Jean Prince was 50 years old when she started working for a UK tech company near Cambridge as a technical author, writing software documentation. "I felt extremely lucky," she said. But she was not happy. "The workplace has become more impersonal and tougher," she said. "Everyone is performance-managed to death." She felt underappreciated and unloved. Older workers tend to be more unhappy in their jobs than their younger colleagues, according to a survey of more than 2,000 UK employees by human resource firm Robert Half UK. One in six British workers older than 35 said they were unhappy — more than double the number for those under 35. Nearly a third of people older than 55 said they did not feel appreciated, while 16% said they didn’t have friends at work. There’s the stress of being in a high-ranking position — or the disappointment of not making it far enough up the career ladder. True, salaries are higher, but life starts to get more expensive. "Work-life balance" starts to mean...
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