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Comment by limelight | Hacker News Reader

I think it's overwhelmingly a generational thing, not a "white collar" thing. Older white collar workers still want/expect lifetime employment, while young workers of all kinds are more comfortable with labor fluidity.

The vast majority of my young friends are uninterested in jobs which would provide lifetime employment. (As am I.)

Honestly, it was incredibly risky for HubSpot to hire Lyons and the outcome seems predestined. He came in with completely mismatched expectations and an ax to grind.

This is also a huge contributory factor to ageism in tech. Of course you won't hire older people when they expect lifetime employment at a startup which might not even exist in a few years.

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People don't want fluidity. A few moths of unemployment every few years wrecks most people's long term savings.

Now if you have no kids or major bills and a high paying job then sure it can feel like a vacation. But there is a reason unemployment is often considered one of the most stressful periods in someone's life.

Sure, it's a generational thing.

However, I'm not sure if that's a matte of preference or realism. Our generation knows that "lifetime employment" at a single company does not exist any more. The only way to remain sane is to accept the reality.

I'm a student know, and repeating the same summer job search process every spring is stressful. I don't look forward to future with joy, but what alternatives there are?

While true lifetime employment might be extinct, there are still gradations in job security. Your tenure at a large corporation or government job will generally be much longer that a startup. But you don't see people lining up to work in the government.

It's not exitinct per se, there are millions of jobs in government with great retirement packages. Some university jobs are basically for life too.

That's because job security isn't the only factor, obviously.

I don't think we are more comfortable with it, the people I know think it sucks and would usually love to stick with the same company if they are given stuff they like to work on. It's great when I get to work with someone who has been with a company for 10 or 12 years. We do have an understanding though that the jerks that are running most of these startups don't think that way and we have to just put up with it.

We strongly believe that longer-term relationships are generally better; how often is your first 6 months on the job the most productive? And if you look at successful companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook, they tend to have low turnover among their key people.

I think there are still plenty of people who would be willing to sign up for a lifelong job with a single organization, but it's nearly impossible for any organization to actually fulfill their end of the bargain. How many companies are likely to last the 40-50 years of a person's career?

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