Eternal Postdoc

I have started a training program as a data bank systems developer. I now spend 6 hours a day learning programming techniques in the language c#. The people on the course are all unemployed, but come from a mixture of backgrounds. Some have broken off a computer studies degree, some were working in the IT field and made redundant, and some are unemployed academic types. I'm one of two former particle physicists on the course.

I went to lunch with "Karl", who has spent the last 20 years at the Ruhr-University of Bochum. He studied there, did his PhD there, spent 8 years as a post-doc there, and is now unemployed. I only managed one year as a post-doc, but maybe completely failing to fit in was a blessing. I don't want to suddenly wake up and realise that I'm 37, unemployed, having spent 8 years treading the concrete flagstones of the university. I think the German Chamber of Commerce should give Karl a job as a "Ghost of Postdoc future". He could spook the corridors of university departments showing what will probably happen to students if they never set off into the real world. He could quickly scare them into getting a job far from the university.

On second thoughts, there is no need to pay someone to do this. Every university department I've ever been in had their own version of Karl. Not all are unemployed, some are happy enough, but they all give the air of stagnation.