I see a lot of folks advising young people that job security is important and they should pick a career path or skill set that gives them job security. I consider this bad advice and will outline why I believe so below.
Job security, the likelyhood of you losing your job, is incredibly important and especially so, when you get to the age that you are responsible for others as well as yourself, and an age when going home to your parents is no longer an option. However it is not the end goal. The true security you want is financial security. Money to live on, even if you’re unable to work. It’s an important distinction and the terms are not interchangeable.
Whoever you work for, everyone is expendable and companies just do not give a fuck about you. They never will and are probably, actively seeking to replace you behind your back. They have teams and projects designed to replace you. There is no such thing as job security. People do get made redundant from government jobs, regardless of what is claimed. That threat is always there.
Everyone in a company falls into two categories: back office “workers” who are cost centres that should be reduced via offshoring or automation and front office staff to be replaced by self service websites. I’ve seen jobs like accountancies morphed into “work pipelines” filled by unskilled, minimum wage people who escalate to a limited number of real accountants for actual issues. This “process driven” approach takes the demand off the need for expensive skilled employees and can be seen in every sector.
Nurses do the most work and escalate to doctors who in turn escalate to consultants and specialists.
I know many people who have been made redundant from jobs and it can cause some incredibly difficult problems for them, especially if their job or skill or being a provider is what gave them their self-worth. Who doesn’t define themselves by their work just a little?
That’s why I say never work for a single employer like the government (teacher, NHS, admin etc), despite the claims of unions, they can sack you and you’ve no where to take your skills when they do. Can you really dodge being a political escape goat for 40 years or somehow play out 40 years without taking on at least some responsibility? We can all be fired, and you shouldn’t consider yourself an exception.
People worry that computers and robots, self service checkout tills and vacuum cleaners are going to replace their jobs, and they’re probably right. They also believe us IT guys are completely safe, building these replacements and we’ve gotten the better end of the job security situation. Unfortunately they couldn’t be more wrong.
I work in IT and whilst “job security” for A job is high because it’s an in-demand skill.. in any given company that’s not true. For example I worked for website founded in 2001 that now makes over £1 billion per year selling clothes. It’s privately owned and can splash its cash anywhere. I worked on complex warehouse software that I believe helped our company edge out its luxury customer unique selling point. Only we got bought by a rival. They already have a competing warehouse, so you know how that down… send us your customer database to load into our system, ship your stock to our warehouse locations and go home. (ok it wasn’t quite like that at all.. but thats a real thing).
As a population we need to understand that job security is a meaningless word and that we should be aiming for “employability” and changing careers to suit demand. That’s just how we should view life now, because it’s the only way to survive in the real world of uncaring companies.
Even if you hate your job you still need the money so don’t confuse job security with your real concern: financial security.
If you have the opportunity to be a contractor, on twice the salary for only half the time.. I’d even go so far as to recommend that, personally. The purpose of the article is only to achieve the basic goal of making you think twice about job security as a metric.
When talking about groups being made redundant all this “go get another job stuff is meaningless because almost no one can afford to go out and re-educate or reskill themselves and take a zero experience entry role even if they did have the motivation to. The companies laying them off or replacing them with machines certainly aren’t footing the bill.
I don’t know what the solution is, it just seems to be the government that’s supposed to pick up the pieces. It just seems that regardless of what we say, companies will do what they want and we have to live with this situation regardless. Fighting the technology doesn’t even work. How we can help people stay in their jobs, which definitely helps those people, I honestly don’t know. You’re literally fighting the employers themselves. Something that only unions or the government can successfully do.