WTF Happened To The 40 Year Career?

The job market used to be so simple, you had skills, experience and time to offer a business, and a business had money to pay you in exchange for that time. Settle it all with a firm handshake and get to work, in 40 years you will be allowed to retire. It all just… kinda made sense… Today that straightforward exchange of labor for pay, now involves dozens of third party applications, multiple round technical interviews, headhunters, industry wide deceptive practices and worst of all… cringe linkedin posts… so, so many linkedin posts. The reason why this is happening is because work has become more complicated, more competitive and less clearly useful. When “work” was more straightforward like assembling something on a production line, it was quite clear when someone wasn't pulling their weight. But today the market is filled with people who openly brag about only doing a few hours of actual work every week and yet the system keeps on chugging along. So how did we get here, and more importantly… how did you make this dumb system work for YOU.