s/o Work Life Balance

[Deleted]

Ugh. I don't know how y'all do it. I couldn't handle it.

[sfy]

Oct 2, 2015 15:00:37 GMT -5 @blissoff said:

Ugh. I don't know how y'all do it. I couldn't handle it.

*turns on the O'Jays "For the Love of Money"*

Oct 2, 2015 15:01:23 GMT -5 melmaria said:

I actually think I lucked out for biglaw, hearing other people's stories. Yes, there have been plenty of months where I've worked round the clock and billed a ton of hours -- that's just the nature of the industry/litigation -- but I work for nice, understanding partners. I've never had to cancel a vacation, and my bosses know I have a life outside the firm and generally respect that. The biggest reason I want to get out of biglaw is not because of the work/stress, but because I know there's a 0.001% chance of making partner at my firm and if I don't try to leave eventually the decision will be made for me.

My friends in investment banking have always seemed to have it worse, but that might also be NYC work culture vs. DC.

They are exactly who I was thinking of when I said BigLaw might not be the worst.

[Balki.Bartokomous]

Oct 2, 2015 14:03:49 GMT -5 tacosforlife said:

Oct 2, 2015 13:52:43 GMT -5 Balki.Bartokomous said:

First two jobs (gov and university) were great. Last corporate job was not. Current job is MUCH better but I think it will still have its moments at quarter end.

I hate how corporations these days get away with basically owning people. It's so depressing. Fuck the man. It's been a long week, can you tell?

Yup. H is fighting this at work. He'll get in at 8 and start to leave at 4:30 or 5, and his coworker will say, "You're leaving already?" Fuck you, man, he's got a wife and pets at home that he'd like to spend some time with. His coworker will also work a lot over the weekend, and H isn't having any of that. Fortunately, he's really good at what he does and his boss generally likes his work, so he seems to have some leverage to not work all the time. But the expectation is creeping in, and it's annoying as fuck. Why, no, he would not like to do work at 3pm on a Saturday when his father is having a retirement party, fuckyouverymuch.

Sorry you've had a long week.

Preach. Life is too short for this stress.

I was so annoyed last week bc my boss started emailing at 8:30 on Sunday morning about urgent issues that we had previously tied out. Of course I didn't see it or his subsequent emails until I was up in LA and then I couldn't even enjoy my gtg with the GBCNers bc I was worried about this all day. Ugh. Fwp, I guess.

[boiler717]

I would say I have great work life balance -- not because I never hear from work during off hours, but because of the flexibility during the work day. My boss is very committed to project based work vs physically being in the office for set hours. As a result, I'm able to flex my time throughout the day. In turn, I'm available when he's working in Asia and calling me at odd hours, answering a quick one-off question during vacation, or traveling over a weekend if necessary. I think flexibility is more key for work life balance than the idea of never working after hours.

[niq]

My current job does pretty well on this score. My last job, not so much. The head of development gave a speech a lot like the one given at v's former job, but didn't seem to realize that software developers in Seattle have a ton of places they can go work where you either get paid more, shit on less, or both. Oops.

A lot of people at startups have terrible worklife balance, but that's sort of by "choice". The expectation is that you don't live that life for a long period of time, either the company gets bigger and work hours get a little more regular, or you decide it's not for you and go get a job at bigco, or you go snowboarding for two months to recharge.

I've heard managers at places like Microsoft and Google put in ridiculous hours and have little to know work life balance. It's better than biglaw, but they're still working nights regularly and check work email on their phone a lot. On the flip side they get paid a lot of money.

I know the NYT article makes it sounds like everyone at Amazon works 70 hour weeks and is glued to their phone when they're not in the office, but that wasn't my experience. The variance within Amazon is superduper high. Pager duty does, however, suck, unless you're a 25 year old single dude and the idea that "I am what keeps the internet going" makes you feel like a total badass. That lasts about two years tops.

[doobeedoo]

Mid-management for a F200 co here and definitely struggle with work/life balance. But I struggled with it when working for a rapidly growing private company, too. I strive less these days for balance and more for integration.

For example, I might duck out for a few hours to go to my kids' holiday chorus thingy, but I come back and finish out the day. PTO is generally respected, but not always. I frequently respond to email on days off, but I won't necessarily take calls. I also get a lot of vacation and tend to use most of it so I take decent chunk of time off, so there's that.

[fleurdelis]

Oct 2, 2015 13:08:30 GMT -5 @wandering said:

I admittedly don't personally know any big law lawyers, but is it really the worse job lifestyle wise?

From a medicine perspective, I think it depends on your specialty, but during residency no matter your specialty, especially intern year, you expect to not have work/life balance and just make the most of it. 12-15 hours per day, 6 days a week is pretty typical. Taking a sick day, unless you are in the ER, is unheard of for the most part. But it's pretty much expected, so we get used to it.

I'm sure you know this, but for most specialties in medicine you will continue with basically that same schedule for your entire career. My husband still works 60-75 hrs a week, 20-21 weekends per year (with no,weekdays off ever except vacation weeks) and all holidays except every other Christmas off, works thanksgiving every year and will forever unless he switches groups. This is all very typical. I work 50-55 hrs per week and 13-15 weekends per year but have more flexibility during the work day and can often leave if there is a kid emergency bc I am only in clinic half time and the rest administrative.

[crashgizmo]

I also work in non profit, and I run the local office of a national organization. I try really heard to model work/life balance for my team and it seems to work. However, I am pretty much on call all the time and my national office expects a lot from me (7 or 8pm conference calls, weekend work, etc). I do try to balance it out, and certain times of year are easier than others. I basically have no set schedule and can flex my time as I please, but the deadlines and work are so significant that I can't take time off even if I wanted to. I find it interesting that a lot of folks here in non profit work have great work life balance. Interesting, and slightly jealousy-inducing.

[tacom]

I still don't know how my H survived banking. I remember the 20+hour work days. At one point, he lost 15lbs during a two week deal. he was only 160ish at that time anyways. 

I generally have great work life balance. It seems like I'll be able to leave my new job at work and I only work 4 days a week. The (rather large) exception being holidays. We have the same amount of work and no one wants to do it. I'll probably end up covering xmas day this year which totally sucks and changes my plans for visiting home. I also have to cover one weekend day per month but that's nbd

[jena]

I work part time, started out full time but didn't want to go back after kid 1. So my friend who did my maternity leave coverage became my job partner and we've been job sharing working flexible schedules for 8 years now. So yeah, I have good work/life balance in general.

My mom is in O&G construction. She is living on a job site. They work 55-60hr/wk. M-F 6am-5pm and Saturday they work a "half-day" of only 6am-noon. It's insane. If you choose to live on the site, all food and a room is provided. If you choose to live off-site, it's a 1.5hr commute each way. And some people do that because they brought their families. These assignments are 1-4 years. I cannot even imagine. Mom loves it though - big bucks, lots of respect, and no housework/cooking. She turned 69 today. I think this is her ideal "retirement living" situation.

[redwino]

I work in public education but I'm neither a teacher nor administrator. My work life balance is good. I am out the door most days at 3:30 and try to work at home less than 5 times a school year. The drawback are that I have limited pto that isn't tied to a break, the pay isn't great, and depending on where dd goes to school, I may have to miss things during the day.

My supervisor definitely encourages a work life balance. She has told me and other parent to pass on trainings and other meetings that happen after school when possible. There are people with my same title in my dept. who work 12 hour days and answer and send emails on weekends. I feel that is more of their working style than an expectation of the job.

[babsbunny]

Large defense firm here and it really varies, but generally regular employees have balance while moving up the chain ties you more to your phone, late nights, and weekend meetings (sometimes for an emergency or a planned weekend activity, but often times simply because everyone has too many meetings during the week leaving only weekend time to talk). Our major problem is that we spend a lot of time in firefighting mode and that results in working extra hours. But we stress "back ups", expect people to use their vacation, cover them when they're out, and don't question them attending personal events or being home sick (if they can telecommute while mildly sick, then they do it).

One of our higher up people sent out an article about promoting work life balance, so I looked up his time sheet (which anyone can do) and saw he averaged 10-14 hours overtime a week. Lol!

I'm all for some jobs being demanding, like medicine, military, fire and police, etc., but just shake my head at the rest. I get reacting to pop-ups and unknowns, but we (US companies) should be better at planning and willing to staff to that plan.

[mellymel]

I work for a global automotive supplier. My role is high level and global, and I typically have days where I am in the office by 5:45 am (early for conf calls with Europe and Asia) and don't leave until 6:30 pm and then do a couple more hours of email catch up on my phone or laptop after the kids are in bed. I travel a lot too, some domestically and some internationally. So, not much balance during the work week.

I have, however, put some boundaries around my weekends. I try not to take calls and I try not to check email more than once a day and when I do that, I do it from my phone.

I get a decent amount of vacation and holidays to use as well throughout the year.

The flip side is that I am paid very well and get many perks, like a company car and a gas card to use for all fuel (personal and business).

My DH is a SAHD. This job would likely not work well at all for our family if DH didn't SAH -- I honestly don't know how we would do it. I know other people do it, but I really can't see it working for us.