Cycle Expertise

on careerism, corporatism & ageism

If you worked in finance during the global financial crisis, you’ve got one of these stories. Some of these stories are way worse than the one I’m about to tell, but those stories aren’t mine. This one is.

I was still considered young when the GFC hit. I was young, and I was cheap. So when the layoffs came, I somehow survived.

Just to be clear, this was no feat of accomplishment on my end. It was dumb luck, and the final decision was made by people who couldn’t pick me out of a lineup and did no evaluation on my specific talents or abilities. These surface level decisions were made on the basis of where a name happened to fall on an org chart, by people with no skin in the game, and who would face no consequences if they got rid of the wrong people. But you knew that already.

Anyway, the layoffs that we all knew were coming finally came. The unlucky souls were one by one asked to go into a conference room, and from there were walked directly out of the building. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not pick up your personal things at your desk.

There was this one guy that I worked with who had been there for twelve years. Every morning he would sit down and eat a bowl of hot cereal at his desk at the start of the day. On that day he went and got his hot cereal, sat down at his desk, and then got called into the conference room.

He never got to take his first bite of his hot cereal. They didn’t let him go back to his desk to get anything or to clean it up. So the now-cold hot cereal just sat there in his place.

The bowl just sat there. It was a reminder of our fallen comrade. It was a reminder that we could be next.

I suppose that maintenance thought he was coming back to eat it, or maybe they just didn’t see it, but they just left the bowl of cold hot cereal on his desk for two nights. I certainly wasn’t going to walk over and throw it out. No one else was either. So the sad bowl of cold hot cereal stared at us for three days.

That’s what I remember about those layoffs. I remember my friend’s bowl of cereal that he never got to eat, sitting there and drying out in the open.

I was thinking about all this after talking to another friend yesterday. This guy was someone I admired from afar early in my career, and got to know later in my career. Someone who is a bit of a legend in the ETF industry.

He had gotten laid off and was asking about job opportunities. When I asked about his salary range he didn’t want to say. “I’ll take anything, honestly, and I really don’t want to price myself out.”

The conversation was similar to several I’ve had this year. No gold watch exits, no thank you cards signed by the team, no cake, no fanfare. “Thanks for your contributions, now beat it.”

Corporations these days. They expect loyalty, and they offer none in return.

With all this on my mind I fired off a short tweet.

There are so many guys who were considered absolute legends when I started in this industry and are now in their 50's or early 60's and can not find any job at all.

Not sure what to make of this.

The tweet struck a nerve. Seems like this is way more prevalent than you would expect. I guess people just don’t like to talk about it.

My DMs became a sad place, with people sending me stories of their own experiences, and of once-rainmakers tossed out at the first sign of gray hair. Even aging Hollywood starlets get better treatment than modern corporate America offers.

Responses are falling into two categories: the pragmatic, and the romantic. Pragmatics encouraging people to save and invest while the getting is good, because you can not rely on future employment. Romantics encouraging people to quit their day jobs to go work for themselves.

I am, of course, a romantic. I am, of course, a believer in self-determination and entrepreneurship. And I say this not as someone who has won at that game, looking down at the worker bees from his yacht. I say this as someone who has mostly lost at that game - albeit with a few wins - but has found the sacrifice to be far more fulfilling.

The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary. -Taleb

Here was a thought-provoking response from my friend Nico:

It has stopped to value cycle expertise and experience over short term ability to deliver the narrative ppl want to hear or corporate script.

I think a lot about this too

Cycle expertise. That is interesting. Something I may have to write more about in the future. Cycle expertise, and cycle careers. When you think about it that way it becomes easier to accept. And it becomes easier to accept the need to adapt and to stay curious and to get out of your comfort zones.

We are all playing our career games one cycle at a time. The cycles are getting shorter, they are changing faster, and we never go backwards.

Our skill-sets and networks might prove valuable for this cycle, but they might not play in the next cycle.

And while careerism might work fine for you this cycle, something more bold just might serve you better for the next one.