CAREERS : SHIFTING GEARS : Some Fatherly Advice : Remember, What Works for One Generation Doesn’t Work for All

I am constantly giving my son job advice. He doesn’t really listen. Good for him.

What the hell, I didn’t listen to my father. Back in the ‘60s he advised me to go into aerospace technical writing. It pays much more than journalism, he said--and that was the only thing he was right about. An aerospace engineer in the heady days of the Cold War, my father had used his fat Boeing paychecks to build a beautiful house in a Seattle forest. But by the time he was in his mid-50s, Boeing had laid him off, and he was scratching to sell real estate in Chula Vista.

It turned out that what my father accepted as the norm--steady, lucrative employment at companies that repaid loyalty with security--had been just another economic upswing. Sure, that was probably naive of him, but now I wonder whether my generation is any wiser.

We accepted the values of our parents: Work, have a family, support them, lift the kids a rung above you on the ladder--just as your parents did. And I hear myself passing on the same American Dream mantra to my high school graduate, who’s already well into his 20s.

To be sure, the words have changed a bit. You’re not interested in college? OK, I say, but you can still get some security by excelling at a skill in demand. Choose something, I advise, where there is room to excel, where the best is a lot better than the average. People want the best mechanic to work on their cars, but they don’t care whether the best carrier delivers their mail. Nowadays, if you start at the bottom, you’re likely to stay at the bottom.

The only problem is, my homilies lack conviction. Is it really still possible for someone without a Stanford business degree, highly prized skills and a driving ambition to live the American Dream as we did?

(And why didn’t I say “as we do”?)

I graduated from high school in California in 1960. If you had good grades, you didn’t think about junior college. You could go to the University of California. And because you were a Californian, the state wanted you there. It built huge dormitories to accommodate huge freshman classes and made the fees cheap. Really cheap. I’m-a-trucker-but-I’m-sending-my kid-to-college cheap.

So why didn’t my son’s friends, all of them sharp guys, get university educations? Because nowadays you need more than just good grades to get in. You need super grades, they tell me. And none of their families can afford the immense fees and the wasted time?

Wasted?

Wasted, they say. Unless you’re coming out of law school, it doesn’t translate into money.

Why are so many of my son’s friends, all in their mid-20s, still unmarried? Because as soon as you’re married, they tell me, your wife costs you half of your money. Then your chances are gone. If you want even to get your foot on the ladder, you have to save, save, save. Marriage and family are definitely back-burner.

How are they going to make it? By being the boss, the only guy who’s going to be making any money anymore, they tell me.

One of my son’s friends works at a carpet-cleaning service. He endures the ghastly hours and the slavish labor, believing that in a few years he’ll have saved enough money to start his own carpet-cleaning service. Then he’ll be handling the cash box and the prod instead of the oar. Then it’s hello, American Dream . . . if there’s any time left.

This is a workplace that seems alien to me, but is it really?

Everywhere I see traditional employees being gently or not-so-gently shown the door and replaced by the newer models.

The new ones are young and grateful--that’s nothing new. But they don’t expect benefits such as retirement and health insurance--now or maybe ever--and that is new. Those who snag jobs even with poor health insurance plans feel as if they’ve struck gold.

These jobs are designed to be cheaply filled and conveniently jettisoned. The people who have them don’t seem to be employees to me. They seem more like the vanguard of what may lie ahead, a work force that is, in effect, self-employed.

Will their jobs survive the slightest economic ripples? Will they be replaced by an outside contractor as soon as a good bid comes in? Will they ever be able to make plans based on any kind of job security? I wonder what awaits my son and his friends when they are as old as I am. I wonder whether I am being too pessimistic.

But I no longer wonder whether my fatherly advice has any validity. I sadly know that it doesn’t. What I counsel is irrelevant, because it is based on a life I thought was ordinary but was, I fear, America’s Golden Age.