Grieving Ladders in a Latticework Economy
My father worked thirty-five years for one company, climbing predictable rungs from junior clerk to department head. Each promotion followed logical progression, each year added security, each decade brought him closer to guaranteed pension. That career path died before I graduated university.
We mourn professional stability we never experienced but somehow inherited the expectation of.
The modern career demands constant reinvention while I crave the security of specialization. I’m expected to pivot, adapt, embrace disruption while part of me longs for the boring predictability of steady advancement within defined parameters.
My father knew what he would be doing in five years, in ten years, likely for the rest of his working life. The trajectory was clear, the milestones predictable. Work fifteen years, become senior clerk. Work twenty-five years, move to management. Work thirty-five years, retire with pension and watch.
I have no idea what I’ll be doing in five years. The industry might change. My role might be automated. The company might restructure. The skills I’m building might become obsolete. The career I’m constructing might evaporate.
We’re nostalgic for career certainty that our economy no longer provides.
This nostalgia is strange because I never experienced what I’m mourning. I never had job security, never expected to work anywhere for decades, never believed my employer would reward loyalty with stability. Yet I feel the loss anyway, like mourning a promise that was broken before it was ever made to me.
The psychological contract has changed without our psychology changing with it. We still crave what the old system provided—stability, predictability, the comfort of knowing what comes next. But the new system provides none of this while demanding we perform enthusiasm for uncertainty.
The gig economy promises freedom but delivers perpetual job searching.
Every project ends, every contract expires, every opportunity requires starting over. I’ve become professionally nomadic in a world that still expects me to answer “What do you do?” with singular identity rather than plural capabilities.
“I’m a consultant” sounds less stable than “I’m an accountant at Corporation X.” “I freelance” carries less weight than “I’ve been with the company for fifteen years.” Even when gig work pays better, provides more flexibility, enables more interesting projects—it lacks the psychological certainty of traditional employment.
And the searching never stops. Even while working one contract, I’m cultivating the next. Building networks, maintaining visibility, ensuring the pipeline doesn’t dry up. Employment becomes a continuous hustle rather than a stable state.
We’ve gained flexibility but lost the deep satisfaction of mastering one thing completely.
My father became an expert through decades of focused practice. He knew his domain intimately, understood its nuances, could solve complex problems through accumulated wisdom. His expertise had value because it was rare, built through time and focus.
I’ve become competent at many things without mastering any. The economy rewards breadth over depth, adaptability over expertise. By the time I’ve developed real mastery, the field has changed enough to require starting over.
There’s satisfaction in mastery that versatility can’t replicate. The deep knowledge that comes from doing one thing for years. The confidence that emerges from genuine expertise. The identity that forms around being truly skilled at something specific.
Modern careers provide exposure to variety but rarely the time for mastery. We’re perpetual intermediates, competent generalists, adaptable but never quite expert.
My son will enter a job market that barely resembles anything previous generations experienced. He’ll need skills that don’t exist yet, adapt to changes we can’t predict, build security from uncertainty itself.
I try to prepare him while knowing my advice is outdated before I finish giving it. “Study what interests you” seems naive when interests won’t pay bills. “Find stable work” seems impossible when stability barely exists. “Build expertise” seems impractical when expertise becomes obsolete.
What do I tell him about building a career when I barely understand how to navigate my own? When the rules change faster than I can learn them? When the path I’m on might disappear before he’s old enough to follow it?
Each generation becomes more professionally agile but less professionally rooted.
My father’s generation was rooted—deep expertise in narrow fields, decades with single employers, careers that provided identity and community. My generation is transitional—some roots, some flexibility, careers that blend old expectations with new realities.
My son’s generation will be fully nomadic—constant movement between roles, industries, even careers. Professional identity will be fluid rather than fixed. Security will come from adaptability rather than stability.
This might be evolution. It might be progress. But it’s also loss—the loss of depth, of community built over decades, of identity that comes from sustained commitment to one thing.
Perhaps mourning dead career paths is really mourning lost psychological certainty.
The stability we miss isn’t just about employment—it’s about knowing who we are, what we’re building, where we’re going. My father’s career provided narrative coherence. He could tell a story about his professional life that made sense, that showed progress, that connected present to future through clear trajectory.
My career lacks this coherence. It’s a collection of projects rather than a progression. A portfolio rather than a path. Adaptations rather than advancement. The narrative doesn’t flow—it jumps, pivots, redirects.
This creates existential uncertainty beyond financial insecurity. Who am I professionally if my work keeps changing? What am I building if nothing lasts? Where am I going if the destination keeps moving?
What career stability are you nostalgic for that you never actually had? I’m nostalgic for the pension I’ll never receive, the company loyalty that was already dying when I entered the workforce, the predictable advancement that exists only in stories about previous generations.
I’m nostalgic for knowing what comes next, for building expertise that compounds rather than expires, for professional identity that’s stable enough to feel like truth.
How do we build security in an insecure economy? Not through loyalty—companies don’t reciprocate it. Not through expertise alone—it becomes obsolete too quickly. Not through single employers—they’re too unstable.
Maybe through networks, portfolios, diversified skills. Maybe through building platforms rather than climbing ladders. Maybe through accepting that security now means resilience rather than stability, capacity to adapt rather than certainty of trajectory.
But these feel like consolation prizes compared to what we’ve lost. They work, practically. They just don’t satisfy the same psychological needs that stable careers once did.
And what does it mean to prepare for futures we can’t predict? It means teaching adaptability over expertise, breadth over depth, resilience over stability. It means raising children for careers that don’t exist yet, preparing them for changes we can’t foresee.
It means accepting that career planning is less about choosing a path and more about developing capacity to navigate pathlessness. Less about building toward a destination and more about maintaining mobility to pursue whatever destinations emerge.
My father’s career was a ladder. Mine is a lattice. My son’s will be a web, or maybe a cloud—no fixed structure, just connections and movements and constant reconfiguration.
This might be better in ways I can’t fully appreciate. More freedom, more variety, more opportunity to align work with values rather than accepting whatever the single employer offers. More agency, even if less security.
But it’s also harder. Psychologically, emotionally, practically harder. The old path was narrow but clear. The new landscape is wide but unmarked. Possibility replaces predictability, which sounds liberating until you’re the one navigating without a map.
I don’t know if I’m mourning something lost or resisting something inevitable. Maybe both. The linear career is dead, but the psychology that evolved around it remains—the need for stability, the desire for progression, the comfort of knowing what comes next.
We’re in transition between systems, living with new economic realities while carrying old psychological expectations. The friction between what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained creates the particular anxiety of modern professional life.
My father retired with certainty. I’ll retire with adaptability. My son will retire with… what? Skills we haven’t imagined? Careers that don’t exist? Forms of security we can’t yet conceive?
The path is dead. We’re building something else, something less certain but potentially more interesting. Whether it’s better depends on metrics we’re still developing, by standards we’re still defining, toward futures we’re still imagining.
The mourning is real. So is the necessity of moving forward anyway.