Comfy Chairs

From the ST, Dec 16 2006:

... thousands of middle-aged managers who lost their jobs during the late 1990s downturn and have yet to make their comeback.

Many have tertiary education, speak good English, own private property and used to hold middle and senior managerial positions paying $5,000 to $20,000 a month.

But these days they shuffle around office buildings and shopping centres, a tatty plastic bag of dog-eared CVs and documents in hand, looking for job-vacancy signs.

They first ended up on the chopping board after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Since then, the forces of technology, management de-layering, right-sizing and outsourcing have shoved even more off their comfy swivel chairs.

[...]

In particular, psychiatrist and suicidologist Chia Boon Hock, who has studied thousands of suicide notes, is keenly watching this vulnerable group. He notes that the chief reason why those aged 45 to 59 kill themselves is financial. (emphasis mine)

Sitting on my comfy swivel chair at home reading about other mature adults being shoved off the ultimate Comfy Swivel Chair ... struck fear into this one's heart, especially when I am wondering about my own financial future here from age 40 onwards.

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Is it more true that some industries are overhyped and later marginalized, or more that individuals blindly follow trends like lemmings under the 'old social compact' , such lemming-like behaviour subsequently much criticized by the government when things started to go sour? What do you think motivates each and every person's choice of career path?

In another paragraph of the same article, finally even the ST itself has said, "'self-improvement' is a bad word for many in this group, who used up chunks of savings to pay for courses leading to diplomas and degrees, only to find these of little use when the crunch came"! Also see this article by Terence Chong on Dec 11.

Please take heed of your own chairs before they become so much flotsam in the ocean.