What's the difference between a job and a career?

TheCatWoman said:

we were expected to get a job

This is a really interesting question. I never knew of 'careers' until a decade ago. From a working class background, 50's and 60's, you simply got a job and 'went to work.' It was easy to leave a job, get an interview and start a new job the following week. I did this for decades [as did many girls] -  over time working as a cleaner, 'temp', engineering store-keeper, security guard, library assistant, NHS counsellor, sales assistant selling power tools in a big DIY chain, author, PA. I changed jobs whenever I became bored, neither myself [nor anyone else] recognising I might have pursued a single 'career' rather than a scattergun approach. This lack of linear progress used to bother me until recently. Looking back, I can think of many 'careers' I might have had - archaeologist, librarian, archivist; but I was never confident enough, also lacked support and money to study.

Recently, I've begun to consider these jobs as pearls, all equally valid, strung together as, 'life experience.' Does it matter? Well, from a financial perspective, yes; I might have earned more, leading to a larger pension. From a 'life experience' perspective, no. I met so many interesting, kind people as a security guard and sales assistant, for example. Conversely, many NHS professional colleagues, in a highly stressed/under funded department, were hostile and suspicious. A lot was to do with autism, no doubt: it is hard to plan a career if you have to spend a huge amount of time and energy interpreting irrational people!

TheCatWoman said:

we were expected to get a job

This is a really interesting question. I never knew of 'careers' until a decade ago. From a working class background, 50's and 60's, you simply got a job and 'went to work.' It was easy to leave a job, get an interview and start a new job the following week. I did this for decades [as did many girls] -  over time working as a cleaner, 'temp', engineering store-keeper, security guard, library assistant, NHS counsellor, sales assistant selling power tools in a big DIY chain, author, PA. I changed jobs whenever I became bored, neither myself [nor anyone else] recognising I might have pursued a single 'career' rather than a scattergun approach. This lack of linear progress used to bother me until recently. Looking back, I can think of many 'careers' I might have had - archaeologist, librarian, archivist; but I was never confident enough, also lacked support and money to study.

Recently, I've begun to consider these jobs as pearls, all equally valid, strung together as, 'life experience.' Does it matter? Well, from a financial perspective, yes; I might have earned more, leading to a larger pension. From a 'life experience' perspective, no. I met so many interesting, kind people as a security guard and sales assistant, for example. Conversely, many NHS professional colleagues, in a highly stressed/under funded department, were hostile and suspicious. A lot was to do with autism, no doubt: it is hard to plan a career if you have to spend a huge amount of time and energy interpreting irrational people!

I was much the same as you Marianne, I bounced from ob to job, although by the time I left school jobs were becoming harder to find and there was quite a bit of unemployment. I wonder if it was a class thing? If you were working class there was a ceiling that was hard to break through, especially if you were female. 

 I remember a careers advice day at school, it was after we'd made "our" choices for O levels or CSE's, so it was more a case of telling what we weren't going to do rather than what we could do. For many our exam choices weren't ours they were our parents or more likely teachers choces for us. It was expected that we'd leave at 16 and have a job until we married and had children.

For me careers started in the 1980's, they were suddenly something we were all supposed to have as Thatcher destroyed manufacturing and encouraged a service economy. So I think I didn't so much get left behind as never had a chance to start. If jobs are what you do to pay the bills and a career is what you want to do and has progression, the there was a generation who never had a chance. It wasn't the computer said no, it was, the class system that dictates how educated you may become and discriminates against you because of where you come from that said no. I know there were a lot of people who did succeed, but there were a hell of a lot of us who didn't, who were held back, for whom going to college for more qualifications was never mentioned, we were factory fodder who then became the "underclass"