Comment by thelettere

In the dim and distant past of my Dad's youth, it was expected that you'd join a company in your late teens / early twenties, and that company would train you in the skills you needed, pay you a living wage to do your job (enough to raise a family on without another income), and employ you for your entire life, eventually paying you a salary-linked pension until you died. If the company did badly, then it was still obligated to continue employing everyone, and in return the employees were obligated to remain with the company, being "company men", putting the company near the top of their personal priorities. Career advancement meant getting a promotion within the company. If you didn't manage to get promoted, then you stayed in your job, possibly for decades, until you could retire.

Then somewhere in the 70's, that changed, and companies no longer considered themselves obligated to look after their employees (at least in the UK, this was an age of massive strikes, and labour relations at a terrible low). Then in the 80's, the Yuppies took control of their careers and the modern idea of a self-made career where you hop from job to job within the same industry became popular.

I'm old enough to have had the old ideas of loyalty taught to me in school, only to then discover that the world had changed and loyalty was an outdated concept. I'm kinda glad - I would not make a good "company man". But for many it was depressing and strange, and I know a few people who were sacked in mid-career and had no idea how to continue.

> It was always my understanding that it started with employees

It did not.

> because what changed was not that employees suddenly started working for multiple employers in the same field

That's wrong, that's exactly what happened (from the employee side, though it wasn't the start) first and most, though, and that remains more common than changing career fields (which, of course, happens, too.)