Reflections on Office Workers in Their Early 40s.txt

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When I first started working in my 20s, there was a man in his 40s named Mr. L, who was my team leader at the time.
There were three members in Mr. L's team, and I was part of that team working alongside them.
Mr. L was a typical "salary thief" at the company. He lacked the ability to solve problems, yet because he had to maintain his authority as a team leader, he was a pathetic boss who typically blamed his incompetence on his team members and shifted the responsibility onto them. I remember all the team members hating him intensely.
Since he was frequently reprimanded by the CEO and other executives—who were certainly not unaware of his incompetence—he hated attending the Monday team leader meetings hosted by the Director more than anything and was always busy running away using excuses like outside field work.
One day, after being severely scolded by the CEO, the team leader came back sighing deeply and said to me, who was then practically a rookie: "Hey, I really don't want to work at this company anymore."
At that time, I think I thought to myself,
'Then just quit, why are you still working here?'
Even through my eyes as a new employee back then, it seemed like Mr. L truly hated working at the company to death but was just enduring it because he had no choice.
I understood even then that as a married man with children, he couldn't easily quit, but I couldn't understand why, instead of thinking about working hard to make up for it, he only tried to cut corners.
However, having worked at companies for a long time and having reached a similar age and career level as the team leader I saw back then, there are certainly parts I now understand.
Through my experience at various companies, I've realized that office workers entering their early 40s—though the timing may vary slightly—experience a major turning point.
That is the crossroads of whether or not they can be incorporated into the leadership of the organization.
Becoming part of the leadership does not simply mean having a higher rank.
To move into the leadership of an organization, an employee must be verified on whether they have the ability to lead the organization in the direction the owner desires.
Simply being able to handle given tasks is something that should have already been verified at the junior practitioner level. To rise to leadership, one must be able to direct the practitioners who handle those tasks to drive projects and even present a vision for the company—in other words, it is the fundamental stage of testing whether one has the ability to lead the organization as a proxy for the owner.
Most office workers realize their limitations in their capabilities from this point onward.
And it seems that the time when one first feels these limits is roughly in their early 40s.
This is also the period when one is promoted from a practitioner to a team leader level, where basic practical skills are required plus additional (+) skills.
It is a time when simply doing well on one's own no longer holds much meaning, and it becomes necessary to lead a sub-unit within the organization to produce results.
Office workers who sense their limits here begin to calculate their remaining lifespan within the organization.
They intuitively realize that if they cannot become part of the leadership, they cannot survive in this organization indefinitely.
From that point, they enter "survival mode." Knowing they will eventually be let go, they attempt to extend that period as much as possible.
At this stage, they begin to seriously attempt politics with upper management to gain favor through non-work-related means, and the disgraceful behavior of bosses—who steal and exploit the achievements of their subordinates as if they were their own—begins in earnest.
In fact, there is a way to survive in a company for a long time without enduring like that.
One can simply calmly accept being overtaken by juniors rising from below and yield one's position.
However, not many office workers can endure that humiliation.
To speak very coldly, if following the natural order, a person who does not possess the abilities required for the position demanded by the company should not hold that position. This is something I have felt deeply through my decades of working life.
While it may sound harsh to the individual, it causes harm to the entire organization, colleagues, subordinates, and superiors alike.
While it is best not to fall into such a situation, office workers who inevitably fall into that pit begin to act like "defeated soldiers" from the moment they instinctively sense those limits.
It is as if they have been defeated and wounded in the battlefield of a fiercely competitive organizational society.
The emotions that follow are lethargy and a loss of proactivity. They think, 'No matter how much I struggle, my chances of joining the leadership through the structural glass ceiling are gone anyway; it's a lost cause, so let's just hang in there (jon-beo); if I try too hard, everything will just be cut off by the higher-ups, so let's just maintain a level where we don't get criticized...'
When I was an office worker in my 20s, I couldn't understand the psychology and attitude toward work of those in their 40s, but having reached a similar career level, I can understand that it wasn't necessarily because the person or anyone else was bad, but rather a desperate struggle by workers who could no longer promise further growth to avoid being discarded by the organization.
So, what should one do to avoid feeling those limits even in their 40s?
Feeling a limit is synonymous with saying that growth has stopped. It means growth within the organization has stopped.
Why did growth stop? It is because as years of service increase, ranks rise and the tasks one must perform within the organization become more sophisticated, but their actual abilities have not improved. I have experienced such cases countless times.
They hold the position of a team leader but fail to perform the role of a team leader; they have a title and a rank, and the company gave them that title and rank for a reason, yet they cannot perform it properly. And most of them do not make any significant effort.
When they fail to meet the organization's demands, office workers feel a sense of crisis that their position may be in jeopardy.
However, even while feeling that crisis and tension, they actually do nothing.
If they do nothing, how can they change? Ultimately, falling behind is the natural consequence.
Therefore, within an organization, one must accurately grasp their position and the tasks required of that position and must constantly strive and study.
As one's position rises, one must solve more important and difficult problems, and to hold onto the advantages that come with one's position while being unable to do so is, to put it bluntly, nothing more than a thief's mindset.
There was once a mockery regarding a lack of "no-o-ryeok" (extreme effort), but while that is a mockery directed at the youth, for a professional, if you lack ability, you must at least work incredibly hard to barely maintain your position.