February 2002

"Thirtynothing"

To those who joined the work force in the go-go '90s, it looked as if the only possible direction was up. The younger they are, the harder they fall.

By Matthew Boyle

First, You Have to Figure Out Who You Are

Feb 18 - Sitting in his Amsterdam office at European broadband provider Chello in December, Michael Braun, a 31-year-old vice president--of what he's not quite sure--surfs the Web and counts down the days until his job ends. An expert in the cable modem business, Braun was one of the first employees at Comcast Online (outside Philadelphia) and ran Marcus Cable's broadband operations in Fort Worth before accepting a lucrative offer from Chello in 1999. He had a Princeton pedigree and a Duke MBA. Life was good.

Two years later his company's IPO plans have fizzled, the cable industry has consolidated, and Braun's highly specialized knowledge is no longer that special. He left just before Christmas. "I have no idea what I want to do," he says. "I don't even know who to call." He's moving back to Philadelphia to live with his parents.

Braun is not alone. Many well-educated people who entered the work force and shot up the corporate ladder in the go-go '90s have maxed out--or more diplomatically, plateaued. Al Branch, 38, Norwalk, Conn.: a journalist who more than doubled his salary over the past five years, now out of work and worried that he has nowhere to go but down. Chris Anderson, 31, St. Louis: a hotshot salesman and self-described mercenary in the telecom wars who can't find an army to fight for. Jeff Hawkins, 32, San Francisco: a regional IT director for e-consultancy marchFIRST, who was making $150,000 by age 27 and just sold his BMW 530 and his $5,000 high-definition TV.

Most believe that they'll get back on track once the recession haze lifts. "It's very clear that it's cyclical," says Andrew Brenner, 33, a laid-off techie who co-founded a Recession Camp for his pink-slipped brethren in San Francisco last year.

But the remarkable run-up in pay and titles over the past five years means that some of these folks haven't plateaued--they've peaked. "Will I make $90,000 again? It's doubtful," says Alexander Fulks, 25, a former dot-com CEO looking to join a blue-chip media firm. "A year and a half ago I could have jumped ship for $120,000. Now I'd be lucky to get $60,000. I'm hesitant to label anything a failure, but it is a step backward."

The dizzying career advancement typical of the past decade led to self-delusion on a grand scale. Many believed that rather than merely hitching a ride as the economy rocketed upward, they were really fabulously talented and eminently marketable. "All they had to do was fill out the number on a check," says Dave Opton, CEO and founder of ExecuNet.

In a recent poll by HR consultancy Drake Beam Morin, a quarter of the firm's 143 consultants said they believed that white-collar managers and execs "often" received positions above their skills during this time, and 65% said it happened sometimes. Take San Antonio-based PR executive Ken Slavin. In a March 1998 FORTUNE cover story ( The New Organization Man) profiling a new generation of "gold collar" workers who were "treated like star athletes," Slavin, then 36, crowed, "I pretty much write my own ticket." Contacted last month, he says he hasn't received a raise in over three years, and his firm has been decimated by three rounds of layoffs. "The rug's been pulled out from under me," he says.

Highfliers in the high-tech industries have fallen particularly hard, but as Slavin's story shows, the misery is nonsectarian. In November the Conference Board's Help Wanted index, which measures the number of jobs offered across the country, hit its lowest point since 1964. The U.S. economy shed more jobs in October and November than in any two-month period in the past 20 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While national unemployment, at 5.8% in December, is still pretty low by historical standards, it's rising faster than it did during the dog days of 1982.

Some talented people fell after taking easy money from unknowns. Hillary Dietz, 32, an online marketing whiz, was lured from her job as head of marketing and PR for Internet.com in 1999 by an "obscene" six-figure offer from an IT staffing startup. The company tanked, but Dietz was able to make the leap from the virtual world and land a position as director of business development at CRM consultancy Peppers & Rogers--despite having no sales experience. "We had absolutely no training," she says. "Anything we did, I made up on my own." She was laid off in October.

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