How To Know When To Quit Your Job
Many baby boomers—especially those at the top of their game—struggle with the decision to step down. And when they leave, the transition is often ‘painful and messy,’ says one career coach.
4 min
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Older workers have a problem. They don’t know when to quit.
As baby boom-era CEOs, professors, lawyers, engineers and others get older and keep their jobs longer, it is raising uncomfortable questions.
Is there an art to stepping down gracefully? “I’m not sure there’s an art. I think it requires will,” says Anne Mulcahy, who was 56 when she voluntarily gave up the CEO job at Xerox to make way for her successor, Ursula Burns. She is now 68. “It’s hard. It’s not something that happens naturally if you like what you do and you’re good at it. You have to set time limits for yourself.” You also have to know what your purpose is after you retire or “you go into this void that’s really very tough,” she adds. Leaving the C-suite was one of the hardest things she’s ever done, says Ms Mulcahy, who lives in Connecticut and is now actively involved with nonprofit organizations.
Mandatory retirement at 65 ended for most jobs in the mid-1980s, giving some people the impression they could work forever. Since life expectancy has increased—from 70 years old in 1959 to about 83 for today’s 65-year-olds—many people want to work longer, for both personal and financial reasons.
At their peak, boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, numbered almost 79 million, and their ranks include the first generation of career women and lots of people who remained single or got divorced. For many boomers, work has taken on an outsize role. It provides purpose, fulfilment and community. It creates structure and routine.
Since many work at desks or in the service industry—not manual labour—boomers also have fewer physical limitations that could cut a career short. “Retiring at 65 makes no sense. Many people are still at the height of their game,” says Gillian Leithman, a Montreal-based retirement coach who conducts seminars and corporate workshops. Nonetheless, 65 is still the line of demarcation at which everybody else thinks you should be ready to retire, regardless of whether you agree. Another career coach says it’s like having an expiration date on your forehead.
“People are turning traditional retirement age and the gas tank isn’t empty,” says Robert Laura, a Brighton, Mich.-based retirement coach and financial planner. “They can easily work til 75.”
That’s why so many people avoid planning for it. Until the pandemic, boomers were retiring at a rate of about 2 million a year. By last September, 40% of boomers in the U.S. had retired, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center.
Dr Leithman finds that most people, even high-powered executives, put off thinking about it until the 11th hour. When she asks them what will get them out of bed in the morning in retirement, most have no idea, she says. “They’re terrified.”
The transition is so difficult that it has spawned a new industry of coaching and consulting firms that focus solely on retirement. Many are run by former corporate executives who know the difficulties first hand, like Bob Foley, former CEO of Travelodge hotels and the former human resources chief of Pyramid Hotel Group. Mr. Foley says he was called in one day by his boss, the CEO at Pyramid, who asked out of the blue if he had a plan to identify and train his successor. “I thought, ‘What, are you out of your mind?’ ” he recalls. He was 53, and the company was growing fast. “I thought, ‘Is he pushing me out? Is my life about to end?’ You go through that fear stage. Everybody does.”
He spent eight years hiring and training his much younger successor, learning to appreciate the generational differences between himself and younger workers who are more tech savvy and champing at the bit to get their turn.
Mr Foley, now a Boston-area executive career-transition coach, tells clients to retire when their skills are no longer in vogue. At Pyramid, he was against texting—he thought it too unprofessional. He didn’t think customer service could ever be entrusted to an automated chatbot. When younger employees suggested replacing an obsolete HR system that he’d created, “Boy, did I say no to that,” he says. He finally realized “these guys are smarter than I am. I finally got out of my way.” At 61, he was ready to leave.
Retirement doesn’t just happen. “The heavens don’t open up, the world isn’t at your feet when you retire,” says Mr Laura. “Retirement is a made-up phase of life. It’s nothing until you put things into it.”
He asks clients to write down how they’d spend one day in retirement; then how they’d spend a week. Often they only make it halfway through. Once people figure out retirement could last 30 years, they realize that’s a long time to play golf, knit or help register voters. They want to find something to throw themselves into, says Chip Conley, who founded Modern Elder Academy, a school in Baja California Sur, Mexico, where mid-lifers and retirees can problem-solve a career transition.
The transition is often painful and messy, says Mr Conley, 60, who founded the boutique hotel business Joie de Vivre Hospitality at age 26, sold it 24 years later, and then for a time was a strategy executive at Airbnb. “I had to end the idea that I was a CEO. I had to right-size my ego and let go of all my hotel knowledge,” he says. He likens it to “ripping off a body suit of Band-Aids.”
He warns clients about “the messy middle,” the interim period when retirees have no idea what’s next. He has them create dream boards, asking themselves, do you want to be an angel investor, author, social worker, entrepreneur? He helps them figure out what skills and experience they can apply in a new venue, as he did when he moved from the hotel industry to tech. He tells them to follow their curiosity. “If you’re passionate and engaged and curious, people lose track of your wrinkles,” he says. “They are attracted by your energy.”
Stepping down works best when you follow a plan, experts say. Don’t expect execution to be perfect. Though Ms Mulcahy knew she wanted to be in nonprofits, “the need to fill your calendar is so strong that you say yes to things you shouldn’t,” she says. “You worry about your shelf life and staying relevant.” She found in hindsight that it hadn’t been necessary to add a stint as cable news commentator to her board and nonprofit work. “It solved my itch to feel I was still part of the business world,” but it didn’t suit her, she says. “I hated it.”
She settled into a seven-year chapter chairing the board of Save the Children, a nonprofit organisation that took her all over the world. She is now focused on helping younger career women navigate the corporate world, specifically a network of 25 who meet in her apartment every quarter. “We sit around and drink wine and solve each other’s problems,” she says.
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
You’ll never guess where they found a little extra room when renovating this west coast house
4 min
There was a time, not too long ago, when the most important must-have for would-be renovators was space. It was all about space to be together and space to be apart.
But as house prices increase across the country, the conversation has started to shift from size for the sake of it towards more flexible, well-designed spaces better suited to contemporary living.
For the owners of this 1920s weatherboard workers’ cottage in Fremantle, the emphasis was less on having an abundance of room and more about creating cohesive environments that could still maintain their own distinct moods. Key to achieving this was manipulating the floorplan in such a way that it could draw in light, giving the impression at least of a larger footprint.
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Positioned on a site that fell three metres from street level, the humble four-room residence had been added to over the years. First order of business for local architect Philip Stejskal was to strip the house back to its original state.
“In this case, they were not quality additions,” Stejskal says. “Sometimes it is important to make sure later additions are not lean-tos.”
The decision to demolish was not taken lightly.
“Sometimes they can be as historically significant as the original building and need to be considered — I wouldn’t want people to demolish our addition in 50 years’ time.”
Northern light hits the site diagonally, so the design solution was to open up the side of the house via a spacious courtyard to maximise opportunities to draw natural light in. However, this had a knock-on effect.
“We had to make space in the middle of the site to get light in,” Stejskal says. “That was one of the first moves, but that created another issue because we would be looking onto the back of the neighbouring building at less appealing things, like their aircon unit.”
To draw attention away from the undesirable view, Stejskal designed a modern-day ‘folly’.
“It’s a chimney and lookout and it was created to give us something nice to look at in the living space and in the kitchen,” Stejskal says.
“With a growing family, the idea was to create a space where people could find a bit of solitude. It does have views to the wider locality but you can also see the port and you can connect to the street as well.”
A garden tap has also been installed to allow for a herb garden at the top of the steps.
“That’s the plan anyway,” he says.
Conjuring up space has been at the core of this project, from the basement-style garaging to the use of the central courtyard to create a pavilion-like addition.
The original cottage now consists of two bedrooms, with a central hallway leading onto a spacious reception and living area. Here, the large kitchen and dining spaces wrap around the courtyard, offering easy access to outdoor spaces via large sliding doors.
Moments of solitude and privacy have been secreted throughout the floorplan, with clever placement of built-in window seats and the crow’s nest lookout on the roof, ideal for morning coffee and sunset drinks.
The house has three bedrooms, including a spacious master suite with walk-in robe and ensuite overlooking the back garden. Adjustable blades on the bedroom windows allow for the control of light, as well as privacy. Although the house was designed pre COVID, it offers the sensibility so many sought through that time — sanctuary, comfort and retreat.
“When the clients came to us, they wanted a house that was flexible enough to cater for the unknown and changes in the family into the future,” Stejskal says. “We gave the owners a series of spaces and a certain variety or moods, regardless of the occasion. We wanted it to be a space that would support that.”
Mood has also been manipulated through the choice of materials. Stejskal has used common materials such as timber and brick, but in unexpected ways to create spaces that are at once sumptuous but also in keeping with the origins of the existing building.
Externally, the brickwork has been finished in beaded pointing, a style of bricklaying that has a softening effect on the varied colours of bricks. For the flooring, crazy paving in the courtyard contrasts with the controlled lines of tiles laid in a stack bond pattern. Close attention has also been paid to the use of veneer on select joinery in the house, championing the beauty of Australian timbers with a lustrous finish.
“The joinery is finished in spotted gum veneer that has been rotary cut,” says Stejskal. “It is peeled off the log like you peel an apple to give you this different grain.”
Even the laundry has been carefully considered.
“The laundry is like a zen space with bare stone,” he says. “We wanted these different moods and the landscape of rooms. We wanted to create a rich tapestry in this house.”
The owners now each experience the house differently, highlighting separate aspects of the building as their favourite parts. It’s quite an achievement when the site is not enormous. Maybe it’s not size that matters so much after all.
The coastal area southeast of Melbourne is providing a permanent escape as the pandemic endures.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
