This is all wonderful stuff. Especially your points about HR (I'm a 42 year old dude who has literally never worked for a company with a competent HR staff) and running the race you want to win.
The first piece of advice I have for young people is kind of a corollary to that second point, something I had to learn hard for myself a couple times before getting my career on track:
Sometimes it's the job that's bad.
It's not you. It's not your chosen career. It's where you've chosen to work. And while that sucks, it is correctable. It's easier to move sideways into a better job in your current career path than the blow it all up and start from scratch, so if you find yourself thinking very early in your career that you've made a horrible mistake and you need to get out, it can often* be a lot better idea for you to give it one more shot with a different employer in a slightly different position and see how the change of scenery suits you. Misguided career counselors may warn against job-hopping, but employers don't care unless it's, like, 3 jobs in a year with no plausible explanation.
The second piece of advice I have is to avoid job situations where people's passion for the trappings of the job blind them to the realities of the job. Video games (especially AAA studios). Sports-adjacent industries (*cough* blogging nation of the sporting kind *cough*). Any industry where there's a wave of naïve kids in their early 20s graduating every year that the industry can chew up and spit out. Companies will absolutely take advantage of the demand for their jobs and use it as leverage to keep down your compensation and use it as an excuse to ignore bad working conditions.
Hearty agreement on both points. I'm in a very healthy scenario now that I wouldn't have believed possible if I'd let some of those previous jobs stand as my image of the work.
And yeah--having a lot of friends/acquaintances in both writing and the arts, your second point is extremely true.
I agree with the "change of scenery" idea. My first job in NYC was also my first job at a BigLaw firm's IT department. My manager was taking phone calls and yelling at his employees DURING my interview, which was a sign I should run in the opposite direction but I needed the job. He was a micromanager in a department full of people who would take any chance to blame someone else for something they did wrong. I was actually competent enough to be given the role of "team leader" which meant I got to manage people but had no power to discipline them and of course that role did not include any extra money. In short, it was miserable.
I started looking for a new job and a recruiter called me about a job with a different law firm. I told him "no way, I'm not going to another law firm." He said that people love this firm, and that they go to work there and never leave. It was also a slightly different role and would have meant giving up technology that I loved working with. But I took the interview and got the job. The guy who interviewed me was my manager and a great mentor for a young engineer, which I didn't realize at the time. I'm still at that job, 20+ years later. That recruiter was right!
Maybe that's my advice: be wary of recruiters (if that's even still a thing) and take everything they tell you about a job with a huge grain of salt, but also sometimes they know what they're talking about. And if you see red flags during your interviews, take them for the warnings that they are.
Recruiters are a huge mixed bag. It varies so much by location and industry. The great ones are invaluable but the bad ones are such a pain. And it's a really transient position, too, so when you use a good one who finds you a good job, most of the time they're not in the career, when you're looking next.
I'm a bit tired of getting called by recruiters who are six months out of business school telling me they think I'm a perfect fit for a Design Director position that they clearly know nothing about
I’ve had that happen too, and not on a direct line, either. They called the front desk and asked for me, and I’m like “what conversation do you expect to take place right now?”
Jesus. I mean, they email me, or call my cell? You know what, okay, I get it, you work on commission, you see I haven't had a new job in a long time, you're husting, I get it. But get entirely the fuck out of here with calling me at work.
As you know, I spent part of the past week hanging out with my dad. At 69 years old, he's finally starting to look towards a future that doesn't include all-consuming work. He's quietly left most of the many boards and nonprofits he's been involved with, no longer attends industry conferences, and has receded into the background of his company (spending most of his time now working to sell it, actually, but shhhhh).
So this week, it was interesting to catch him in a much more relaxed and introspective mood than I'm used to seeing from him. Over dinner my last night in FL, I started to ask him about his career and how he went from being a CPA to an expert on dementia care over the past 30+ years. I watched it happen in real time, of course, but he was too busy and scarce to really give me any context at the time and I was far too young to understand anyways.
Talking about his greatest successes, prides and also failures, I more-or-less tactfully asked him why he was so driven by his work all these years at the expense of his family, his marriage, watching his kids grow up, and any of the other many things that have hurt and angered me over the years (we have a wonderful relationship now but it's taken my entire adult life to get to that point). And you know what the answer was? He wanted his face on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. THAT would mean that he made it. THAT was his measure of a good career. He kinda ruefully snorted as he said it because now, finally, he realizes how ridiculous it sounds. He never made it, either. He *almost* made it, supposedly, but his crosstown business rival made it and he never did.
This is going to probably haunt me for the rest of my life. I feel bad for him that he never quite made it, despite all his many business successes. But mostly I feel sorry for him, that he was so blinded by this for so long that I don't think he'll ever really understand how much of life he missed out on. Even now as someone who's made massive strides towards being a good dad, friend, and grandpa, he'll never know how much he missed while chasing that weird, singular metric.
Hi - corporate training lady here, AKA your friendly neighborhood People and Culture/HR representative in the comment section. Sigh. I am ready to be hated now.
I have three things I tell my people all the time.
1) Do your reading. Research the industry, the company, the job. I am consistently stunned by the number of people who show up as new associates in assurance/audit or tax and don't realize that tax season = longer hours than normal. That's just a fact of life in this role, and while we do what we can to keep the burden spread evenly among everyone in the group, you're not working a 40-hour week the week before the April 15 deadline. Understanding what you're getting yourself into, and what the future looks like, will help you decide, "do I really want to do this?"
2) Take advantage of any and all training you're offered. That might sound like me popping my jersey, but you're not just in training for them, you're in training for you. You're learning things you can take with you when you go somewhere else. Take it seriously. Talk to the people in your training department. If you have a workplace that has, like, LinkedIn Learning or similar, soak up everything you can.
3) The head of our assurance practice likes to say that we rent employees, we do not own them. What he meant is, while they're with us, we want them to feel good about the job (on balance, occasional bad days notwithstanding); learn a ton; and leave us with an overall positive feeling about their time here. If your leaders don't feel like that? That's a red flag. You are not property of your company. You are a human being with your own dreams, needs, and wishes. You are allowed to chase your career wherever you feel comfortable taking it, and unless you're being a jerk about how you leave a place, you should not be made to feel bad for going elsewhere. I always say when one of our people leaves, "Are you excited about the new thing?" When they inevitably say yes, I tell them, "I am so excited for you even as I'm bummed for me." Don't let people guilt you into not taking a new job just because they don't want you to go.
I have done lots of corporate trainings, including for some companies that are renowned I'm their industries for their excellent training and educational regimes.
I have never once in my entire life had a corporate training that was worth the time it took. I don't know who HR people or companies think these trainings help, but it's not their employees.
ALSO
Every company that does these trainings conveniently doesn't have a culture where your work is in any way paused because you're in training, you just have to get your work done outside of normal hours.
If your company offers you training that leads to a certification that other employers decide to care about, consider it, otherwise ignore point #2 because it's coming from an extremely self-interested source and is not good advice
I’m going to play mediator here and say: while many people admittedly have had their own less-than-stellar experiences with these things, you clearly have the positive outlook and constructive approach that we need more of, and I stand by my prior statement to that effect :)
After working in two completely toxic environments, I was one job away from giving up the law practice for good. I frankly was more interested in a place of harmony than anything else. So when I interviewed at one place, I asked, “what’s the turnover like around here?” One of the partners answered my question—she had to think about it—and the senior partner just stared at me intensely. After my question was answered, the senior partner said, “That was a great question! What made you ask that question?” So I told him that I’d learned high turnover usually meant a toxic work environment and I wasn’t going into that again. He LOVED it! They offered me a job, I took it, and it turned out to be the best environment. For years, the senior partner would pull me into his office while he was mentoring with other lawyers and say, “tell them what question you asked in our interview.” He passed away in 2009 and it was absolutely like a loss in the family for all of us who worked there. Not a workday goes by that I don’t think of him.
I realize that most of what I see of "hustle culture" is an online caricature, but it seems like a mindless glorification of effort over cultivating actual knowledge, skills, and ability to deliver value to clients/customers in your chosen field.
It does baffle me how much of the focus is working 80 hours a week or whatever and not, you know, accomplishing anything in the time that you're there.
I'm very fortunate in that I currently work my dream job at a place I actually like (non-profit shelter vet in Chicago). I briefly did private practice right out of school out of necessity (no shelter openings in the city we moved to for my then partner's internship) and was miserable. I started looking for a new job within four months. I have never regretted it.
I started at the shelter in Vegas and it was great. I was the 7th vet on the staff when I was hired in March of 2017. As of two months ago, none of those seven are left. Five (including myself) were gone by December of 2018. None fired. The new lead vet, who was two years older than me, was a big pusher of that business bullshit. We worked from 8-7 and he would try to claim that was a 10 hour day. "We get an hour lunch break" he would claim, to a bunch of doctors who did not even have the time to take 10 minute lunch breaks. We didn't actually leave until 7:30 usually due to waiting to give rabies vaccines to lost dogs being picked up at the end of the shift. He sat me down one day and said "I notice out of everyone you seem to get out around 7 the most often." He tried saying that like a bad thing. I knew my time at that shelter was rapidly coming to an end.
We get 4th year vet students as part of a shelter rotation they can take every few weeks at my new job. The best advice I have been able to give baby docs (and honestly anyone) is do not be afraid to quit your job. I had 3 different jobs before I reached 3 years of being a doctor. My current job treats me great, I'm at my highest salary, and I'm somehow on the local news every week. The day I stop liking it here (which I hope never comes), I will leave. Work is important, but it's not life.
1) Shoot for the moon once when you’re young. Try to do something career-wise that straddles the border between ambitious and ridiculous. It may or may not work out, but the experiences provided can either be the basis for a good bar story for the rest of your life, or a really interesting bullet point on your grad school application.
2) If and when you identify a supervisor who is a genuinely good person who wants you to develop and succeed, try very hard to follow both their advice and their example.
My perspective on this is shaped significantly by the fact that I’m in nonprofits, or as I prefer to think of it, I’m a professional do-gooder. I started as an AmeriCorps member with a small org, and while most of the staff was great, the ED was not and the culture was incredibly toxic as a result. I was making $900/mo and working full time plus at least one Saturday a month, sometimes more, and doing a bunch of stuff I was *not* supposed to be doing during my service term because staff left because again, toxic leadership.
I’m actual staff with a larger org now, which has its own set of pros and cons, but the company culture is much better - I work like 2 hours of overtime a week because I genuinely *want* to and it has given me a lot of room to grow outside my usual job description (I have a forklift certification now!). Management and leadership get that we can’t pour from empty cups here.
this has gotten long but final tip: as shitty as this is, all too often it’s not what you know, but who. I got my current job because someone who had also worked for the org I was with when I was an AmeriCorps referred me to my now-boss.
to the point PAK made below -- "people's passion for the trappings of the job blind them to the realities of the job" -- I think non-profit work environments can be every bit as toxic as the most voraciously for-profit, if not more, because so many internal problems can be excused away by the notion of "we're doing something good/important"
ABSOLUTELY YES - and this is also why nonprofit (and religious org) staff are often WILDLY underpaid and have few or no benefits, because theoretically every dollar they’re paying you could be going to “the mission” so wanting to be paid more makes you selfish or whatever. But the lie there is of course that without staff, little to none of the work on the mission gets done. Paying your staff what they need to not use the services you or other agencies provide should be the bare minimum and it’s honestly disgraceful how many orgs don’t even pass that bar, which is half an inch off the floor.
100% agree- non-profits can be just as toxic, if not more so. Perhaps even more, because they're usually run by one person, with the plusses and minuses of that mindset.
On that last point, who you know is such a big factor. Knowledge as a concept isn't just the procedures or rules, it's also the group that is involved in the project. I have refused to apply for a number of promotional opportunities here simply because I knew I either couldn't work with the boss or with the rest of the underlings.
YES. There have been a few interesting openings in another department at my current org that I have avoided applying for because I know I would be miserable working for the department’s director. Office politics and gossip suck, but it’s honestly better to know what’s going on than not to.
About eight years ago, I left a job at a company that was stagnating for a significant raise at another firm where there was a good amount of cross-pollination; people here knew people there. When I told current coworkers who my new boss would be, multiple people said "oh no... good luck", but I had dollar signs in my eyes and thought it'd all work out.
Anyways, that boss is the root of my "don't trust HR" beliefs, because they were flagrantly, wildly abusive and when I tried to get their egregious behavior on the record, I was confronted by them for it the very next day. I began actively job-searching again that day, and left two miserable months later.
I should've listened to the people who knew better.
1. DON'T BE EAGER TO TAKE ON MORE WORK. You will simply become the person they dump extra work on. Instead, focus on learning what drives the business, what their goals are, and offer your time to help in tangible ways that move the company toward that goal. Maybe they don't take you up on it, but they will learn that you can see the forest for the trees and are capable of more responsibility.
2. HAVE A SPOUSE AND CHILDREN, or pretend to have a spouse and children. Jobs pay more when you have them. They don't pay you more for doing a good job, they pay you more to keep you from leaving. Added expenses (like a family) in your personal life are concrete and people WILL leave jobs if they aren't paid more because of it.
3. FIND A TASK IN THE OFFICE THAT NOBODY ELSE KNOWS HOW TO DO AND BECOME AN EXPERT AT IT. Better yet, once it is KNOWN that you are the expert on it, teach someone else how to do it. Then repeat the process.
Yeah #3 was a big one. My first job out of college (which was a terrible fit but hey I needed work), I would almost certainly gotten fired if I hadn't been the only person in the office who understood our financial software (and the other offices of the company were in the UK, so after 2pm it was ask me or wait until morning). It was to the point where they were going to completely re-tool my job description so that is what I'd do all day. And then I found a new job that I actually wanted and my bosses were so happy for me (slash, liked me too much to fire me and were now off the hook)
Also, CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR 401K!! UP TO WHATEVER YOUR COMPANY MATCHES. Do it now. Do it this very instant.
If your company does not offer a 401K, ask them about it. Also, start an IRA and set up direct deposit so that money is going into an account for that automatically.
Then, if your company comes back and says they have no plans to offer a 401K, ask for a raise. If you do not get one, leave.
Hello, it is me, late GenX teacher who just finished year 20 and my best advice as a young teacher is to find an older teacher who is a realist, not a cynic, to learn from. It's really important but very very hard to know the difference when you are young. Also, you need a work group chat at some point with people you trust.
I think I fall into the “young people” crowd the tweet in question was aimed at. I’ve been out of college and working for two years now. I work for a fairly large engineering consulting firm that thankfully has a good company culture where overtime is not expected and my coworkers are respectful of everyone’s time, both inside and outside of the office.
I was lucky enough to learn some of the things you’ve mentioned here before I graduated. During my interview with the place I’m at now I made known my desire to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and so far I’ve been able to do that.
There’s a big difference, too, between “overtime because we’re on a deadline and need to pull together and finish” versus “that, but every week, because it’s how the company is intentionally structured”
I will easily accept when it’s by necessity, but not when it’s by design.
I like to think my management style would be tough, but fair. For instance, anyone caught bragging about the number of hours they billed would be beaten with a pillowcase full of doorknobs, but the thread count on the pillowcase would be no less than 500
Yeah, I work in sports, some times of year are all hands on deck, but usually after regular season/playoffs, my employers generally tell everyone to take time off if they don’t outright give extra days off
oh man, the contractors that we worked with at the present job...I know they had hotels paid for, but I don't know if they were looked on favorably if they were ever used.
"Do better, and break the cycle." (Rapturous applause.) I'm in my mid-50s and spent more than a few years doing the Biglaw thing. Back then, some of my fellow associates/sufferers used to chat over lunch and make promises to each other that if we ever became the guy, we wouldn't be THAT guy. Could we still do better? Absolutely. But I know the place where I work now is loads better for working parents than what I experienced when the DCs were younger, and I hope that's more common these days.
So, my advice (admittedly, I'm in my mid-thirties, so I'm kinda old-young?) is simply this: there are no win situations, and luck matters.
- First company I worked at out of college fired the department I worked in because a machine sat in a warehouse without being tested (because they delayed opening a new facility for it), didn't work when finally tested, and it had sat too long to get a refund. I ended up, years later, subpoenaed for the lawsuit over that machine. I developed and launched six products in a year (which is kind of a lot), and they still make literal millions off of those products. They had moved my department three states away (because the owner needed to move to state that he agreed with politically) into an unfinished building six months prior to firing us. None of it mattered. The owner told me that I was why he hated hiring people right out of college (it was the first real conversation we had ever had). His great-grandkids will be absurdly wealthy, and I was unemployed in a state where I didn't know anyone for a year.
- Next job was with a very large you've-heard-of-it company as a contractor. The manager did not even talk to me day one. He instructed my coworkers on their day-to-day and would just look at me and leave the room. Of the three of us, the only one that still works there is the one that had a business degree and got an online degree in science while working there, despite the rest of us having actual degrees already (one person had a masters!). Because the manager didn't like us, and his manager thought our manager was the next big thing in the company. Both of them were gone from the company within two years.
- Later, worked at another place, one of our coworkers was absolutely cruel to any female coworker. They went to HR, the rest of us got interviewed for the investigation and corroborated. The VP of our department sat us all down to address the complaints and said "if you see a problem, perhaps the problem is you." There was no punishment for the offending party (and in a lesson for any HR types out there- 60% of our department left the company within a year).
- Other places I've been: a job where I was good at it and the company liked me, but it was so small that if I wanted to get promoted, someone had to retire (or, um, die). Sales, but for a company with a lot of old timers that couldn't understand that your average millennial doesn't/can't go out to a three martini lunch or play golf during the work week. All told, I've been in industry for over ten years and, while I know I'm not C-suite material, I've still never been promoted past entry level.
People will tell you that with enough effort you can blah blah blah blah, but truly, sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. The thing I wish I knew then, and that I still struggle with, is that it isn't always your fault. (I mean, sometimes, it's your fault).
So sorry you've had to endure these poor environments.
I learned early on that if you land in a good work environment, treasure it. I had to learn that lesson the hard way, but thankfully it wasn't one I had to relearn several times along the way.
Oh, don't be sorry- I've learned something every time, I met my wife at one of those jobs, and another helped us afford a house. It's been frustrating, but people have it far worse.
1. Work to live, not live to work. Your job is not your life. Your job simply provides the money that enables you to have the life that you want outside of work. It takes some age and wisdom for most of us to figure that out. That doesn't mean you should work a job you hate or that your job cannot be fulfilling. It just shouldn't be your only source of fulfillment or actively get in the way of all other fulfilling things.
2. Don't let complacency and fear of the unknown keep you from finding a better situation. It can become easy to just keep trudging along on auto-pilot day after day. If every single day you wake up and absolutely dread having to go to work then it is time to look into other opportunities. I say this from experience. I had to be fired or laid off from more than one bad job or toxic work environment to realize how much I hated those places. Each time, being let go was a blessing in disguise, but with each one came long periods of unemployment that weren't necessary if I had just looked into something better while still employed.
3. Never quit without having something else lined up, whether it is a new job, school, certification training, etc. My brother is dumb. He works in IT and one day decided that he wanted to put in his two weeks notice because he was irritated about something insignificant. He thought that two weeks should give him plenty of time to look for something else. They said, "Okay, pack your stuff and go. You don't get two weeks, you get 10 minutes and someone from security is going to watch you the entire time." He had no exit strategy whatsoever and spent a lot of time unemployed.
4. Lastly, you don't know shit. Sometimes, when you are young and smart you think you know everything. What you don't know is how much that you don't know, and it is a lot. Listen to your elders, especially those that have careers or career paths that you hope to emulate.
I would add to number 4- not all of your elders know what they don't know. Listen, but listen wisely and tune out those that are just trying to poison the next generation.
ABSOLUTELY. I've fallen into the trap of adopting the cynicism of others before. Now, one might term some of the things I've said here today as cynical, but I think there's a difference between taking care of your own priorities and just being a grump about everything -- and I think we've all worked with the latter at some point.
All great advice, from everyone - one piece of advice (that might have been said already but I want to reiterate) I sadly got too late was recognize the red flags as early as you can and don’t brush them off as nothing or your mind playing ticks on you.
I remember going on an interview for a job I eventually landed at Chase Bank (this was over 15 years ago and remains the worse job and manager I ever had). I was interviewing with the branch manager and assistant manager and the manager asked me something like “What are the 4 P’s of sales?” Of course I didn’t know, why the hell would I? She then turned to the Assistant Manager and asked the same question. He had a total deer in headlights look, he had no idea either and the Manager would not continue until he got it.
I didn’t recognize it at the time -probably because I was too young- but it was indicative of the type of environment it would be under that manager who was notorious in the district. The level of disrespect and micromanaging she dished out could be a case study in how not to manage. Things like logging bathroom breaks, asking staff to track what they did in 15 minute increments and berating staff saying they didn’t earn their paycheck that day and if it were up to her, she’d withhold their pay for that day.
She, like many middle managers, held her staff to a standard that she never held for herself. Working there exacerbated what was an always under the surface substance abuse problem. Scott, you aren’t kidding when you say these types of jobs can lead to some really damaging and potentially dangerous habits.
This is all wonderful stuff. Especially your points about HR (I'm a 42 year old dude who has literally never worked for a company with a competent HR staff) and running the race you want to win.
The first piece of advice I have for young people is kind of a corollary to that second point, something I had to learn hard for myself a couple times before getting my career on track:
Sometimes it's the job that's bad.
It's not you. It's not your chosen career. It's where you've chosen to work. And while that sucks, it is correctable. It's easier to move sideways into a better job in your current career path than the blow it all up and start from scratch, so if you find yourself thinking very early in your career that you've made a horrible mistake and you need to get out, it can often* be a lot better idea for you to give it one more shot with a different employer in a slightly different position and see how the change of scenery suits you. Misguided career counselors may warn against job-hopping, but employers don't care unless it's, like, 3 jobs in a year with no plausible explanation.
The second piece of advice I have is to avoid job situations where people's passion for the trappings of the job blind them to the realities of the job. Video games (especially AAA studios). Sports-adjacent industries (*cough* blogging nation of the sporting kind *cough*). Any industry where there's a wave of naïve kids in their early 20s graduating every year that the industry can chew up and spit out. Companies will absolutely take advantage of the demand for their jobs and use it as leverage to keep down your compensation and use it as an excuse to ignore bad working conditions.
Hearty agreement on both points. I'm in a very healthy scenario now that I wouldn't have believed possible if I'd let some of those previous jobs stand as my image of the work.
And yeah--having a lot of friends/acquaintances in both writing and the arts, your second point is extremely true.
I agree with the "change of scenery" idea. My first job in NYC was also my first job at a BigLaw firm's IT department. My manager was taking phone calls and yelling at his employees DURING my interview, which was a sign I should run in the opposite direction but I needed the job. He was a micromanager in a department full of people who would take any chance to blame someone else for something they did wrong. I was actually competent enough to be given the role of "team leader" which meant I got to manage people but had no power to discipline them and of course that role did not include any extra money. In short, it was miserable.
I started looking for a new job and a recruiter called me about a job with a different law firm. I told him "no way, I'm not going to another law firm." He said that people love this firm, and that they go to work there and never leave. It was also a slightly different role and would have meant giving up technology that I loved working with. But I took the interview and got the job. The guy who interviewed me was my manager and a great mentor for a young engineer, which I didn't realize at the time. I'm still at that job, 20+ years later. That recruiter was right!
Maybe that's my advice: be wary of recruiters (if that's even still a thing) and take everything they tell you about a job with a huge grain of salt, but also sometimes they know what they're talking about. And if you see red flags during your interviews, take them for the warnings that they are.
Recruiters are a huge mixed bag. It varies so much by location and industry. The great ones are invaluable but the bad ones are such a pain. And it's a really transient position, too, so when you use a good one who finds you a good job, most of the time they're not in the career, when you're looking next.
I'm a bit tired of getting called by recruiters who are six months out of business school telling me they think I'm a perfect fit for a Design Director position that they clearly know nothing about
Pre-pandemic I had recruiters calling my OFFICE line. I mean what the hell.
I’ve had that happen too, and not on a direct line, either. They called the front desk and asked for me, and I’m like “what conversation do you expect to take place right now?”
Jesus. I mean, they email me, or call my cell? You know what, okay, I get it, you work on commission, you see I haven't had a new job in a long time, you're husting, I get it. But get entirely the fuck out of here with calling me at work.
As you know, I spent part of the past week hanging out with my dad. At 69 years old, he's finally starting to look towards a future that doesn't include all-consuming work. He's quietly left most of the many boards and nonprofits he's been involved with, no longer attends industry conferences, and has receded into the background of his company (spending most of his time now working to sell it, actually, but shhhhh).
So this week, it was interesting to catch him in a much more relaxed and introspective mood than I'm used to seeing from him. Over dinner my last night in FL, I started to ask him about his career and how he went from being a CPA to an expert on dementia care over the past 30+ years. I watched it happen in real time, of course, but he was too busy and scarce to really give me any context at the time and I was far too young to understand anyways.
Talking about his greatest successes, prides and also failures, I more-or-less tactfully asked him why he was so driven by his work all these years at the expense of his family, his marriage, watching his kids grow up, and any of the other many things that have hurt and angered me over the years (we have a wonderful relationship now but it's taken my entire adult life to get to that point). And you know what the answer was? He wanted his face on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. THAT would mean that he made it. THAT was his measure of a good career. He kinda ruefully snorted as he said it because now, finally, he realizes how ridiculous it sounds. He never made it, either. He *almost* made it, supposedly, but his crosstown business rival made it and he never did.
This is going to probably haunt me for the rest of my life. I feel bad for him that he never quite made it, despite all his many business successes. But mostly I feel sorry for him, that he was so blinded by this for so long that I don't think he'll ever really understand how much of life he missed out on. Even now as someone who's made massive strides towards being a good dad, friend, and grandpa, he'll never know how much he missed while chasing that weird, singular metric.
Hi - corporate training lady here, AKA your friendly neighborhood People and Culture/HR representative in the comment section. Sigh. I am ready to be hated now.
I have three things I tell my people all the time.
1) Do your reading. Research the industry, the company, the job. I am consistently stunned by the number of people who show up as new associates in assurance/audit or tax and don't realize that tax season = longer hours than normal. That's just a fact of life in this role, and while we do what we can to keep the burden spread evenly among everyone in the group, you're not working a 40-hour week the week before the April 15 deadline. Understanding what you're getting yourself into, and what the future looks like, will help you decide, "do I really want to do this?"
2) Take advantage of any and all training you're offered. That might sound like me popping my jersey, but you're not just in training for them, you're in training for you. You're learning things you can take with you when you go somewhere else. Take it seriously. Talk to the people in your training department. If you have a workplace that has, like, LinkedIn Learning or similar, soak up everything you can.
3) The head of our assurance practice likes to say that we rent employees, we do not own them. What he meant is, while they're with us, we want them to feel good about the job (on balance, occasional bad days notwithstanding); learn a ton; and leave us with an overall positive feeling about their time here. If your leaders don't feel like that? That's a red flag. You are not property of your company. You are a human being with your own dreams, needs, and wishes. You are allowed to chase your career wherever you feel comfortable taking it, and unless you're being a jerk about how you leave a place, you should not be made to feel bad for going elsewhere. I always say when one of our people leaves, "Are you excited about the new thing?" When they inevitably say yes, I tell them, "I am so excited for you even as I'm bummed for me." Don't let people guilt you into not taking a new job just because they don't want you to go.
The corporate world needs more people like you in it!
I have done lots of corporate trainings, including for some companies that are renowned I'm their industries for their excellent training and educational regimes.
I have never once in my entire life had a corporate training that was worth the time it took. I don't know who HR people or companies think these trainings help, but it's not their employees.
ALSO
Every company that does these trainings conveniently doesn't have a culture where your work is in any way paused because you're in training, you just have to get your work done outside of normal hours.
If your company offers you training that leads to a certification that other employers decide to care about, consider it, otherwise ignore point #2 because it's coming from an extremely self-interested source and is not good advice
... well. All right then. Thanks for weighing in so kindly.
I’m going to play mediator here and say: while many people admittedly have had their own less-than-stellar experiences with these things, you clearly have the positive outlook and constructive approach that we need more of, and I stand by my prior statement to that effect :)
After working in two completely toxic environments, I was one job away from giving up the law practice for good. I frankly was more interested in a place of harmony than anything else. So when I interviewed at one place, I asked, “what’s the turnover like around here?” One of the partners answered my question—she had to think about it—and the senior partner just stared at me intensely. After my question was answered, the senior partner said, “That was a great question! What made you ask that question?” So I told him that I’d learned high turnover usually meant a toxic work environment and I wasn’t going into that again. He LOVED it! They offered me a job, I took it, and it turned out to be the best environment. For years, the senior partner would pull me into his office while he was mentoring with other lawyers and say, “tell them what question you asked in our interview.” He passed away in 2009 and it was absolutely like a loss in the family for all of us who worked there. Not a workday goes by that I don’t think of him.
So my advice would be to ask about turnover in the initial interview and if they hem and haw and don’t want to answer your question, RUN.
I want hustle culture to die a lonely miserable death.
I realize that most of what I see of "hustle culture" is an online caricature, but it seems like a mindless glorification of effort over cultivating actual knowledge, skills, and ability to deliver value to clients/customers in your chosen field.
It does baffle me how much of the focus is working 80 hours a week or whatever and not, you know, accomplishing anything in the time that you're there.
Hours aren't a product, they're a measure of time, ONLY.
Any job that has mandatory extra hours, or mandatory "face time"? RUN.
Also, any job where the product isn't the product, but is instead just hours on a timesheet? RUN FASTER.
Basically, don't go to law school.
I'm very fortunate in that I currently work my dream job at a place I actually like (non-profit shelter vet in Chicago). I briefly did private practice right out of school out of necessity (no shelter openings in the city we moved to for my then partner's internship) and was miserable. I started looking for a new job within four months. I have never regretted it.
I started at the shelter in Vegas and it was great. I was the 7th vet on the staff when I was hired in March of 2017. As of two months ago, none of those seven are left. Five (including myself) were gone by December of 2018. None fired. The new lead vet, who was two years older than me, was a big pusher of that business bullshit. We worked from 8-7 and he would try to claim that was a 10 hour day. "We get an hour lunch break" he would claim, to a bunch of doctors who did not even have the time to take 10 minute lunch breaks. We didn't actually leave until 7:30 usually due to waiting to give rabies vaccines to lost dogs being picked up at the end of the shift. He sat me down one day and said "I notice out of everyone you seem to get out around 7 the most often." He tried saying that like a bad thing. I knew my time at that shelter was rapidly coming to an end.
We get 4th year vet students as part of a shelter rotation they can take every few weeks at my new job. The best advice I have been able to give baby docs (and honestly anyone) is do not be afraid to quit your job. I had 3 different jobs before I reached 3 years of being a doctor. My current job treats me great, I'm at my highest salary, and I'm somehow on the local news every week. The day I stop liking it here (which I hope never comes), I will leave. Work is important, but it's not life.
My only two pieces of advice:
1) Shoot for the moon once when you’re young. Try to do something career-wise that straddles the border between ambitious and ridiculous. It may or may not work out, but the experiences provided can either be the basis for a good bar story for the rest of your life, or a really interesting bullet point on your grad school application.
2) If and when you identify a supervisor who is a genuinely good person who wants you to develop and succeed, try very hard to follow both their advice and their example.
Hello, it is I, Young Person! (I’m 26).
My perspective on this is shaped significantly by the fact that I’m in nonprofits, or as I prefer to think of it, I’m a professional do-gooder. I started as an AmeriCorps member with a small org, and while most of the staff was great, the ED was not and the culture was incredibly toxic as a result. I was making $900/mo and working full time plus at least one Saturday a month, sometimes more, and doing a bunch of stuff I was *not* supposed to be doing during my service term because staff left because again, toxic leadership.
I’m actual staff with a larger org now, which has its own set of pros and cons, but the company culture is much better - I work like 2 hours of overtime a week because I genuinely *want* to and it has given me a lot of room to grow outside my usual job description (I have a forklift certification now!). Management and leadership get that we can’t pour from empty cups here.
this has gotten long but final tip: as shitty as this is, all too often it’s not what you know, but who. I got my current job because someone who had also worked for the org I was with when I was an AmeriCorps referred me to my now-boss.
to the point PAK made below -- "people's passion for the trappings of the job blind them to the realities of the job" -- I think non-profit work environments can be every bit as toxic as the most voraciously for-profit, if not more, because so many internal problems can be excused away by the notion of "we're doing something good/important"
ABSOLUTELY YES - and this is also why nonprofit (and religious org) staff are often WILDLY underpaid and have few or no benefits, because theoretically every dollar they’re paying you could be going to “the mission” so wanting to be paid more makes you selfish or whatever. But the lie there is of course that without staff, little to none of the work on the mission gets done. Paying your staff what they need to not use the services you or other agencies provide should be the bare minimum and it’s honestly disgraceful how many orgs don’t even pass that bar, which is half an inch off the floor.
And they'll guilt you into not asking for raises, etc, because you're not "committed to the cause."
This is the whole idea behind some teachers feeling guilty about asking for higher pay.
100% agree- non-profits can be just as toxic, if not more so. Perhaps even more, because they're usually run by one person, with the plusses and minuses of that mindset.
Small orgs where the founder is no longer ED but still on the board are the absolute worst about this. “Founder syndrome” is a term for a reason.
On that last point, who you know is such a big factor. Knowledge as a concept isn't just the procedures or rules, it's also the group that is involved in the project. I have refused to apply for a number of promotional opportunities here simply because I knew I either couldn't work with the boss or with the rest of the underlings.
YES. There have been a few interesting openings in another department at my current org that I have avoided applying for because I know I would be miserable working for the department’s director. Office politics and gossip suck, but it’s honestly better to know what’s going on than not to.
About eight years ago, I left a job at a company that was stagnating for a significant raise at another firm where there was a good amount of cross-pollination; people here knew people there. When I told current coworkers who my new boss would be, multiple people said "oh no... good luck", but I had dollar signs in my eyes and thought it'd all work out.
Anyways, that boss is the root of my "don't trust HR" beliefs, because they were flagrantly, wildly abusive and when I tried to get their egregious behavior on the record, I was confronted by them for it the very next day. I began actively job-searching again that day, and left two miserable months later.
I should've listened to the people who knew better.
Uh, advice for young workers?
1. DON'T BE EAGER TO TAKE ON MORE WORK. You will simply become the person they dump extra work on. Instead, focus on learning what drives the business, what their goals are, and offer your time to help in tangible ways that move the company toward that goal. Maybe they don't take you up on it, but they will learn that you can see the forest for the trees and are capable of more responsibility.
2. HAVE A SPOUSE AND CHILDREN, or pretend to have a spouse and children. Jobs pay more when you have them. They don't pay you more for doing a good job, they pay you more to keep you from leaving. Added expenses (like a family) in your personal life are concrete and people WILL leave jobs if they aren't paid more because of it.
3. FIND A TASK IN THE OFFICE THAT NOBODY ELSE KNOWS HOW TO DO AND BECOME AN EXPERT AT IT. Better yet, once it is KNOWN that you are the expert on it, teach someone else how to do it. Then repeat the process.
Yeah #3 was a big one. My first job out of college (which was a terrible fit but hey I needed work), I would almost certainly gotten fired if I hadn't been the only person in the office who understood our financial software (and the other offices of the company were in the UK, so after 2pm it was ask me or wait until morning). It was to the point where they were going to completely re-tool my job description so that is what I'd do all day. And then I found a new job that I actually wanted and my bosses were so happy for me (slash, liked me too much to fire me and were now off the hook)
Oh!
Also, CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR 401K!! UP TO WHATEVER YOUR COMPANY MATCHES. Do it now. Do it this very instant.
If your company does not offer a 401K, ask them about it. Also, start an IRA and set up direct deposit so that money is going into an account for that automatically.
Then, if your company comes back and says they have no plans to offer a 401K, ask for a raise. If you do not get one, leave.
You don't want to be 70 and doing the same thing.
Hello, it is me, late GenX teacher who just finished year 20 and my best advice as a young teacher is to find an older teacher who is a realist, not a cynic, to learn from. It's really important but very very hard to know the difference when you are young. Also, you need a work group chat at some point with people you trust.
ALL GLORY TO THE WORK GROUP CHAT
I think I fall into the “young people” crowd the tweet in question was aimed at. I’ve been out of college and working for two years now. I work for a fairly large engineering consulting firm that thankfully has a good company culture where overtime is not expected and my coworkers are respectful of everyone’s time, both inside and outside of the office.
I was lucky enough to learn some of the things you’ve mentioned here before I graduated. During my interview with the place I’m at now I made known my desire to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and so far I’ve been able to do that.
Also LinkedIn is the worst social media site.
There’s a big difference, too, between “overtime because we’re on a deadline and need to pull together and finish” versus “that, but every week, because it’s how the company is intentionally structured”
I will easily accept when it’s by necessity, but not when it’s by design.
If there's that much overtime? Hire another person.
Cons: Funding health insurance for two people. Pros: Less likely to have a heart surgery claim from a 25-year-old.
I like to think my management style would be tough, but fair. For instance, anyone caught bragging about the number of hours they billed would be beaten with a pillowcase full of doorknobs, but the thread count on the pillowcase would be no less than 500
Blanx, "The Egyptian Cotton Hammer"
Oh absolutely. Sometimes shit just happens and it can’t be avoided.
Yeah, I work in sports, some times of year are all hands on deck, but usually after regular season/playoffs, my employers generally tell everyone to take time off if they don’t outright give extra days off
oh man, the contractors that we worked with at the present job...I know they had hotels paid for, but I don't know if they were looked on favorably if they were ever used.
"Do better, and break the cycle." (Rapturous applause.) I'm in my mid-50s and spent more than a few years doing the Biglaw thing. Back then, some of my fellow associates/sufferers used to chat over lunch and make promises to each other that if we ever became the guy, we wouldn't be THAT guy. Could we still do better? Absolutely. But I know the place where I work now is loads better for working parents than what I experienced when the DCs were younger, and I hope that's more common these days.
My only real solace during my BigArch days was having friends in BigLaw and thinking "well, it could be worse"
So, my advice (admittedly, I'm in my mid-thirties, so I'm kinda old-young?) is simply this: there are no win situations, and luck matters.
- First company I worked at out of college fired the department I worked in because a machine sat in a warehouse without being tested (because they delayed opening a new facility for it), didn't work when finally tested, and it had sat too long to get a refund. I ended up, years later, subpoenaed for the lawsuit over that machine. I developed and launched six products in a year (which is kind of a lot), and they still make literal millions off of those products. They had moved my department three states away (because the owner needed to move to state that he agreed with politically) into an unfinished building six months prior to firing us. None of it mattered. The owner told me that I was why he hated hiring people right out of college (it was the first real conversation we had ever had). His great-grandkids will be absurdly wealthy, and I was unemployed in a state where I didn't know anyone for a year.
- Next job was with a very large you've-heard-of-it company as a contractor. The manager did not even talk to me day one. He instructed my coworkers on their day-to-day and would just look at me and leave the room. Of the three of us, the only one that still works there is the one that had a business degree and got an online degree in science while working there, despite the rest of us having actual degrees already (one person had a masters!). Because the manager didn't like us, and his manager thought our manager was the next big thing in the company. Both of them were gone from the company within two years.
- Later, worked at another place, one of our coworkers was absolutely cruel to any female coworker. They went to HR, the rest of us got interviewed for the investigation and corroborated. The VP of our department sat us all down to address the complaints and said "if you see a problem, perhaps the problem is you." There was no punishment for the offending party (and in a lesson for any HR types out there- 60% of our department left the company within a year).
- Other places I've been: a job where I was good at it and the company liked me, but it was so small that if I wanted to get promoted, someone had to retire (or, um, die). Sales, but for a company with a lot of old timers that couldn't understand that your average millennial doesn't/can't go out to a three martini lunch or play golf during the work week. All told, I've been in industry for over ten years and, while I know I'm not C-suite material, I've still never been promoted past entry level.
People will tell you that with enough effort you can blah blah blah blah, but truly, sometimes you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. The thing I wish I knew then, and that I still struggle with, is that it isn't always your fault. (I mean, sometimes, it's your fault).
This was very long but cathartic.
So sorry you've had to endure these poor environments.
I learned early on that if you land in a good work environment, treasure it. I had to learn that lesson the hard way, but thankfully it wasn't one I had to relearn several times along the way.
Oh, don't be sorry- I've learned something every time, I met my wife at one of those jobs, and another helped us afford a house. It's been frustrating, but people have it far worse.
I'm glad your clouds came with some silver linings :)
My advice:
1. Work to live, not live to work. Your job is not your life. Your job simply provides the money that enables you to have the life that you want outside of work. It takes some age and wisdom for most of us to figure that out. That doesn't mean you should work a job you hate or that your job cannot be fulfilling. It just shouldn't be your only source of fulfillment or actively get in the way of all other fulfilling things.
2. Don't let complacency and fear of the unknown keep you from finding a better situation. It can become easy to just keep trudging along on auto-pilot day after day. If every single day you wake up and absolutely dread having to go to work then it is time to look into other opportunities. I say this from experience. I had to be fired or laid off from more than one bad job or toxic work environment to realize how much I hated those places. Each time, being let go was a blessing in disguise, but with each one came long periods of unemployment that weren't necessary if I had just looked into something better while still employed.
3. Never quit without having something else lined up, whether it is a new job, school, certification training, etc. My brother is dumb. He works in IT and one day decided that he wanted to put in his two weeks notice because he was irritated about something insignificant. He thought that two weeks should give him plenty of time to look for something else. They said, "Okay, pack your stuff and go. You don't get two weeks, you get 10 minutes and someone from security is going to watch you the entire time." He had no exit strategy whatsoever and spent a lot of time unemployed.
4. Lastly, you don't know shit. Sometimes, when you are young and smart you think you know everything. What you don't know is how much that you don't know, and it is a lot. Listen to your elders, especially those that have careers or career paths that you hope to emulate.
I would add to number 4- not all of your elders know what they don't know. Listen, but listen wisely and tune out those that are just trying to poison the next generation.
ABSOLUTELY. I've fallen into the trap of adopting the cynicism of others before. Now, one might term some of the things I've said here today as cynical, but I think there's a difference between taking care of your own priorities and just being a grump about everything -- and I think we've all worked with the latter at some point.
All great advice, from everyone - one piece of advice (that might have been said already but I want to reiterate) I sadly got too late was recognize the red flags as early as you can and don’t brush them off as nothing or your mind playing ticks on you.
I remember going on an interview for a job I eventually landed at Chase Bank (this was over 15 years ago and remains the worse job and manager I ever had). I was interviewing with the branch manager and assistant manager and the manager asked me something like “What are the 4 P’s of sales?” Of course I didn’t know, why the hell would I? She then turned to the Assistant Manager and asked the same question. He had a total deer in headlights look, he had no idea either and the Manager would not continue until he got it.
I didn’t recognize it at the time -probably because I was too young- but it was indicative of the type of environment it would be under that manager who was notorious in the district. The level of disrespect and micromanaging she dished out could be a case study in how not to manage. Things like logging bathroom breaks, asking staff to track what they did in 15 minute increments and berating staff saying they didn’t earn their paycheck that day and if it were up to her, she’d withhold their pay for that day.
She, like many middle managers, held her staff to a standard that she never held for herself. Working there exacerbated what was an always under the surface substance abuse problem. Scott, you aren’t kidding when you say these types of jobs can lead to some really damaging and potentially dangerous habits.