In this week’s Sydney Morning Herald, the paper’s economics editor Ross Gittins took time away from his usual financial analysis to reflect on his 50 years as a journalist. It’s a remarkable achievement, and it gave me pause to consider how rare “jobs for life” seem to be these days.
My dad came to Australia in 1951 and, as a qualified industrial chemist, took a job with ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) Australia. When he eventually hung up his lab coat, it was one with an ICI logo stitched onto the pocket. Dad was very happily an ICI employee for his entire working life.
It’s a similar story for the parents of most of my friends, but interestingly, not for my friends themselves – and nor for me. In my case I have not only cycled through a number of employers but also different careers.
I began my full time working life doing accounting work for a large finance company. I did similar roles for two other large businesses before discovering I had a certain adeptness for computers and software. This led to me becoming first a computer help desk person and later a software tester. Years later I realised my one true love was in fact writing. And so began the third phase of my working life.
One of my lifelong friends is an academic who has remained with the same university for the duration of his career, but our other contemporaries have changed employers, if not their actual jobs, over the same 40-year period.
I have no regrets about my career and employer changes, but I always admired Dad’s loyalty to ICI, and theirs to him. I wonder how many of those starting their working lives now will even have the opportunity to stay in the same role or with the same company for 40 years, or even 50 years, as Ross Gittins has done.
Have you had a long career with a single employer? How do you reflect on that?
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