Why was there no talk of "career long-term planning" and "midlife crisis" ten years ago?

A veteran industry insider with fifteen years of experience in the workplace shares their story, having gone through the fiery furnace and the trivialities of this economic cycle.
Ten years ago, top real estate companies like Evergrande and Sunac were the fallback options for second-tier civil engineering students. As long as you were a living person willing to work on-site, signing a tripartite agreement for a high salary was as easy as grabbing it out of thin air.
At that time, the Big Four accounting firms only required passing CET-6 and completing a simple aptitude test to get in. Ordinary graduates from first-tier universities in finance and accounting had no trouble finding a way out, turning down multiple offers with their eyes closed.
Public primary and secondary school positions in local government were the lowest threshold options that top graduates looked down upon. Ordinary normal university education students could easily get in, and those with a bit of ambition flocked to New Oriental and TAL Education to earn a million-yuan annual salary.
Back then, no workplace professional wanted a long-term job that lasted twenty or thirty years. As long as you worked in a booming industry for two years, your salary increase from job hopping was over 30%. No one relied daily on demolition, lottery wins, or riding on someone else's coattails to escape work.
That was an era of hot money rushing in wildly. Leverage was maxed out, capital was frenzied, and every industry was racing to claim territory. Even a flawed O2O business plan could secure tens of millions in angel round funding.
Now, college students who haven't even graduated are actually hoping to find an industry that will never decline in their lifetime.
They haven't even survived the youth crisis, yet they’re everywhere asking if there’s still room to grow in their thirties. The brutal reality is, if you can hold on, the company you join probably won’t last until you’re 30.
What was once considered "stable and long-lasting" and seen as hopelessly unambitious ten years ago has now become the obsession everyone kneels to. The current job market is simply not sustainable—only thousands of troops fighting for a piece of the pie. Those who can't get a share will starve; those who do will be sick of it every day.