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> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was who you were m

> A job for life also meant that your job was your life. You went into teaching or sports reporting or proctology because it was a calling—it was who you were meant to be. But it’s been a long time since anyone has been able to count on a job for life. The tech industry led the way: our shift to precarious employment was hastened by more efficient algorithms, apps and Amazon. What is the real history of employment stability? I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? And that's for identifiable trades, which it seems were not even easy to get trained into. So maybe the reality is that employment for most people has always been precarious? Hasn't tech merely brought this instability to a social class that was exempted from it for the latter half of the 20th Century? Would love to know more from someone who has some grounding in this.

carlmr 8y ago
>I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? I'm guessing in most countries a Blacksmith (a toolmaker if you will) was usually self-employed. Of course they were "in-for-life", nobody was there to fire them. But this doesn't mean that it was easy going, they could still have a bad economy or some other blacksmith underbidding on price (or offering much better quality, marketind, whatever). You can open your own toolmaker shop as a programmer. Your success won't depend on whether your boss likes you, but whether you can sell your tools, whether you can provide the appropriate quality, and whether you're not underbid by a large competition.
- rebuilder 8y ago
  In medieval Europe, AFAIK trades were regulated by guilds. You couldn't just become a blacksmith, the job was hereditary. And the prices of goods were set by the guilds. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I'm sure I'm painting the era with a very broad brush here. The point is, I don't think you can compare being a craftsman in previous ages to being self-employed today.
sametmax 8y ago
Well 2 of my grand father and my father worked in the same trade for their whole life. Their entourage mostly did. Now appart from very specific jobs like lawyers and doctors, I don't know many people around me that haven't already changed job several times. Just a data point of course.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  Are they changing jobs within the same “trade” or are they really changing trades? As someone who is looking for a career reset in the short/medium term, it appears companies/recruiters have a very narrow window for what kind of new employee they feel is acceptable.
golergka 8y ago
I'm also very surprised to see "employment stability" as something good. I'm the kind of person who likes to change things in life pretty often, and I change jobs around once a year, also taking shorter contracts. In the "old" world of job-for-life employment I would be complete outcast; I am really happy to work in the industry that is much more friendlier to my temperament.
- ppeetteerr 8y ago
  > In the "old" world of job-for-life employment I would be complete outcast This is not the case. The old world also had job variety: you could join one of the many ad agencies or one of the many manufacturing companies. Consulting was also a thing. Today's GDP is occupied more and more with startups, not companies focused on the long term.
Balgair 8y ago
Like most things in history: it's complicated. Generally, in a feudal system: yes, you had a job for life and that was that. How stable was that? Not very, as food is still 'variable' until the industrial revolution and the green revolution of the 1930s-1960s[0]. But starvation and epidemics are a bit orthogonal to the question of employment. Still, the skills and, importantly, the tools used were expensive to learn and teach. The feudal system, as done in Europe in the middle ages, is actually a result of just one man: Emperor Diocletian. His policies essentially ushered in feudalism as Europe knew it. He forbade the travel of skilled craftsmen, inadvertently encouraged the self sufficiency of large estates, and tried to fully regulate all prices in the empire. His early attempts gave Rome the Tetrarchy and yet more civil wars; essentially his efforts were total failures. He actually retired, a first, and went off to grow really big cabbages in modern day Turkey. Though many of his reforms flopped, the feudal system of 'jobs for life passed onto kin' did stick for about 1500 years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution [1] https://cafehayek.com/2006/09/an_empire_of_re.html https://cafehayek.com/2006/09/an_empire_of_re.html

carlmr 8y ago

>I mean I can imagine that a Blacksmith was probably safely a Blacksmith for life back in the day, but is even that really true? I'm guessing in most countries a Blacksmith (a toolmaker if you will) was usually self-employed. Of course they were "in-for-life", nobody was there to fire them. But this doesn't mean that it was easy going, they could still have a bad economy or some other blacksmith underbidding on price (or offering much better quality, marketind, whatever). You can open your own toolmaker shop as a programmer. Your success won't depend on whether your boss likes you, but whether you can sell your tools, whether you can provide the appropriate quality, and whether you're not underbid by a large competition.

rebuilder 8y ago
In medieval Europe, AFAIK trades were regulated by guilds. You couldn't just become a blacksmith, the job was hereditary. And the prices of goods were set by the guilds. I'm far from an expert on the matter, and I'm sure I'm painting the era with a very broad brush here. The point is, I don't think you can compare being a craftsman in previous ages to being self-employed today.

sametmax 8y ago

Well 2 of my grand father and my father worked in the same trade for their whole life. Their entourage mostly did. Now appart from very specific jobs like lawyers and doctors, I don't know many people around me that haven't already changed job several times. Just a data point of course.

germinalphrase 8y ago
Are they changing jobs within the same “trade” or are they really changing trades? As someone who is looking for a career reset in the short/medium term, it appears companies/recruiters have a very narrow window for what kind of new employee they feel is acceptable.

golergka 8y ago

I'm also very surprised to see "employment stability" as something good. I'm the kind of person who likes to change things in life pretty often, and I change jobs around once a year, also taking shorter contracts. In the "old" world of job-for-life employment I would be complete outcast; I am really happy to work in the industry that is much more friendlier to my temperament.

ppeetteerr 8y ago
> In the "old" world of job-for-life employment I would be complete outcast This is not the case. The old world also had job variety: you could join one of the many ad agencies or one of the many manufacturing companies. Consulting was also a thing. Today's GDP is occupied more and more with startups, not companies focused on the long term.

Balgair 8y ago

Like most things in history: it's complicated. Generally, in a feudal system: yes, you had a job for life and that was that. How stable was that? Not very, as food is still 'variable' until the industrial revolution and the green revolution of the 1930s-1960s[0]. But starvation and epidemics are a bit orthogonal to the question of employment. Still, the skills and, importantly, the tools used were expensive to learn and teach. The feudal system, as done in Europe in the middle ages, is actually a result of just one man: Emperor Diocletian. His policies essentially ushered in feudalism as Europe knew it. He forbade the travel of skilled craftsmen, inadvertently encouraged the self sufficiency of large estates, and tried to fully regulate all prices in the empire. His early attempts gave Rome the Tetrarchy and yet more civil wars; essentially his efforts were total failures. He actually retired, a first, and went off to grow really big cabbages in modern day Turkey. Though many of his reforms flopped, the feudal system of 'jobs for life passed onto kin' did stick for about 1500 years. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution [1] https://cafehayek.com/2006/09/an_empire_of_re.html https://cafehayek.com/2006/09/an_empire_of_re.html