You've been counting your peers wrong
Readtime: 3.5 minutes
I was on a train recently, on my way to deliver a talk at a tech company off-site.
The sun was shining and the carriage was full of people heading to Royal Ascot (a fancy day at the races here in the UK). One big group near me were all in their mid-twenties, all from the same company. Laughing, joking, a couple of drinks in before lunch. Having a great time together.
And it struck me that I was completely on my own. Nobody with me on the train, and at the other end, just a room of strangers I was about to stand up in front of.
It got me thinking about how the people you call your peers change over a career.
Easy to spot at the start
When you start out, particularly in a big company, a peer is easy to spot. It's someone the same age and seniority as you, doing more or less the same job.
You do the same work, for roughly the same money, chasing roughly the same thing. When you get the train somewhere, or go to the pub, or moan about the boss who keeps emailing at 9pm, you're all in it together.
Camaraderie is built into the situation. You're peers because the structure makes you peers.
That definition stays with you for a bit. Every time you move somewhere new, you can tell within a week or two who your counterparts are, the people sitting at your level in the team. For a while, you're equals again.
When everyone spreads out
Give it 20 years, though, and the definition stops fitting.
The people you came up with are scattered everywhere. One is on an ExCo, or made partner. One left to start something of their own. One stepped sideways. Plenty are somewhere in the middle, getting on with it. Some are not quite as progressed as they'd like to be.
That spread is normal. People want different things and get them at different speeds, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
But it does something to the friendships. The person who used to be your equal is now two levels above you, or two below. And without really deciding to, you start relating to them differently. They become someone senior, or someone junior, rather than the person you used to sit next to.
We sort ourselves by seniority. It's a hard thing not to do.
And measured against that early definition, you slowly run out of peers. There's hardly anyone left who's doing your job, at your level, at the same point in their life.
What really makes a peer
Which is when I think the definition has to change.
Because the thing that made those people early on feel like peers was never really the job title. It was the shared experience. You were going through the same place at the same time, with the same boss, the same daft systems, the same impossible deadline.
That shared experience doesn't disappear as you get more senior. It just stops lining up neatly with your level.
The person one level above you will sit in some of the same meetings, working towards the same targets. Maybe managing the same chief executive's moods. Or you might both be directors, but one of you runs sales and the other runs the legal team. Completely different jobs, but exactly the same experience of the place.
Some of the people at your own level are now not actually your peers in the way you used to define it, because they're after the same next job you are, and you can't be fully open with someone you're competing with. So the ones genuinely in it with you are often a rung up, a rung down, or off in another function entirely.
So whilst it can feel like your peer group thins out as your career goes on, a lot of that is just the old definition at work.
The ones really in it with you now might not do your job, or sit at your level, the way they did when you started. But they're going through the same things you are, in the same place, at the same time.
You may, therefore, have more peers than you think.
Thanks for reading.
Mostyn
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