As you might know from my profile, I currently work as a network engineer. My salary has never been astronomical, but thanks to my years of experience, it sits at a pretty decent level. My profession offers a bit more long term stability than other IT jobs, but it is certainly not fully safe. You've probably seen the news lately. Famous companies are slashing their workforce, shrinking interview pools, and pushing people toward early retirement. The reason is obviously artificial intelligence. A single AI can now execute tasks faster and better than a whole team of humans.
I constantly worry about what would happen if I were suddenly fired overnight. The real problem is that I have absolutely no backup plan if I do get cut. I am getting too old to find a completely new career, and there are not many places willing to hire me. The competition will only become more vicious as more people lose their jobs. Even the office workers in their thirties around me are already suffering from this anxiety and looking into freelance side hustles as a safety net.
How Technology Broke A Generation
I read a fascinating article in the New York Times this year about the career collapse of Generation X. In the West, this generation refers to people born from the mid sixties through the seventies, which puts them right in their mid forties to fifties today, exactly the age bracket companies love to nudge toward early retirement. This article points to the rapid shift in the technological environment as a primary cause of their career crisis.
 |
| Childhood in the analog world, before everything changed |
When Generation X was growing up, they lived in an environment not much different from the Baby Boomers. They had newspapers printed with ink, glossy magazines, landline phones, and heavy CRT televisions. This generation was completely accustomed to that analog world and naturally built their dreams within it. They dreamed of making television shows, becoming newspaper reporters, or shooting gorgeous photographs for magazines. Many people actually spent their entire lives polishing those specific skills and building their careers. Then a huge problem emerged. The world digitized at an unprecedented speed. Industries like newspapers, magazines, and television steadily shrank, and the very structure of the industry transformed entirely.
The people in their forties and fifties, who should be at the absolute peak of their careers, were suddenly pushed into a terrible situation. This hits at the worst possible time in their lives. This is the exact period when they need to pay off their mortgages, cover their tuition bills, and sometimes even support their aging parents. They need money the most right now, but their entire industry just collapsed underneath them.
The Brutal Reality Of Falling Behind
Let me share the story of a man named Steve, whom the New York Times interviewed. He was just a kid who loved punk music and joined the famous music magazine Spin in the early two thousands. But the truth is that magazine circulation was already dropping by then, and advertising money was shifting entirely to the internet. As time passed, Spin was eventually sold to a website company, and the print magazine was completely shut down. Steve looked back in his interview and admitted they were flailing through their own decline without even realizing it.
A lot of my own acquaintances work in the media industry, so I hear a lot about their worries in that field. One of my friends recently told me he has no idea how to run advertisements anymore. He said there used to be a time when placing a single ad in a famous newspaper would sell thousands of books instantly. But these days he says you simply cannot survive if you do not master internet advertising. Marketing trends shift dramatically every single year, moving from Instagram to YouTube and bouncing around constantly. People who fail to respond to this rapid change will highly likely face increasingly difficult circumstances.
If keeping up with every new platform and algorithm update already leaves you exhausted, Stop Chasing Marketing Hacks And Start Improving Your Core Value breaks down what to focus on instead.
This harsh reality is not just a problem for Generation X. I honestly think the generations coming after them will face the same struggle, because technology continues to evolve and industrial structures keep changing without stopping. The gap between the cultural and technological environment we grew up in and the one we face later in life is just too massive. This never happened in the past. For most of human history, a person lived their entire life with the culture and technology they learned at birth and handed that same world down to their descendants when they died. But things are entirely different now. The world turns upside down in just a few decades, or even a few years. Humans have never lived through such rapid change, so it is naturally very difficult to adapt.
Even The Young Are Not Exempt
Generation X in particular spent their childhoods right before the digital revolution truly kicked off, so it makes sense that they feel the shock of this changed environment much more severely as adults. This is not just a story about the content industry. Technology and work structures are changing rapidly in every single industry, and adapting is never an easy task. According to a BBC article, corporate executives today often prefer younger generations over Generation X. They believe the generations who grew up interacting with digital technology from a young age will adapt to the new technological environment much faster. Because of this, older employees frequently get pushed aside in task distribution or promotions, even though they have vastly more experience. Even at my own company, the rookies actually teach the veterans how to use AI. Some veterans with strong pride refuse to learn, and they ultimately just fall behind and fade out.
 |
| Even the young are not exempt from what's coming |
So will the people in their twenties and thirties right now be able to avoid this crisis later in life. I really do not think so. The AI revolution is happening right now. Ten or twenty years down the line, companies will likely start thinking very differently. They will wonder if the newer generation who handled AI from childhood might be much more useful than Gen Z. When that time comes, Gen Z will run into the same worries that older workers are facing today.
When Age Becomes The New Diversity Issue
As the problem of losing your job or losing your status within your industry due to age grows bigger, some people are even arguing that age diversity or age equity needs to be institutionalized as a core value. Have you ever heard of DEI before. It is a word that stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It is usually used as a standard to prevent gender discrimination or racial discrimination, but these days it is heavily used to evaluate whether a company or organization is pursuing the right values. When President Trump was elected, this DEI framework was the very first thing he attacked, questioning why these values were being forced upon people.
 |
| The first target when DEI came under political attack |
But some voices are now arguing that age related policies must be included in this framework. They argue companies should take institutional measures to guarantee their members are sufficiently diverse in age and strictly prohibit any disadvantages based on age. I recognize that anxiety immediately, because it is exactly the feeling I described at the start of this piece, wondering what happens to me if I get cut with no backup plan in place. If you think about it from the opposite perspective, you could interpret this as a sign that people today feel so much professional anxiety as they age that they feel pressured to invent and promote entirely new corporate values just to protect themselves.
Build A New Strategy For Survival
I personally believe we need to significantly expand educational opportunities for people in their forties through their sixties. Until now, society's general perception of education has been that you study hard when you are young and coast on that one stock of knowledge for the rest of your life. People still hold onto this outdated thought quite heavily. But the reality we live in has already strayed very far from this. There are so many older adults these days who genuinely want to learn new things because it has simply become necessary for their survival.
The real problem is that new types of scams exploiting this same desperation are running rampant. They claim they will teach you how to make money with AI and then extort thousands of dollars from you, preying directly on the anxiety older workers already carry. So if the government is going to implement policies, it will be crucial to provide older adults with genuine opportunities to access good education so they can truly adapt to the new technological environment. However, there is always a hard limit to government led initiatives. Ultimately, the private sector needs to step up and release a lot of high quality educational programs designed specifically for adults.
The public perception itself must also shift. I think it is incredibly important to adopt a positive and proactive mindset that fully accepts you can study, develop yourself, and adapt to the times even after you get older. For my own part, I am trying to treat every new AI tool at work as something I need to learn rather than something optional, because I do not want to end up as the veteran everyone quietly works around ten years from now. We all get old eventually. As human beings who are all inevitably aging together, we must actively start solving the reality of each other's future before it is too late.
For deeper reads on tech, business, and the shifting economy, follow The Techtonic for weekly breakdowns.
Latest Insight: [Why You Don't Actually Own Anything Anymore]
Trending Insight: [Stop Learning and Just Start Copying in the AI Age]
Comment