[verandaguy]

This is an insultingly out-of-touch article.

_Lots_ of people dream of retirement, and _lots_ of people retire happy. Not everyone's lucky enough to love their jobs, or have stimulating positions at companies, or work with people they get along with.

Lots of people work in customer-facing jobs in industries where customers are rude, entitled, and just generally disrespectful.

Many of those people don't have the option to retire because the venn diagram of those jobs, and jobs that pay too little to afford retirement, is pretty close to being a circle.

There's also the issue of there only being so many work opportunities, and whether or not it's correct for someone of traditional retirement age to hang on to a job, possibly at the expense of someone new to the workforce having one fewer opportunity.

I would give this article a bit easier of a time if it didn't conspicuously dance around the issue of having an aging population combined with (in many countries) social insurance-type systems not geared to support an age pyramid that top-heavy, but lines like this are just... bad.

> But can anything truly replace the framework and buzz of being part of the action?

Yeah, lots of things. Travel. Hobbies. Going dancing with your partner. Gardening. Hell, using your retirement and pension to kick off a startup of your own. For many people, above all, not being under constant pressure to perform at a certain level.

I say all of that as a millennial who both (a) loves my job, and (b) is unlikely to ever be able to afford to (comfortably) retire, barring major shifts in the economy.

[happytoexplain]

>Not everyone's lucky enough to love their jobs

Most people are not, I'd say. Remember, you don't have to hate your job to be miserable. You merely need to not "40 hours a week + commute for decades" love it. That's love.

It's simply logistically impossible for the majority of people to manage to match themselves with a job like that.

[xwiz]

Exactly. I have a hard time viewing articles like this as anything other than deliberate propaganda. But maybe it's the case that many people reading the Economist cannot derive joy from anything besides employment.

Furthermore, who is this article for? People deciding whether to retire, but who weren't around for Seinfeld?

[zoomablemind]

> ...Furthermore, who is this article for?

Well, it's an author's column. Very much reflective.

[subpixel]

> Not everyone's lucky enough to love their jobs

I agree, but I know a whole lot of people who are no longer working but who struggle to fill the gaping void in their lives once filled by a job and ameliorated by a paycheck.

So they do often turn to the shiny objects, and are doubly disappointed when the expensive things they do or buy fail to produce lasting satisfaction.

Sadly, I can report that more than one person in my life who retired at the top of their field is usually to be found bent over their phone, playing weird videos from Facebook at full volume.

There may be a correlation between excellence in a highly competitive career and failure to connect with other seniors at the community kitchen, I don't know. But I'm pretty sure that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution for growing old _contentedly_.

[ripply]

Some people just never learned how to enjoy life and just exist, be it because of their demanding job or responsibilities or the toxic work cultures they spent decades in.

[trilbyglens]

Or simply being a product of their culture. Americans are renowned for not knowing how to just _be_.

[DonnyV]

This just sounds like they don't know how to find hobbies to do, so they just go back to working. Since its the only thing they know. How lacking in creativity do you have to be to need work this much to regulate your life.

[subpixel]

Your comment is judgmental but my observation is that this is how many people live their lives. How much of this is a function of their personality vs the society they must live in is an open question.

[weatherlight]

It's the Economist. You should be exploited, or be exploiting someone until either you, or they die..

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I am "retired." I didn't want to be, but no one in tech wants to work with oldsters, so I had to take my butthurt, and admit that I'm not going to be working for anyone, ever again.

Best damn thing that ever happened to me.

I had enough to retire, when I did, but had no intention of doing so, for another ten years.

That was a bit over six years ago, and I am wondering what all the fuss was about.

The "retired" was in quotes, because I never stopped working. I just stopped writing code on someone else's orders, and started writing the code that I always wanted to write. It's a lot more professional, high-Quality, documented, and bug-free, than anything I ever did, when I was being paid to do it.

And I really enjoy it.

I have no intention of ever stopping. The coroner is gonna have to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.

I know three chaps that retired from my old company. They had worked there for 30+ years, and moved out of state, to relax. They were all in their sixties.

They are all dead, and achieved this transcendental state, before they reached 70.

[Ferret7446]

> The "retired" was in quotes

I think that's the point. Actually retiring as in not doing any work is statistically speaking a steep slippery slope to death.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

What age were you forced retiring? I'm highly concerned because as a millennial, retiring safely seems to be something that can be achieved at 65

[ChrisMarshallNY]

55, but I also live like a pauper, and was maxing out my retirement options for 30 years.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Thanks! I am maxing out my retirement options too, but I have a mortgage and that ends at ~63 roughly. Based on my projections if I retire at 65 I'm good, however if I retire before then, I will definitely need to sell the home for a smaller one (which could be fine, if the body allows it)

[mech422]

I'm 55 and still getting interviews... got my last job at 52.

The whole "omg, I'm 40 - no tech will hire me" is a bit overblown...

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I was a manager. That was a big problem, looking for an IC job.

My employees were close to my age, and got jobs, but it took years. These were top-shelf C++ geeks.

I was treated pretty badly, and decided it wasn’t worth it.

[mech422]

Wow man - Sorry you had such bad time :-/ Hopefully you got something fun now :-)

I have noticed over the years that interviewing has gotten more onerous and ghosting has gotten more common. There's never any reason to treat people badly/ghost them. Even a thanks-but-no-thanks is better then radio silence.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I'm glad it is like that, I'm concerned for anything at 60+, in the end 5 years of income is quite a bit, hence why I am trying to plan ahead for retirement

[mech422]

sounds like a good plan :-) Trick is to be on the edges - either leading edge or trailing edge. That's where the competition is lowest and the compensation is highest. I do cloud architecture/infrastructure atm, but I figure I'll fund my retirement by being the last living COBOL programmer :-P

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

That's way harder to accomplish unfortunately. Unless I study COBOL too

[verandaguy]

I'm happy for you. This kind of "retirement" would be my end game, too.

[doug_durham]

With declining birthrates it's going to be not only "correct" but essential for people to continue in the work force. Instead of early retirement being the expectation it should become an option. For people who get no fulfillment from their work or have aspirations for volunteer work by all means that should be able to save and construct that kind of life. The social safety net for folks that retire needs to be continues and improved. Personally I enjoy traveling and dancing with my partner, but I wouldn't want to do it full time.

[verandaguy]

> With declining birthrates it's going to be not only "correct" but essential for people to continue in the work force.

This is a point I wish the article leaned into more. I disagree with your position, but it's a discussion that needs to be had. Our existing social safety nets, like you said, are incompatible with the direction society's going.

My opinion is that we're in a place where high levels of automation mean that we have the tools to start moving towards a post-scarcity, or at least reduced-scarcity society. It won't happen overnight, and maybe not even this century, but the idea that we've replaced many lower-paying jobs with automated solutions which are much cheaper (typically a fraction of the price for similar or better throughput) in the long run, while an affordability crisis is in full swing, seems like we're missing some clear ways to pump more money into social services while letting those companies using this automation get away with really harmful behaviours.

And yeah, I'm an optimist about post-scarcity, but I'll die on the hill that it's worth the effort to at least try and direct ourselves towards that.

[throwway120385]

I've never seen automation used to provide higher quality things. Usually it's used to provide subpar things and to try to drive the cost of things down. Or it's used to increase the intensity at which people work until they're completely exhausted every day after they finish work.

I really like the "Manna" series because I'm increasingly of the opinion that this is where our society is going with automation -- the computer thinks for me and if I'm not a suitable candidate to be automated by a computer, then I'm shoved in a box somewhere to live out my days with almost no comforts.

Just because automation could be used to eliminate scarcity it doesn't necessarily follow that that's the only way it will be used. It's far more likely to be used to further entrench the already existing structure of our society.

[verandaguy]

You're right that in some industries, with some products, automation delivers lower-quality results. But at the same time, automation has allowed us to build certain things that we previously almost couldn't at scales that were once unimaginable. Electronics are a good example of this -- a sub-µm process couldn't be done, practically, without a level of precision reliably achievable only through automation.

In many industries, automation also leads to higher reliability. Aircraft with flight envelope protection are a direct result of automation, and while poor design (like the original set of MCAS-related issues on the 737 MAX) or bad crew doctrine (like AA965 in 1995) can still lead to bad outcomes, automation, on the whole, has saved countless lives.

These tools exist, we just need to keep improving them, and use them in a strategic, smart, and forward-looking way.

[kredd]

I have a strange feeling that a vast majority of people will throw in the towel rather than “work forever” once retirement isn’t an option.

[markus_zhang]

Maybe it's because these kinds of articles are not for us plebs.

[hn_throwaway_99]

What, you're telling me that you don't want to be like Georgio Armani or Charlie Munger or Warren Buffet or Jerry Seinfeld or a writer for the Economist? /s