The Frustrated CFO goes to a corporate party and during cocktails mingles with bankers, all kinds of brokers, execs from various industries, business owners, etc. Everyone exchanges cards, handshakes, hugs, or cheek-pecks depending on the length and the warmth of the relationships. Some people talk shop, some solicit business and/or advice, some boast about themselves and/or their children, some discuss the Super Bowl without much enthusiasm (it's NYC after all - we only got excited when we saw our very own Eli Manning in the stands watching the event turning miserably for his brother). Many, of course, discuss the weather - it has been an appropriately cold winter, which makes the clueless schmucks unhappy.
The Frustrated CFO does her duty of actively participating in this business-social hubbub. She doesn't even have her cards out, because in this room everyone knows her and she knows everyone. This is great - no pressure, no awkwardness, no need for ice-breaking: she freely rotates herself around the space joining a conversation here and there, mostly listening to others chattering away.
The party is not very large - just 60 people. So, it is a testimony to the prevalence of the trend that she catches two independent dialogues, which support one of her it's-only-gonna-get-worth observations: that there is no such thing anymore as a "secure" profession.
A VP of Acquisition and Investment from a Commercial Real Estate Brokerage humorously tells a story how at a recent RE conference she met a middle-aged gentlemen with a double-sided business card. One side introduced him as a licensed commercial property broker and another... as a cardiologist. He told her that he'd been a practicing heart specialist for 25 years before getting into selling corner delis, Korean restaurants, and warehouses. People didn't know how to react and, therefore, they snickered - a typical response. Someone said, "I wouldn't trust that guy with my heart."
Well, I've been saying for some time now that HMO's together with malpractice insurers did a pretty thorough job of downgrading the medical profession from one of the highest-earning trades to a regular struggling-to-survive occupation. This is why it's so hard to find a good primary physician nowadays: the insurance pays $8-$25 monthly allowance for PP patients and the only appointment you are allowed to bill to the provider is the annual full physical. Every single privately practicing doctor that I know, including specialists, feels obligated to tell me how he is about to lose everything and how he cannot afford his kids' tuition anymore. But I have to be honest: A cardiologist going into real estate? That was surprising even to me.
In another conversation The Frustrated CFO's corporate attorney was explaining how they had to push one of the partners out because "he wasn't bringing enough business." His arrangement gave him rights to share in the combined profits, while the other partners didn't feel that he was pulling his weight. So, they simply didn't renew his contract. Now, the attorney said, the ousted ex-partner went to work for a law firm that kept all attorneys strictly on the eat-what-you-kill basis. No more sharing in each other's efforts - if you don't bring any business on your own, you don't earn anything at all.
Well, this has been a shift in many partnership-based professions: not just law firms, but also accounting, managerial consulting, architecture & design, web development, advertising, and some-such companies. It's not that important anymore whether you are a good lawyer - it's all about the salesmanship, the "rolodex," the ability to snatch a new client. I keep waiting for the time when these entities start hiring sales execs without the required professional backgrounds and pay them humongous bonuses for selling services fulfilled by someone else.
As recently as 10 years ago parents still thought that as long as they force their children into being a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a money manager (regardless of the kids' actual talents and dreams), they did their "duty" of making sure that these young men and women were financially comfortable and could provide for themselves and their future families. But it's not true anymore: there are no more cushy jobs, no security in any profession, no guarantees.