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From the 1960s to late 1980s it was a thing. Now you need to have the education and skills to apply for the job opening
Generally speaking yes, it is/was a thing. Now a days I feel like it’s a euphemism from starting from the bottom and working your way up. I’ve definitely known people who have worked their way up.
It certainly was and is a thing.
Start out low in a company and work your way up.
Mailrooms aren’t much of a thing anymore but starting at a low position in a company and working up does happen but it’s rare. It’s probably more rare now than it used to be.
Yeah. You get a job, and you move up. Talk says you do better switching companies these days, but you can definitely move up within a company.
It is, but more in some industries than others.
I overheard the purchasing manager at my job telling someone on the phone that he has been with the company since he was 21 and started sweeping the floors.
In past generations you actually could start relatively low on the totem pole and work your way up. There were of course societal, socio-economic, racial, and gender barriers that can stop you dead in their tracks in decades past though, but yes there are a lot of people who worked in the 50s and 60s from a pretty low position and ended up with good careers where they could afford to buy a home, send kids to college, and retire, often on a single salary.
Nowadays? Its pretty much a given that both adults in a household have to work, and there’s a lot fewer companies that want to spend time training workers. There’s less loyalty among workers, and less loyaty among employers.
>Would people even with a degree have to start from there ?
If its a job they apply for, yes.
A degree from a US college isn’t training you for a specific job or company and doesn’t guarantee you job placement. But a company also isn’t going to make a job posting for a Project Manager and then be like “oh by the way, we need you to work the mailroom for a year”
It certainly can be a thing for the right types of people and the right types of companies. My company’s CEO started in a similar entry level position, and is now CEO of a Fortune 500 company (30 years later of course). Many of our executives also have similar humble beginnings. Many/most of those folks received appropriate business degrees during their tenure to grow their skills to match their responsibilities, but they didn’t come in with those skills/education.
ehhhhh….kinda.
Anyone who actually started in a low, unskilled position and worked up was probably just working the unskilled gig while getting their education or something. Actually making that move without a large qualifications change would be exceedingly rare and involve patronage from higher in the organization. It’s the kind of thing they write a human interest piece about or mention in a biography specifically because it almost never happens.
Most people start in a junior role and advance through a mix of promotionand company-switching (mostly the latter in more recent years) but you wouldn’t generally start in a strictly menial position like that as a college grad.
Yes and no.
At one time it might have been a normal thing in the corporate world, especially in an office environment, but usually if you get hired for the mail room, you stay in the mail room.
Now, in many businesses a job opportunity might come along, and those already employed by the company get first dibs at the opportunity. It often comes with higher pay and more responsibilities. Many prefer to “hire” within the company due to less paperwork and less training time, since the employee might already be slightly familiar with the operations of the department. If they don’t have enough people put in for it, or nobody shows any interest, then they open it up to the general public. They also invite the employees to tell their friends and family; in fact, they often encourage them to do so by promising a referral bonus.
You might move up within your department. You might start off as the lowly assistant, but maybe in time become a manager or even vice president over that department.
It varies from company to company.
As others have said it’s now just kind of a euphemism for starting at a low position in the company and working your way up. It’s very possible, I am one of these people.
Literally from a mailroom almost certainly not a thing anymore, a lot of mailrooms are contracted out these days so there’s no place to get promoted. Maybe the contracting company can promote you up but lol.
More generally, starting from the bottom and working your way up is also a thing, but it’s much harder than it used to be. Like my dad, a real old timer, started working in the 1950s as like a department store/retail floor guy, and he ended his career in senior management. It’s not impossible to, like, start working as a Target associate and work your way up from there, but it’s much more common for Target (for example) to hire “management track” type people out of business school, and for their retail associates to top out at much lower levels of authority.
It’s still a thing at my company, although the “mailroom” handles all sorts of stuff. Our mailroom people typically have college degrees in the liberal arts or something like that, and move up to other administrative positions including administrative management. They aren’t going to become the boss of the whole place though, because we’re an engineering company and only engineers are allowed to become owners and company presidents, and engineers don’t start out in the mailroom.
Yes it’s still a thing metaphorically. I wouldn’t recommend literally applying for mailroom jobs.
I know salespeople making 6 figures who don’t have a college degree. Career paths can take unexpected twists and turns and you can find a very lucrative niche, even if you start in an entry-level position.
It kinda stopped at some point but it used to be.
Most places I’ve worked absolutely didn’t promote internally.
My father did, working up from the mailroom to being an area sales rep, to someone that was picked to become a Vice President of the company. (He turned it down for personal reasons.) This was over the 30 years he worked for that company.
I think you see this less and less nowadays.
It seems more and more companies are looking outside to hire management, rather than promoting from within a company. On the one hand this increases the cultural diversity within a company when it comes to management styles, and helps keep things “fresh” in that you’re looking to outside eyes to understand the direction a company is going in.
On the other hand, it reduces corporate loyalty and reduces the chances of advancement based on merit.
Which means if you have a job at a company, and you hope to work your way up to middle management–your best bet is to basically switch companies and not stay with the same company in the long term, like my dad did.
It’s more of a euphemism for starting at an entry level position and working your way up but, yeah, it was and is a thing.
My mom started as a cashier at Home Depot when I started high school in 1997 and recently retired as a Regional Manager. She had the opportunity to move further up but it would have required more travel then she wanted to do. I believe Walmart’s current CEO started as an associate. The latter is pretty much otherwise unheard of though.
There’s a guy who is currently a District Manager for a local newspaper I work for who used to work in the press putting ads in a hopper machine. That part of the press is literally called the mail room.
20 years, ago…yeah. I have first-hand knowledge. These days, probably not, as hiring practices are more about keywords than experience.
Yes, it definitely is.
You get an entry level job, and besides doing good work, you take an interest in what you are doing. Maybe you are a college student, and you minor in business or a connected field.
You graduate from college, and you already know a lot about the company and how work gets done, so you are ‘first in line’ for the ‘entry level administrator’ positions. You have jumped from $18/hour to $55,000/year, appropriate for an entry-level college graduate.
Now, you are in a position to go as far as your ability takes you. Maybe you leave the company a few years down the road to take on a ‘supervisor’ or other higher level position, or maybe you just grow inside the company.
But either way, someday you will have 20 years of experience in the field, and you can have a high-level position anywhere.
I started my job in 2007 at an entry level spot and now I’m in senior position in a totally different department. This is about as high as I can go at this company without moving into management, which I dont want to do. Over half of the guys on my team did the same, but not all. I work in IT fwiw.
I definitely think I’m more the exception than the rule. I know far more people that hop jobs for better pay or titles and only stick around for a year or two. I probably could be making more if i did the same, but I’d also be giving up a lot of perks that I’ve earned from sticking around, seniority has its benefits. A lot of Americans complain about lack of PTO, but I get get like 40 days off a year combined, can take off with no notice, and overall I’m just trusted to do my job without oversight. If I jumped ship I’d go back to half of that PTO at best, and probably have to deal with a lot more micromanagement for being new again – maybe better pay but I’d be working a lot more and giving up all the flexibility I’ve earned.
Brit here but I had to comment. My wife is a senior bod for an American firm in the UK. She came here as a Romanian immigrant and literally started in the mailroom!
The former CEO of our transit agency started off as a bus driver.
Definitely, this works especially well in the restaurant/fast food or manufacturing.
I dont particularly keep up with my highschool class but a lot of college educated ones are doing okish. One is some sort of high earning Network Specialist. Like 150k a year. But the other highest earning dude from my class started as a cashier/stocker at Walmart and is now a District Manager there (after getting a free degree by the company), last I heard he bragged about making 140k or so. Which I believe based on a cursory google search.
You can start low in a comapny and work up.
Unfortunately most companies outside stores, fast food or some manufacturing has a “corporate” seperation that leads but doesnt hire out of the main body of the company.
Depends on the place, although mailroom is more of a general term than specifically working in the mailroom. My coworker was a civilian working for the DoD who went from a high school intern doing the switchboard in the 90s to being a GS-14 today (equivalent of a major in the army) making close to 120k. A corporate VP at my new employer (a huge tech company) started as an intern right out of college too, and now probably makes over $300k a year, easy.
But I think it’s also important to understand people switch jobs a lot, so while it may not look like they’re doing the mailroom-to-comfort pipeline, they are rising up. I don’t think that has gone away at all. Not many people are making the same money or in the same position as when they were 22 by the time they’re 42
Once upon a time, sure in some respect, but don’t expect to go from minimum wage and no degree to CEO. A couple things have happened since then:
1) Mailrooms are no longer really a thing what with email and all. My office still has mailboxes, but it’s more a legacy item and mostly filled with scarce fliers and some junk mail.
2) Companies are more likely to hire outside these days- a manager at a competitor getting poached vs raising someone up. YMMV on how good or bad this is (there’s a lot of ‘jump around after 2 years’ advice these days), but it’s another ceiling to go through.
Not exactly a mailroom, but yeah it’s a thing. Some friends who had no degree worked for a restaurant. One was a line cook and another a server. One’s a regional manager and the other is basically a regional manager over about 1/4 of their restaurants.
It’s actually sort of funny because we grew up together and he’ll send me some comp cards and I don’t have to pay anything. But he does actually sign them, so the manager of that store knows where they came from. Sometimes they’ll ask how I got them, and I’ll mention we’re friends. And I’ll ask if they know he started off as a server, and most don’t know that about him. They ended up paying for him to get a degree, and he’s moved up because he’s such a hard worker. So it definitely happens in real life
Yes. Some people go to school while working in a mail room.
Many places have a similar style where you must start at the entry level position. Start from the bottom and work your way up. This way the successful leaders have experience in more departments and life in the entry level positions. It’s still a rat race and can be competitive.
Not exactly the same thing, but in the mainstream game industry there is something similar, where sometimes people work their way up from QA (a game tester) to Game Designer or Artist or Producer. A QA gig sucks in my opinion, so grats to anyone who ‘got out’ of it and moved to move interesting and better paying work in the industry. Also, the entry requirements for being a QA person are about the same as working as a drone in a mailroom i.e. pretty low.