Changing Workplace

¶ … Changing Workplace," has some interesting things to say about how people's attitudes toward job-hunting and job choices have changed over the years. She compares people's work careers today to the pattern that was common, in her view, for most of the 20th century. She looks at how both employees and managers have changed over time. In the fairly recent past, people often took a job with one company, and stayed with that company their entire life.

These people took the job "from womb to tomb" (Carlson, 2002), and as long as they performed their job reasonably well, they could be assured of holding a job with that company all their lives. They were rewarded for their loyalty by retirement benefits, and the company in return could count on their loyalty and continued employment there. People often started out as teenagers and stayed there until they were sixty-five, never working for anyone else (Carlson, 2002).

Within those companies, Carlson recounts how people might start out when young at the bottom of the ladder and gradually work through up to positions with more and more responsibility in the company before moving into management after years of on-the-job training. Today, Carlson reports, people tend to change companies rather than stay with one all their lives, perhaps working for seven or eight different ones during their career (Carlson, 200). According to Carlson, many people change the type of work they do as well one or more times.

Each person will have his or her own individual set of knowledge and experience, and if they want to advance, will have to go out and sell themselves to a variety of different employers over time. The person may work for several companies that compete with each other to get broader understanding of the industry as a whole (Carlson, 2002). This works because businesses today have a different view of what a manager should be. Management has become its own specialty. Rather than.