Reading this post by AK Menon I was reminded of a story I read somewhere about how the retirement age came to be 60. Apparently a European king feared that he would be overthrown by some Counts/Duke's of his own court. He thought of a way out to render such people ineffectual and then realised that all of them were over the age of 60. So he passed a decree that all people in his court over the age of 60 had to leave their post for the next generation.
And this decree apparently was taken up by other countries and over a hundred years later it has become a norm for people to retire after turning 60 or near about that.
Well I don't know how authentic the story is, but it can't be argued that a lot of people are successful after they turn 60. Capt. Nair started the Leela Group of hotels after having retired. Ratan Tata's success came after he turned 60.
So as AK says, if CEOs and entrepreneurs can be successful after turning 60, why not people in regular employment in the workforce? Specially for jobs that require knowledge work rather than muscle work :-)
Interesting Wikipedia article on Retirement
No comments:
Post a Comment