What Happened to Your Parachute?

You've always preached a certain amount of career self-reliance -- or at least career self-direction. How much has the need for that intensified since you first wrote "Parachute"?

Thirty years ago, the idea of doing a lot of pen-and-paper exercises in order to take control of your own career was regarded as a dilettante's exercise. Today, it is a survival skill. If you don't take time to figure out what you want to do with your life, you will be at the mercy of all those forces out there today.

Has the concept of "career" changed over the past 30 years?

Not as much as people think. When I started writing "Parachute", the word "career" didn't mean what people now say it means. Few people thought that it meant a step-by-step career ladder, where you would start out as a clerk and move up to become ceo of the company. Even back then, most people's careers were an unplanned jumble of stuff, thrown into one basket, and that was called a career.

Some things are different, though. Haven't the rules that guide careers changed?

Yes. Four areas, in particular, have changed. First, jobs today are temporary. You don't know how long your job is going to last. Thirty years ago, before the onslaught of downsizing and such, you could count on spending your working life at the same job. Second, jobs today are really seminars. Change is happening so rapidly that you've got to pay close attention and learn. Third, today's jobs are essentially adventures. You never know what's going to happen next. And fourth, you must find job satisfaction in the work itself. Your self-esteem must come from doing the work rather than from some hoped-for promotion, pay raise, or other reward -- which may never materialize. Fortunately, that dim outlook is not universally true: Some organizations appreciate, praise, and celebrate their employees, but not as many as there once were -- especially not when an organization has more than 50 employees.

Those four changes are pretty profound. What do they add up to for most people in the workplace?

Altogether, people today are much more insecure and apprehensive than they were when I first wrote the book. The contract that they imagined existed between employer and employee has been terminally split -- permanently rent asunder. But I feel that the view that there was loyalty between company and worker back then was also a myth. Even then, the conditions that produced the workplace realities of today were very much in place. These trends always exist in embryo before they start to grow and people begin to notice.

How do you advise individuals to respond to all these changes?

When people change jobs so frequently, their learning curve accelerates. They get the chance to learn more -- and in less time. If I have one job for two years, and I get bounced out of it, or I decide to leave and go to a new place, I have to start learning new stuff -- a whole new set of skills that I didn't need in my last job. This makes me a more valuable employee, wherever I go.

All this bouncing around sounds like a typical day in the new economy -- half-terrifying, half-exhilarating. Are these changes for the better or for the worse?

That very much depends on individuals and their coping skills. The old wisdom, "One man's meat is another man's poison," is still true. Some people eat up change; others get eaten by it.

A lot of people say that this tumultuous kind of environment is great for the well-educated and prosperous, but it's disastrous for everybody else. Do you agree?

Absolutely not. Anybody can survive and prosper in these times, provided that their attitude is positive. In another book I wrote (The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to Life-Work Planning, Ten Speed Press, 1978), I tried to do away with the "victim mentality." There's a sense in which all of us are victims at one time or another: Events happen that make us feel powerless. But the victim mentality goes beyond that and says that I will always be powerless and that my life will never be any better. I've gotten a lot of mail from people with all kinds of handicaps who combat that view. Just the other week, I met a young woman who had previously written to me. She is 17 and has Down's syndrome. She used my book in a paper she wrote for school, and while other kids were writing things like, "I just want to keep busy," she wrote, "I'm going to identify a job where I can make money, so that I can be self-supporting." I truly believe that absent the victim mentality, everyone -- regardless of background, education, or ability -- can carve out a good path for themselves in this tumultuous workplace.

What about changes in the work climate itself?