That there’s no gold watch and pension waiting for you if you invest your conviction and identity into a job. Companies are no longer made of people they are complicated manipulations of the stock market. Companies put employees in the liabilities ledger, not the assets ledger. Employees are an inconvenience to be replaced, removed, reduced, optimized, automated, and simplified at the earliest convenience. Believing in the importance of your role in such an inhuman environment is equivalent to believing dancing can bring the rain.

As a result most people that I know in the culture that I see in online spaces is to develop an adversarial relationship to your work, to your company, and to your boss. Even if you like your boss, they can be directed tomorrow to layoff half of their team, so why care at all?

I was actually just talking with a manager yesterday who is feeling pressure from the C-suite in their medium sized company to pass off their reports’ work as the product of AI because it is better for marketing. If that isn’t a perfect microcosm of the larger economy, I don’t know what is.

Late (born in 79) gen-x here. I learned early on that I wouldn't have a reliable pension or retirement, I would not have the same level of upward mobility that previous generations would have, and that I had to think of my future and plan for it in a different way.

To have a basic skepticism or distrust of any promises made to me that came from either the government or any medium to large corporation. To save aggressively from an early age, and most importantly to educate myself on finance and finance related topics.

The most important thing I learned or made myself do is to get out of the mindset of spending more money to match the rise of income I experienced as I got older, basically to live below my means and evaluate really really hard if I need to buy the latest tech, or fashion, or transportation, or trendy food, or clubs, etc. etc. etc.

Also to have my credit card paid off in full each month every month. The only exception to that rule I've made in the last 20 years was when I bought a house and built up a balance I couldn't pay off right away.

To summarize, what I learned is to direct my life as much as possible so my future well being is, as much as possible, not reliant on the government being able to take care of me, or my job at Corp X or even small or medium business Y being a certain thing. Or that the skillset I had which was in demand in the job market would be in demand forever.

I completely understand the pessimism of generations after me, from my point of view they are facing the same thing but worse. The general situation is seemingly going to be harder for them than Gen-x.

Hard work and going the extra mile is no longer rewarded.

Corporations will post record profits and still enact salary freezes and say there's no money for promotions or bonuses for the IC's while the CEO gets an 8-figure bonus.

That the vast majority of companies do not even remotely deserve your loyalty as they would replace you without hessitation the instant you would require as much as a sliver of theirs.

That you should extract as much wealth from those corporations as possible, while standing up for other employees.