Almost everyone stalls eventually, but the unrest seems more general today. Able boomers, ready for promotion, see jobs above them being snuffed. With few places to go, they’re topping out younger and at lower levels than they expected. Older generations weren’t stopped until they reached their late 40s, says consultant Judith Bardwick of La Jolla, Calif. Now it’s the early 40s and may go lower yet, leaving even thirtysomethings stuck at the same level for years. Professionals and the self-employed may also top out young, squeezed by the competitive cohort crush.
First-wave boomers will do the best. Between early retirements and firings, whole layers of workers have been taken out and shot-leaving the survivors some open slots. Midwave boomers in their 30s, however, are blocked by a wall of fortysomethings who aren’t about to get out of the way.
Not every top-out is unhappy. Some workers find a comfortable niche and roost there deliberately–to avoid stress or to leave themselves more personal time. But for those whose ambition is tied to advancement, topping out feels like failure, especially for those stuck well below their competence level. In the old days, they handled their mortification by drinking at lunch and dropping in on colleagues for bitter chats. Nowadays, however, that can get you fired. So “what usually happens is that people start to alter their goals and how they define personal success,” Bardwick says. “They look to sectors of their lives where they have more control, like creating a wonderful family or contributing to the community.” The objective, she adds, isn’t to change your life but to change how you experience your life.
It’s not just the employee’s job to come to terms with the new economy. Companies, too, need to think about how to encourage talent that can’t advance. Many bosses don’t bother; they figure their underlings ought to be glad they have jobs at all. But that way of thinking leads to a work force that just runs scared. if the old rewards of promotions and pay are no longer available, companies need to find new rewards to keep workers alive to the profits their enterprise might bring in. To achieve this, the leaders of corporate change have been pursuing two ideas:
The lateral move. Instead of advancing in your specialty, you transfer elsewhere in the company or take temporary assignments. These moves broaden your skills and your perspective, which might help promote you in the future. And even if not, you’ve won points for taking up a challenge. At many down-sized firms, midlevel jobs may carry real autonomy, now that the thicket of managers has been cleared away. “More and more, your resume will list the projects you’ve done rather than the titles you’ve held,” says consultant Beverly Kaye of Sherman Oaks, Calif.
Some 60 large companies now do without the traditional career ladder entirely, reports the consulting firm Sibson & Co. Take General Electric. It used to have 29 well-defined professional pay grades, from new college graduate to CEO. Three years ago it replaced them with six occupational “bands,” each one embracing a range of work with varying levels of responsibility. It’s hard to tell which jobs are up, down or sideways. That gives GE more staffing and pay flexibility and encourages workers to blaze new paths toward an engaging corporate career. If dogs have kittens and rain falls up, Vice President Al Gore–reinventor of government–will advance “broad-banding” in the federal bureaucracy, too.
It’s not always easy to lure workers into lateral moves–especially when so few of them offer extra pay. Better the boring job you know than risk a failure that might propel you out the door. Peter LeBlanc , Sibson’s national practice director, thinks companies should promise reliable workers another slot if their new assignment doesn’t go well.
Performance pay. Plateaued on the job probably means plateaued in pay. Increasingly, employers save their raises for the better performers, leaving average workers with little or nothing. Of 2,700 large and medium-size U.S. companies recently surveyed by the consultant William M. Mercer, Inc., 21 percent give bonuses to employees at the top of their salary ranges but no increases in base pay. Below management levels, more workers are getting incentive pay-like $2,000 each to a team that launched a new product on time. A few firms offer “skill-based pay,” which rewards workers for acquiring certain clerical or technical skills.
The common denominator here is differentiation. In every profession, the pay gap is widening between the stars and everyone else, says economist Paul Krugman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Out of an average salary pool of 4.5 percent next year, stars might get 7 percent, says Mercer’s Craig Ulrich, while those doing a satisfactory job could get 3 percent or less. Stars, incidentally, top out, too. A quick riser at 30 may find herself at 50 with virtually the same real pay and perks she had in her admired youth.
For top-outs desperate to break free, there’s no shortage of advice. Network, the self-help experts say. Drop two-sentence ideas on the boss’s desk. Create a higher-level job that doesn’t now exist. Take courses. Publicize your contributions to the bottom line. Jump ship. All of these nostrums will work for some but not for all. As for a business of your own, a number succeed–but it’s cold out there. New business incorporations fell steadily from 1986 through 1991 before picking up a little last year.
The slowdown in promotions and pay sharpens the pertinence of old ideas like arranging to live within your means. You should figure on paying off your debts and building up savings with real money, not with raises that might be only the stuff of dreams. We are glimpsing our own business mortality. A successful career might very well unfold in place.
