Close. Engineering. Lots of engineers hung on 5-8 years longer than originally planned because their retirement plans got hurt so badly, which meant fewer jobs for fresh grad engineers to get hired on. I’m starting to see it again with colleagues who want to retire this year but are tacking on an extra couple because their finances aren’t where they planned to have them.

Then I can get going about removal of pensions back in the day and expectation that people jump job to job to get pay increases instead of getting raises in-role that match let alone exceed inflation, incentivizing people to NOT stay with a company for long, leading to a shallow bench for the next line of leaders and experts. I’m mid-to-late 30s and am on my 4th company since college and 3rd job within current company; contrast that with my dad who worked for the same company for almost 40 years and holds as many patents for them and knew that company inside and out. I will never be as knowledgeable and efficient as he was. Where industrialization allowed specialization, it seems like we’re actively pushing to go back to generalization where workers are replaceable with minimal changeover time.