Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers

datadrivenangel

https://archive.is/UoLx0

figmert

There's no reward for loyalty any more, and it's caused everyone to job hop (at least while that was possible), including me. At the time, employees complained about it, and in the same breath refused to give out any promotions and/or reward employees. Or they'd reward them with some shitty voucher. The world has literally become the people vs corporations. There is no soul in working any more.

mystraline

This has been true for at least since 2008. The only times Ive gotten promotions was to get hired elsewhere. Better title, more money. Its well known that retention budgets are laughable or nonexistant, and new hire budgets are well stocked. That means that if you want to grow from what youre doing, you gotta leave.

recursivedoubts

This has been the case for most of Gen X's career: there was very little mentoring, very little succession planning and career shaping. Instead Boomers (who came into an economy where these things, along with pensions, etc. still existed) took over early and have stayed in leadership roles longer than previous generations. A look at congress provides a template.

nsxwolf

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/no-raise...

NoLinkToMe

I was at my previous company for almost 10 years, I had annual promotions and I roughly 4x'd my annual income in this period, which averages to about 15% of year-on-year pay increases. Part inflation, part growth in skills. Virtually all of that happened in the first 8 years. In the last 2 years I also stalled and saw minor inflation corrections of 2% a year, so I quit. In my experience it had everything to do with me. In the first 8 I was very hungry, and always willing to take on something more or different. In the last 2 I was very much set on just coasting and doing what I was already doing, and it translated in them paying what they had always paid me, plus a little for inflation correction. I think the truth is usually that if others don't stall and you do, that the solution probably sits with you as well. That having been said, I think now with AI the value-add of an employee sees so much pressure, that I think stalling will be a major trend.

dominotw

not getting laidoff is like a promotion now

nsxwolf

I'm pushing 50 now and I hit the wall almost 10 years ago. No real raises, new opportunities pay less. Inflation has been ratcheting down on me constantly, and my family has to make continual changes to stay in the black. ALDI is great though!

everdrive

Interestingly, I've heard that job hopping no longer pays better than staying in place. I can't say if this is true (and no matter what's true, I'm sure that people have anecdotal exceptions!) but it would be quite discouraging if so.

Frieren

Big tech owns a big chunk of the job market. So, the job market is not a market but a centralized system were big-tech has all the power to shape it. Unionizing is just part of the fighting back. Only splitting the big monopolies can bring back competition and healthy salaries and promotions. Monopolies are bad for consumers, but they are also bad for employees when that monopolies control most of the jobs of the industry.

neversupervised

Years of experience don’t correlate to output in all careers. Surgeons and engineers get better over time. This might not be true for all jobs. Meanwhile, management is naturally capped because every manager necessarily needs people to manage under them, so there’ll be 1/N^y managers at the yth level of the org. Unless loyalty ought to be reward for its own sake, it’s not clear why 100% of workers should get promoted indefinitely.

darth_avocado

> No Raise, No Promotion They forgot the “More work, Constant threat of Unemployment” part

gaiagraphia

Isn't it a natural pattern in empire? Everything grows, there's a huge administration class employed who manage to live in relative luxury from the profits, then as relative power and influence recedes, those jobs are the first to get cut. It's an international market and everybody's using the same skills and tools. It's insane to think that 6 digit salaries would forever be sustainable when the rest of the world is doing the same stuff. Developing tech to knock down barriers also paves over moats. I think the west is going to be in for some very trying times in the coming decades. The UK is a fascinating place to look at in this regard.

tiffanyh

Would it be wrong to flip the narrative and say "3 in 4 (75%), don't feel this way"? Not trolling, genuine question.

arsan87

At my workplace we were hyped up for a special announcement during a company meeting. this is after, literally, years of layoffs, offshoring, cut after cut to benefits, and restructurings. Morale is incredibly low. The big announcement is they are giving everyone one extra day off around a national holiday as a reward. We already have "unlimited" PTO but of course can't really use it. So their reward is letting us use a benefit we already supposedly had.

Havoc

Not sure about stall but it sure feels like employers are capitalising on this sense that everyone is keen to hold on to their job

supertroop

I’ve been in the industry for 40 years. This has always been a complaint. Always. It is not new. UNIONIZE

nradov

Kind of a silly article. If you're working in education administration or local government then why would you even expect career progression? These are not growth industries.

Papazsazsa

There is a handover premium that you pay when you churn which often exceeds whatever savings you think you might find. Inertia and institutional knowledge are two of the biggest drags, not to mention morale, hidden costs recruiting fees, ramp time, and customer relationships. It's fake bottom-line thinking that optimizes a few items while ignoring second and third-order effects. Innumeracy with a finance vocabulary.

jandrewrogers

Stalling out on promotion has always happened. It can be explained almost entirely by two factors: As you become more senior, the success metrics for your role change significantly. Mentoring only goes so far because there is a large element of self-awareness and a willingness to change. Some people never recognize this and many never successfully adapt to what seniority entails. It is the career equivalent of trying to raise a Series B with a Series Seed pitch deck. There are a much smaller number of senior roles than people who can be promoted into them. Above a certain level promotions are highly competitive. You are being stack-ranked against everyone else that can do the same job and tenure is only an input into that calculus to the extent it gives you unique domain expertise. A successful strategy for avoiding hyper-competitive promotions is to create a new promotion-like role that doesn't really exist. However, this requires a level of initiative and agency that most employees never exhibit, and these opportunities only exist at specific moments in time. Raises, on the other hand, are largely impacted by complex financial and economic considerations. Many companies could do much better at this but even then I think employees significantly underestimate the network of opportunity costs that must be considered.