Things I'm happy about today

#4,378
#4,378
The last place I worked that had a pension plan was Oak Ridge. When I moved on from there, pensions were generally replaced with 401K plans, year end bonuses, and as an incentive to retain high performers there were restricted stock awards... which usually matured at 25% per year. In total, these incentives did have a positive effect on retention of key employees.
 
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#4,379
#4,379
95 Vol Alum said:
The boomer HR departments/leaders created that dynamic, IMO, by doing away with pension models that kept people in house and thinning organizational structures that allowed for internal growth…

And the HR boomers forgot to beef up their training/onboarding programs to accommodate that strategy in many instances, so they lean even heavier on the experienced folks.

Now the boomers are retiring on their pensions and complaining about young people bouncing to improve their personal earnings and long term retirement profile..,
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Ok, I have to push back on this one.

Pensions were eliminated by the C-suite people, always looking for ways to cut costs and maximize profits, who exploited an odd provision in the tax code that was originally targeted for very high income employees. Corporations switched from defined benefit (pension) programs to defined contribution 401k’s, putting the onus on employees to fund their own retirements. I’m sure a lot of the C-suiters were boomers, but this wasn’t a “boomer” conspiracy. We know quite a few people in their sixties and seventies who would love to be retired, but can’t afford it. Pensions are rare among the boomer crowd.

Similar for the lack of training and general disregard for institutional knowledge. My boomer husband was forced out of his corporate job by (younger) C-suiters who felt that older and experienced employees were too expensive to keep. With them went the history that would have been valuable when evaluating new corporate directions.

Switching to 401k’s has been disastrous for many. But this was not a “screw the kids” move. This was a “screw everyone but me and a few friends who want to maximize our salaries and stock options by stripping down the company and walk away” move.
 
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#4,380
#4,380
VolNExile said:
…My boomer husband was forced out of his corporate job by (younger) C-suiters who felt that older and experienced employees were too expensive to keep. With them went the history that would have been valuable when evaluating new corporate directions...
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—I should probably add “and too annoying” to this. 😜
 
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#4,381
#4,381
VolNExile said:
Ok, I have to push back on this one.

Pensions were eliminated by the C-suite people, always looking for ways to cut costs and maximize profits, who exploited an odd provision in the tax code that was originally targeted for very high income employees. Corporations switched from defined benefit (pension) programs to defined contribution 401k’s, putting the onus on employees to fund their own retirements. I’m sure a lot of the C-suiters were boomers, but this wasn’t a “boomer” conspiracy. We know quite a few people in their sixties and seventies who would love to be retired, but can’t afford it. Pensions are rare among the boomer crowd.

Similar for the lack of training and general disregard for institutional knowledge. My boomer husband was forced out of his corporate job by (younger) C-suiters who felt that older and experienced employees were too expensive to keep. With them went the history that would have been valuable when evaluating new corporate directions.

Switching to 401k’s has been disastrous for many. But this was not a “screw the kids” move. This was a “screw everyone but me and a few friends who want to maximize our salaries and stock options by stripping down the company and walk away” move.
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I never said anything about screwing the kids so not sure why that's quoted. I actually prefer to have the portability and control over my own retirement vs a defined pension model where I lack control.

I also never mentioned a boomer conspiracy - nor do I think that this is truly a one generation trying to screw over another. My response was just feeding into the generalization buckets being expressed. Given boomers range from 57-75 currently, I feel fairly confident that most of the large corporate decision & strategy making over the past 15-20 years has been made by them. But it is a generalization for sure, and there are certainly exceptions. Certainly organizational thinning consists of boomers impacting boomers for the reasons you defined. In my industry, I do see a lot of boomers being contracted back post retirement to bridge the issue you describe. Hopefully your husband rebounded into a good situation!

I'm really not down with the generational food fight and think it is funny to watch. People made those decisions and strategies, regardless of what generation they were born into.
 
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#4,386
#4,386
Tin Man said:
Let’s see… Something positive… I am a gift to all humankind, and if you doubt this, May you stub your toes in the dark.
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#4,387
#4,387
95 Vol Alum said:
I never said anything about screwing the kids so not sure why that's quoted. I actually prefer to have the portability and control over my own retirement vs a defined pension model where I lack control.

I also never mentioned a boomer conspiracy - nor do I think that this is truly a one generation trying to screw over another. My response was just feeding into the generalization buckets being expressed. Given boomers range from 57-75 currently, I feel fairly confident that most of the large corporate decision & strategy making over the past 15-20 years has been made by them. But it is a generalization for sure, and there are certainly exceptions. Certainly organizational thinning consists of boomers impacting boomers for the reasons you defined. In my industry, I do see a lot of boomers being contracted back post retirement to bridge the issue you describe. Hopefully your husband rebounded into a good situation!

I'm really not down with the generational food fight and think it is funny to watch. People made those decisions and strategies, regardless of what generation they were born into.
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my dad, who is very proud of being a 'war baby' and not a 'boomer', retired with a defined benefit pension when he was in his mid '50s. He was fully vested and figured he'd do fine as a consultant. This year, he got a significant "raise" when his former employer decided they did not need a big downtown office building any more and sold it. Sweet deal.
 
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#4,388
#4,388
95 Vol Alum said:
I never said anything about screwing the kids so not sure why that's quoted. I actually prefer to have the portability and control over my own retirement vs a defined pension model where I lack control.

I also never mentioned a boomer conspiracy - nor do I think that this is truly a one generation trying to screw over another. My response was just feeding into the generalization buckets being expressed. Given boomers range from 57-75 currently, I feel fairly confident that most of the large corporate decision & strategy making over the past 15-20 years has been made by them. But it is a generalization for sure, and there are certainly exceptions. Certainly organizational thinning consists of boomers impacting boomers for the reasons you defined. In my industry, I do see a lot of boomers being contracted back post retirement to bridge the issue you describe. Hopefully your husband rebounded into a good situation!

I'm really not down with the generational food fight and think it is funny to watch. People made those decisions and strategies, regardless of what generation they were born into.
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Well, I bolded your statements about the boomers did this and the boomers did that, which sounded like assigning fault. I apologize for apparently misunderstanding you.

Certainly, the unofficial model at Hubs’ job was to lay off seasoned employees in their early fifties and above, and then some time later bring them back as contractors, with no health insurance, 401k, or vacation and other benefits, doing the same job as they had before for much lower compensation. This was before ACA (“Obamacare”), and luckily I could add him to my health insurance, but others were in serious trouble. Also, of course, the limits on IRA contributions are much, much lower than on 401k contributions, so that can be pretty devastating.

My husband, who neither forgives nor forgets 😁, moved on to another employer and eventually semi-retired, working some as a SME in his old field. Now he’s been approached by some old colleagues and has been dragged kicking and screaming back to SME work at age 71, lol.

We made it work, but it sure isn’t anything you’d want to count on.

When I retired, I drowned my books like Prospero did and deliberately let all my certifications lapse, making me effectively unemployable, which I happily tell people who still try to get me to come back.

With the virtue of hindsight, it’s easy to see how employees need to act: consider yourself as a contractor always, keep your skills and your LinkedIn current, and show your employer the exact amount of loyalty that your employer shows you, which for large companies especially, is pretty much zero. It was a brutal lesson for those who got chewed up in the machine though.

^^ The above are just general observations, not continuing a mini-debate.

**edited to correct “seni-retired”, although it does have a nice combo of “senility” and “retired”. 😃
 
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#4,389
#4,389
VolunteerHillbilly said:
my dad, who is very proud of being a 'war baby' and not a 'boomer', retired with a defined benefit pension when he was in his mid '50s. He was fully vested and figured he'd do fine as a consultant. This year, he got a significant "raise" when his former employer decided they did not need a big downtown office building any more and sold it. Sweet deal.
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Sounds like your dad was in the sweet spot in terms of when to retire. Congratulations to him!
 
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#4,391
#4,391
vollygirl said:
My dad was to. Myself and my brother (who is still there), not so lucky.
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For people born post-war through maybe late seventies (what is that missing post-boomer generation? was that Gen X?), the big con was “work hard and be loyal, and you will be rewarded.”

For the millennials and beyond, it was “everyone must get at least a bachelor’s degree, and preferably a master’s, in order to compete, and don’t worry about student loans, because you’ll be making so much money that you can pay them off in no time.”

And sure, it’s easy to say now that these high school kids should have been smarter, and should have gotten a 2-year degree (like I did, eventually) at a community college in something useful and tech-y instead of that four-year degree in French and art history, but they were getting this advice from all quarters that they needed at least a four-year degree to get anywhere, and no worries about the loans, and now a ton of them have bachelor’s degrees and beyond, and they’re underemployed, baristas at Starbucks (hey, at least Starbucks has health insurance), and they’re dragging around student loan debt that just compounds every year.

My older daughter started with over a quarter million dollars’ worth of student loans for med school. I called it her mortgage on her invisible house. (She also has a mortgage on a real house.) As a physician, she can pay it off, and has already paid it down over the last ten years or so to around $100k. But it’s a very real thing, and when you look at how many people in their thirties are carrying SL debt of $25k and above, but working pretty crappy jobs paying maybe $30k, it depresses the economy - it’s hard to buy cars, buy houses, all the stuff we do in our 30’s that gets us on our way to building wealth and financial independence.

It used to be that each generation could be expected overall to do better than their parents did. That’s not nearly as automatic now.
 
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#4,394
#4,394
VolNExile said:
For people born post-war through maybe late seventies (what is that missing post-boomer generation? was that Gen X?), the big con was “work hard and be loyal, and you will be rewarded.”

For the millennials and beyond, it was “everyone must get at least a bachelor’s degree, and preferably a master’s, in order to compete, and don’t worry about student loans, because you’ll be making so much money that you can pay them off in no time.”

And sure, it’s easy to say now that these high school kids should have been smarter, and should have gotten a 2-year degree (like I did, eventually) at a community college in something useful and tech-y instead of that four-year degree in French and art history, but they were getting this advice from all quarters that they needed at least a four-year degree to get anywhere, and no worries about the loans, and now a ton of them have bachelor’s degrees and beyond, and they’re underemployed, baristas at Starbucks (hey, at least Starbucks has health insurance), and they’re dragging around student loan debt that just compounds every year.

My older daughter started with over a quarter million dollars’ worth of student loans for med school. I called it her mortgage on her invisible house. (She also has a mortgage on a real house.) As a physician, she can pay it off, and has already paid it down over the last ten years or so to around $100k. But it’s a very real thing, and when you look at how many people in their thirties are carrying SL debt of $25k and above, but working pretty crappy jobs paying maybe $30k, it depresses the economy - it’s hard to buy cars, buy houses, all the stuff we do in our 30’s that gets us on our way to building wealth and financial independence.

It used to be that each generation could be expected overall to do better than their parents did. That’s not nearly as automatic now.
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I don't keep up with the generation stuff, gen x and millennial and boomers. I don't know what ages are what, and don't care.

I know at one time companies made things and had patents and employed a male workforce. And all was rosy.

And then things changed.
 
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#4,395
#4,395
vollygirl said:
I don't keep up with the generation stuff, gen x and millennial and boomers. I don't know what ages are what, and don't care.

I know at one time companies made things and had patents and employed a male workforce. And all was rosy.

And then things changed.
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And they all got gold watches when they retired.
 
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