As a user experience professional, you know that your field is a hot one, but in the grand scheme of things, UX careers as we know them today have not been around for all that long. So you decide that you need some perspective.
You visit with an old timer who lives down the street and ask what work was like for him back in the day. He tells you about his co-workers and how close they all were. He tells you that every year, new people would start and those of a certain age would retire. He had an employer that took care of employees from start-date through retirement with generous pension plans and the like.
You sit back, and you think to yourself, whoa, that sounds like marriage and nothing like jobs of today!
Even as we are now as a society finally breaking down the remaining barriers to marriage equality, sociologists and demographers tell us that the percentage of people who decide to get married has declined. What they don’t say, or often don’t associate, is that the parallel experience of being married to your workplace is also declining.
See full article: Lebson, Cory and Amanda Stockwell. “‘Til Retirement Do Us Part?” UX Magazine July 9, 2015: Article No. 1503.
