I’m a Gen Xer, I was in my teens when the internet grew to become the all-encompassing presence that it is today.
I’m a mom, I have two young children. Instead of pursuing my career, I willingly took a ten-year hiatus to take care of them full-time. In my country, this is an acceptable option if you are a woman, even if you completed your college degree.
In my case, a frightening brush with infertility cemented my decision to be a stay-at-home mom. In theory, I could always get my career back on track—if I sufficiently dedicated to do so.
Exactly at 39, I became a job seeker. This was the year before the great COVID upheaval in the work place. Freelancing and work-from-home arrangements were just getting started in the Philippines, as they were everywhere else. Nobody was quite prepared how COVID will accelerate the trend. I can say that I got into the game just in time, before the flurry of aspiring online workers hit the job market. I was lucky.
But not so lucky. As a Gen Xer and middle-aged woman, I had to deal with ageism in the virtual workplace. The hiring platforms were have become all virtual. I’m still one of the few people who remember looking for jobs in newspaper print. Instead, I got Monster Jobs and LinkdIn Talent Solutions; Onlinejobs.ph and Kalibrr. I was all but lost.
The first three months was hell. I felt down in the dumps, devalued, and unrecognized. I could have very well thrown my diplomas in the trash. (I have a triple-major and a Master’s degree—I was one of those driven people who populate the Dean’s List consistently). What a blow to the ego!
But before you dismiss this piece as a success story, let me tell you how I fare now, after three years spent on the virtual workspace. The US, Australia, and the UK regularly hire Filipinos to be their virtual assistants for a fraction of the price they would pay if they were hiring locals. In my case, I landed a long-term gig with a Chinese company. I get paid way less than my counterparts hired by western firms. But still, I count myself lucky. I have seen the numbers, and I know I’m in a good place.
Many Filipinos from the Gen Z and Gen Y generation struggle to get a job like mine—one that can regularly pay every month, on time. And even if my job has been paying me regularly for a year now, I know that as an independent contractor, I might not have a job next month. I suspect this is the plight of many, especially people laid off as companies became COVID casualties.
A few months back, I went through a period of reckoning. I contemplated deeply about my career and my life as a whole. To give me structure, I used the Ikigai process. Maybe because I am logic-oriented. Or maybe because I am going through some sort of mid-life crisis, but Ikigai made sense to me. I needed to evaluate what my purpose in life is, and to do that, I had to put my work-life in perspective. A holistic assessment was what was needed.
I realized that my struggle in the virtual workplace is not only caused by choices I have made as an individual, there are social factors at hand. My country’s ranking in terms of gender equality in the global arena is relatively high for a developing Asian country. As a middle age woman, I get as much respect as a middle age man when I go about my business in real life. But in the virtual world, it’s another ball game.
It took me three months for anybody to give me a call in the virtual job market. My first few gigs were bottom-feeder jobs—the places you go just to get some job experience and hardly any pay.
Eventually, after I got to know my way around, I met my Chinese employer (or should I say contractee?) Unlike the others, he chose me because I was his age, and we hit it off lamenting the flightiness of (most) Gen Y and Gen Z freelancers/employees. I promised that I will not leave out of a whim. I promised not to change jobs after three or four months, after completion of training. I promised to be boring, responsible, timely, constant. In short, I promised to act my age: leaning on the EQ learned as a parent, as someone who has experienced disappointment over and over again.
In my decade of being a full-time parent, I have endured (a) sleepless children, (b) fights between siblings, (c) body function failure (mine). (A) has taught me empathy and patience. (B) taught me Collective Bargaining Agreement, and (C) taught me humility to say, “I’ve failed, help me. I can’t do it.”
Granted that not all middle-aged people are parents or want to be parents. But if a person has lived this long, he or she would have had a taste of pain in stronger doses. Pain would have occurred so many more times too. (After the tears and moaning, we have five minutes to get back on our feet. We have to compose ourselves because people are counting on us—our kids, our partners, our elderly parents.)
In the end, what I want to say to future bosses is this: we middle-aged people may not be as tech savvy or quick-witted compared to the younger workers. But we make up for it with maturity. Expect us to recover, get back to the job after a setback. “It is not such a big deal,” we would say. We have practice in failure—we know what to prioritize.
Lastly, even if we are the most individualistic individuals ever, we know our actions are not ours alone. At this age, it is not really about what others think about us. It is about how our actions affect the well-being of other people. We care more about others because we can’t help it. Without other people, we’re vulnerable and lost.
