge easier to disseminate by several orders of magnitude.
This means that the talented amongst us have a lot more options, and know what they are.
Which also means management has to fight a lot harder to hold onto them.
The day of the passive, obedient worker is over. This is a good thing, for it makes people a lot more interesting to be around.
