Well, it looks like I'm done with the corporate world.

[Metaphorical]

5. Yes, agism is a thing

I'm sixty-three, in tech, and a long-term consultant. I noticed when I turned 55 that the jobs started to dry up - I was too old, too expensive, and in general too savvy to put up with the BS. I made a conscious decision that year that I would transition over to consulting and writing exclusively and started my own company. It wasn't what I wanted to do, it was just the recognition that in this day and age, people hire on the basis of whoever is cheapest, then when the s**t hits the fan, they will suddenly pay top dollar for consulting, then will try to nickle and dime EVERY single transaction. This usually means that I'm working with four or five clients at a time, because they see consultants as being a lot like plumbers - critical when there's six inches of water on your kitchen floor, but the moment that final wrench is turned, you want them out of the house as fast as possible.

There's an interesting point about the "social contract". It used to be that most work was done when it was needed, and people charged accordingly for their services, because they had to charge to support themselves between the times that clients needed their goods or service. Salaries came about during the industrial revolution, and it was an agreement (principally with managers and sales people) that they would pay a lower wage if that wage was steady for a known number of hours a week. For a while this was a great bargain, because there was usually enough work needed done during the day that salaries made sense, and it kept your best people from going to work for your competitor.. With modern automation, that relationship started to break down - you didn't need as many people around all the time, and contingent labor began to creep back into the corporation. Hours got cut, wages eroded away in the stream of inflation, and for a while companies continued to keep per hour payment low, while trying to simultaneously not have to deal with health care, retirement funding, or even cost accounting for taxes.

However, what's beginning to happen is that as more companies do this, the (laid-off) independent consultant experts who used to be full time employees are raising their rates again, because they no longer have the guarantee of income. The CodeGen and GenAI are turning into fiascos is only adding fuel to the fire - companies are paying consultant rates to their former employees because they AI crap that they produced thinking they'd get away with not having to pay for expertise is now falling apart.