My advice to all — including my daughters — Plan B starts now. Even if you’re lucky enough to retire or choose the timing of leaving the mainstream workforce, it’s highly likely you’ll want to keep working, especially if that Plan B is a monetisable deep passion.
This is the part that feels underpriced: late-career risk is not just job risk. It’s timeline risk, healthcare risk, identity risk, and planning risk all hitting the portfolio at once. We built longer lives, but we’re still running them through systems designed for shorter careers and cleaner exits. That mismatch is where a lot of the real volatility lives.
Bryan - this is why I am fixated on the concept of building Narrative Worth. I view it as the third pillar to Self and Net Worth’s. My work as a Narratologist (my third career curve that followed corporate guy and startup guy) has taught me the significance of knowing and owning your narrative. I have been working with companies and executives on this very subject since creating it in 2014 as a solution for a structural change for a PR firm. I see an acceleration of your insights happening in our race to “please a concept created by Milton Friedman in 1975.” We have collectively lost the script. And, AI is only going to exacerbate the gap, unless we rewrite the script - our personal script. For that is all we can control.
Bryan, this piece resonates strongly with my experience working with second-half careers. The subtle pressures of late-career transitions, the mismatch between lifespan and organizational structures, and the invisibility of older workers are all real challenges I see repeatedly. Your framing around extended timelines and systemic misalignment highlights how much foresight is needed, both personally and institutionally, to navigate these decades successfully.
A great breakdown! The layout is a sad reality, hope this is a blessing in disguise. I like your attitude re: Aging ≠ Decline, so Layoff ≠ Fallout or Falling-out?
Bryan, I always enjoy your roundups. I very much related to "The Layoff that Breaks the Timeline"--the ones that happen later in life absolutely are the hardest to bounce back from even though I did. Often top quality people are forced into retirement before they wanted to be or have to accept contractor work in bits and pieces.
And, I personally have had to evolve my career into multiple kinds of positions over the years. It's essential for not getting bored and exploring different career options and to be able to have many ways to pivot in the event of a career layoff (I've had 3).
My advice to all — including my daughters — Plan B starts now. Even if you’re lucky enough to retire or choose the timing of leaving the mainstream workforce, it’s highly likely you’ll want to keep working, especially if that Plan B is a monetisable deep passion.
This is the part that feels underpriced: late-career risk is not just job risk. It’s timeline risk, healthcare risk, identity risk, and planning risk all hitting the portfolio at once. We built longer lives, but we’re still running them through systems designed for shorter careers and cleaner exits. That mismatch is where a lot of the real volatility lives.
Bryan - this is why I am fixated on the concept of building Narrative Worth. I view it as the third pillar to Self and Net Worth’s. My work as a Narratologist (my third career curve that followed corporate guy and startup guy) has taught me the significance of knowing and owning your narrative. I have been working with companies and executives on this very subject since creating it in 2014 as a solution for a structural change for a PR firm. I see an acceleration of your insights happening in our race to “please a concept created by Milton Friedman in 1975.” We have collectively lost the script. And, AI is only going to exacerbate the gap, unless we rewrite the script - our personal script. For that is all we can control.
Bryan, this piece resonates strongly with my experience working with second-half careers. The subtle pressures of late-career transitions, the mismatch between lifespan and organizational structures, and the invisibility of older workers are all real challenges I see repeatedly. Your framing around extended timelines and systemic misalignment highlights how much foresight is needed, both personally and institutionally, to navigate these decades successfully.
My dad experienced this. It was unfair.
A great breakdown! The layout is a sad reality, hope this is a blessing in disguise. I like your attitude re: Aging ≠ Decline, so Layoff ≠ Fallout or Falling-out?
Bryan, I always enjoy your roundups. I very much related to "The Layoff that Breaks the Timeline"--the ones that happen later in life absolutely are the hardest to bounce back from even though I did. Often top quality people are forced into retirement before they wanted to be or have to accept contractor work in bits and pieces.
And, I personally have had to evolve my career into multiple kinds of positions over the years. It's essential for not getting bored and exploring different career options and to be able to have many ways to pivot in the event of a career layoff (I've had 3).