The New Retirementality, Fifth Edition

CHAPTER 9Extending Your Stay by Staying on the Edge

Thus, one way to resist aging is to keep working; by doing this mature workers combat invisibility and “stay young” by “staying active.”

—Sargent, Lee, Martin, and Zikic, 2013¹

My friend Scott told me about a sad but instructive tour he was once given of a floor at his former company (a Fortune 100 company) in New York City. It was called the “Dinosaur Floor” and was literally a way station for employees in their late 50s and early 60s, who were, at best, static contributors but most likely were regarded as “hangers-on.” Many of the residents were former big players in the organization, but for one reason or another were now regarded as irrelevant. They knew the reputation of their morose destination and also understood that the corporation was no longer looking at any of them as primary contributors. Nonetheless, they were abiding in a state of stalemate as the corporation was most likely attempting to avoid age discrimination lawsuits.

Scott's observation was that a lot of the people who ended up there had lost their relevance because they failed to keep up with key changes in the organization. They had plenty of experience and were battle-tested but had stopped learning. They had lost the pulse of critical knowledge regarding what was going on in the company and who the generators of change were. Like dinosaurs, they were respected because of the size of their footprint, but also like dinosaurs, they became extinct because ...