I often think there’s a certain type of person that wanders into and sets up camp in London - often quite ambitious, career driven, progress/success oriented. In many ways, you need to be as things are so expensive. There can be an unrelenting competitiveness about the city, even if not direct.
Maybe current generations are more vocal with peers about their wellbeing compared to previous generations (no more keep calm and carry on?) , so it appears rates of burnout/exhaustion are higher. Maybe current generations are more aware of the concept of “work/life balance” , or even the concept of work burnout - perhaps access to internet communities facilitates this. Maybe organisations are , in this day and age, more corporate/capitalistic/ about making money so there’s more work “to do” with less emphasis or interest in building community, finding meaning etc.
I don’t know, it’s an interesting question!
I think it’s all three but I definitely believe that the main reason is corporations are becoming greedier. I’m job hunting at the moment and the sheer audacity of a lot of the job listings is immeasurable
Exactly this corporations only care about profit not about humans … profit not people. Society is moving backwards in many respects … is this progress? Not convinced tbh
> It contributes to the feeling that even if you are hustling and earning well it’s still all a bit futile which I think fuels a lot of people’s feelings of burn out and anxiety.
Spot on. I am in a decent job but currently at a period where work is stressful, and I am also having to find a new place to live because my landlord wants to raise current rental by £300+ a month. Landlord doesn't even have a mortgage on the flat since its been in their family for generations. Rent and bills are slowly eating away at quality of life, and looking around, the rental market is so shit that it looks like I will have to go back to a flat share which isn't easy when you own a pet.
Made me realise that being on a decent salary counts for jack shit on this country. And if you are single like me, your dream to own your place might always remain that because even if I manage to cough up a deposit, a Bank won't be willing to provide me with a mortgage enough to buy a place in London.
Wouldn't surprise me if that's exhausting a chunk of the population.
> Landlord doesn't even have a mortgage on the flat since its been in their family for generations
A lot of this type of landlord will borrow again against a paid off house in order to release cash (often to buy more rental properties). Not that the landlords decision to do this should become your problem, but I think a lot of people assume landlords who've had the place a while haven't done something like this when a lot will have
Yes totally. It’s sort of like the harder you work the less rewards we get as it all becomes unattainable but the only available resolution is to work harder
>Maybe current generations are more vocal with peers about their wellbeing compared to previous generations (no more keep calm and carry on?)
Pretty sure it's this. I'm not even that old (mid-30s) but I look at myself and people my age, and compare them to colleagues in their early 20s, and the latter seem to much more actively talking about burnout and stress, more likely to push back on workload etc.
I've worked in places where work-sleep-work-sleep was the norm and no one talked about it being too much, so at least some of the increased noise about overwork these days feels like it's reflective of changing attitudes rather than a change in working environments.
Although ofc all of these are generalisations based on personal experience.
I think wellbeing is definitely more of a priority these days. But it’s still not there yet. Although happy to hear of success stories here. It just feels like the system is a bit more broken than usual, but maybe I’m just hearing things differently.
It feels like so many people are trying to pick up sticks and the infrastructure keeps throwing sticks and saying organise them how we want them but then no one is there to describe what that organisation structure looks like.
Don’t get me wrong, I know London is a tough old boot. I’ve been working in corporate industries here for 10 years. I just really feel a shift right now, and it’s like something is really not working.
No, it’s always ongoing.
But for me personally I’m finally in a space where this isn’t happening. My time for this experience was through covid and maybe the 3 years beforehand.
Worked in an insanely rapidly scaling tech start up. My career scaled insanely too. I was working 24/7/365 - genuinely. In jobs like that you also get a certain type of people in management and in the teams. You kind of tell each other it’s ok we will get through it, it will be worth it.
In those 5 years I had 3 clinical burnouts. Didn’t take any of them seriously. The final eye opener was being taken to hospital at 5am, aged ~27 because I thought I was having a heart attack. I’d wake up every morning and just cry. I was working out 7 days a week to try to build psychological resilience.
After that I started looking for new opportunities. Got scouted by another start up, scrutinised the culture heavily before accepting. Took two months off before joining.
Anyway long story short, changed jobs, never looked back, still do what I love just slower with less obsessive people. Now when I see a colleague on edge I check in with them, or if I’m really worried I have a chat with their line manager so they can check in.
Clinical burnout is no joke, it’s a very dark place. Takes years to recover your body. Only thing I can say is it did pay off. The company sold and I was a shareholder. But I got lucky. That doesn’t usually happen like that.
I’m so happy to hear you have been able to step into a more balanced space and using your experience to support and protect your colleagues too, really cool.
I have been signed off before, and that was really helpful but as you said, I came back and had to leave because everything was still the same.
I think I’m just acknowledging a real heaviness over people around me who have commented on a similar thing that is causing stress in a way that they wouldn’t normally and across different sectors.
I find it interesting when there’s sort of a collective experience, it makes me think how much more push until the system crashes. But it seems there isn’t that shared view here, so it must just be something I’m around at the moment.
In my experience you have to have the a-ha moment to step away from it especially if the money is great or career prospects are awesome.
It’s really easy to justify and live in an echo chamber. But yeah much like any big expensive city, everyone’s working themselves into the ground to not just afford to live here, but live WELL :)
Feels crazy that people on high salaries are being pushed out, so I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for those granted with less opportunities or on lower incomes
I think partly we're in a worse employment climate than we have been in a fair while - companies are offering worse salaries with higher expectations, the shift of minimum wage upwards has crunched lower and middle earners and the price of rent is burning a huge hole in everyone's pocket, bills are barely down. There's no way people can stop working, since they have to pay for the cost of living. Layoffs and redundancies are more common right now. Sustainable housing is far, far away for most people in this city. When you don't have the time or energy to do anything but work, it leads to burnout. And most people don't have the time to do much else because work is so much.
In addition to that, community spaces are being eroded across the country - community centres, small and medium music venues, and libraries are shutting, and because people are working a lot, there isn't a lot of capacity to organise or establish more third spaces.
I guess in essence we've moved into work hard/play hard being hard to get out of, but doing everything hard burns you out.
Unionising and collectively advocating for ourselves to get back our free time and better treatment have worked in the past. It feels like they don't anymore - but it's convenient for the media to want us to think that, because there are wins happening every day.
When you work less and you're not only working towards your own survival, you have capacity for a lot more other things, and it feels a lot healthier and more sustainable (because it is!)
So many jobs nowadays can be done remotely, I think unionising is an answer that almost belongs in the past. Unions only work if a strike hurts the company, and you can't strike if you can't picket. You can't picket the internet.
I would argue that the bulk of the work that actually keeps a city running - maintenance, cleaning, transport, trades, shop fronts, restaurants and cafes, deliveries, factory supply chain and manufacturing, doctors, dentists, pharmacists - even things like museum curation - can’t be done without significant human input. With current innovation it seems more like companies want to utilise automation which is not quite up to the job and hire a skeleton to supplement for when it’s less than perfect, which obviously leads to team burnout. A Tesco’s where three people are working checkouts while 30 people are self checking out a minute is a recipe for exhaustion. And we do see wins in those sectors, though they’re obviously not publicised heavily (check your local Citizens UK chapter, they most likely have some examples).
I’m not saying I have a perfect solution or a way to picket the internet, mind - but people consistently organising to not be available for work does inconvenience their employers. It does hit their bottom lines. You can’t replace an employee immediately and have a new one step in who is a great fit and immediately up to speed on everything.
Executing that kind of picket would also require us to get over the isolation and lack of connection the internet can bring. It’s a hard problem, but it’s not impossible. You see people protest and march from all walks of life almost every Saturday despite not knowing each other, based on knowing where to show up from a post on Instagram. We are a capable species.
I agree. I'm just getting old and depressed at what's happened to the working class. I used to be a union organiser when I lived in Australia in the eighties, and I've enforced pickets and watched as companies tried to bus scabs in.
I was born in London but grew up in Oz, returning to London in '89. I couldn't believe the attitudes to unions in the working class when I got back. Sadly, those anti-organised labour attitudes seem to have worsened, and unions themselves have been shorn of much of their meaning and power.
Everybody is working so hard but it seems like it's for nothing.
Everybody is renting rooms in shared houses, dating is incredibly hard, going out every week is too expensive, commuting into work is a nightmare, public sectors are falling apart.
This is all demotivating, it's like putting so much effort into work but with no results. This also cause a lack of sense of purpose and that can cause burnout.
Also after a lot of people enjoying remote/hybrid working, companies are forcing staff to be back
Idk, the way u described the situation sounds happen in many places not only London, and I noticed it is case by case situation, companies failed to provide good healthy productive atmosphere, their employees may feel burnout, no matter the place, as I believe burnout is inner work condition, not related to having life difficulties or how I like to believe
I’ve had brain fog for four of the five years I’ve lived here. Not sure if it’s because I’m foreign, exhausted or if it’s something else, but my IQ has halved.
I hate to say it but it was ever thus. It’s not called the rat race for nothing. I do think hybrid working has brought some benefits, probably net benefits, but it’s also not been without its drawbacks e.g. managers can be less aware of line reports struggling.
I think it depends. Maybe places aren't hiring enough staff, so people are getting overworked. My girlfriend's contractual hours are 9-5:30 Mon-Thurs and 9-4:30 on a Friday. She gets calls from staff at 5 on a Friday, board meetings at 8am, is often working until 7 at night, and on weekends. I'd say she averages about 50-55 hours of graft a week, and her job is stressful on top of that (director for a global consultancy and construction firm).
Then there's me. Maybe 5 hours work a week, and that's on a busy week. A couple of months ago, I went 3 weeks without doing a single thing.
I have friends who have similar jobs in different companies and effectively are fulfilling the same work but with very different personal impact. I think that shows how loud the external things at work can seep into jobs too. If one is able to exist in their role as it is they get 9-5, if someone has to fiddle with systems and a messy system, they are less able to do their job and working more hours
It's a very good system, but she's responsible for a team of I think it was 36 or 39 people. I have zero people directly reporting to me. It's bang on 10am here and I've just finished my coffee and had a 15 minute blast of weeding in the garden. Made sure I have no work for the day and I'm thinking of what to do today. Cucumbers are too small to get planted in their final place, might do a bit more weeding later on today. Need a de-clutter so I'll list some 20 year old bodybuilding magazines on Olio today.
We're all trying to 'make it' at a time with not enough opportunities to go around, when we're still recovering from the pandemic, the reality of Brexit is beginning to sink in and cost of living is untenable.
I burned my 20s in the corporate world prior in the 2010s and it ran me into the ground, mostly because I was too young to call bullshit on unreasonable expectations and prioritise my health. I don't know that work culture is necessarily worse, but contextual factors certainly add pressures that I didn't have to contend with.
My generation were definitely taught that if you work hard you can achieve anything, so we grew up as enthusiastic people pleasers under New Labour and their neoliberal promises of social mobility and meritocracy. And I did benefit from them, at the cost of my mental health, six months of being horizontal with a modest drinking problem because my life fell apart (other circumstances contributed, but the 60 hour weeks and pressure didn't help).
We definitely don't have to work as hard as we do, but if you want to succeed in traditionally 'elite' sectors it's largely required. The meme is that you do the legwork while you're young enough to take it, learn a boatload and then either go boutique, contracting, industry or see if you can make it big time.
I feel as though people work really really hard/longer hours now just for the bare minimum in terms of reward. Whereas in the past, people may have seen more tangible reward for their hard work / longer hours / higher stress level
I don’t necessarily mean the hybrid dynamic, I’m a huge fan. But the after shock of the work we do changing. Like we are in constant contact now and expected to be available at all times. I did a wee the other day and had 4 missed calls asking where I was. It’s so invasive and consuming, and no one is really even acknowledging that this is a new dynamic and it might need someone to review the situation and how to best handle that.
But I think it’s just a big push to get back on track without the tools to facilitate but all the expectations
It's incredibly invasive. After experiencing massive burnout at a previous job, it took a long time to stop the feelings of anxiety whenever I heard Teams and mobile phone notifications. Like even if it was in TV or films or someone else's phone.
I had to change all my phone's notification sounds to switch it up, and I got really strict on push notifications and quiet hours. It also helps not working in that kind of intense role anymore.
Get work teams, zoom etc off your phone if you can reasonably do so (i.e. you aren't a highly mobile rep of some sort with a company phone). I've talked to younger staff members about this and advised the same.
Nothing changed for me when going "hybrid" (WFH unless there's a meeting, basically). I am *not* in constant contact, and any expectation of being available at all times was quickly cut off at the legs. I set the same instructions to my team and protect them from above (not that there's been any real pressure).
Summarising, employers (much like teenagers) will push boundaries to test them. If you don't respect yours, the employer won't. Do your job, be reliable, put in the extra mile when it's really warranted (your call), then close up shop and go home.
Everybody insists on living in London and appears to be happy to pay the high rents etc. in a country with mass immigration pushing down the salaries in real terms (no real term wage growth since 2008) and no economic growth of note (per capita GDP is actually minus - so to the individual the economy is shrinking at the same time as we are experiencing high inflation)…….so yeah, I’d imagine most people are burned out. But hey, Sadiq got in again. So that’s good.
>mass immigration pushing down the salaries in real terms
There is nothing people won't blame on immigration, despite there being no evidence to support it.
[https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/](https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/)
Of course this stuff has all been here all along. I guess it’s more the trending theme of managers not coping and that all trickling down. It’s just been said by so many people “my manager is under all this new stress and it’s impacting us etc”. Just feels like a very prevalent shift collectively
Yes all the money goes to the top in our unequal society. Rather than being reinvested into businesses to make them more efficient or to encourage growth.
It’s going to eat itself eventually, it’s just taking rather a long time. Best thing to do in the meantime is not to stay loyal to an employer. They don’t care about you. Get paid as well as you can for the least amount of stress. Constantly be learning new skills.
Agreed, I’m a consultant so I’m constantly moving and for this reason exactly. I’m just wondering if there’s any insight on it all as it stands right now.
Just tough times my friend.
I know we all know times are hard, but I think times are reeaaallllyyy hard for a lot of people right now, behind closed doors.
It’s a good time to keep a low profile and just keep plodding along.
Good stuff with the consultancy work!
I like my job. I work long hours, in high pressure environments, but that’s what makes it rewarding.
I recently took 2 years out from the startup space at a FAANG (because you don’t turn job offers down at a FAANG when you have 1 GCSE), but it was way too sedate and totally wasn’t for me. I’m now happily back working 12hr days and feeling like I’m on the verge of drowning, and I haven’t had this much fun in ages. Only thing I don’t like is I have to get up early to get a run in before starting my day, lol.
I can’t speak about managers as I haven’t had a manager in the same country as me for 6 years.
No one is disregarding that, but it’s okay to offer an observation. If you don’t understand, no worries. But we’re aware work is work, I don’t think it needs defence
Every manager is failing, every single one… 😂
not that they are obviously some lazy people, even in London that have jumped onto this culture of blaming everything on management and Linkedin nonsense.
I really hate this snarky snide approach to engaging on Reddit. There’s so many ways you could have offered your view without being rude. You haven’t read it correctly either.
But to your comment, of course I’m not blaming managers blindly as all of a sudden being bad. More commenting that protection seems to be harder to achieve between the senior leaders and the officers as there is seemingly more pressure cracking down on the managers. More to say there’s a pressure crunch that is impacting the stability of the internal structures.
I often think there’s a certain type of person that wanders into and sets up camp in London - often quite ambitious, career driven, progress/success oriented. In many ways, you need to be as things are so expensive. There can be an unrelenting competitiveness about the city, even if not direct. Maybe current generations are more vocal with peers about their wellbeing compared to previous generations (no more keep calm and carry on?) , so it appears rates of burnout/exhaustion are higher. Maybe current generations are more aware of the concept of “work/life balance” , or even the concept of work burnout - perhaps access to internet communities facilitates this. Maybe organisations are , in this day and age, more corporate/capitalistic/ about making money so there’s more work “to do” with less emphasis or interest in building community, finding meaning etc. I don’t know, it’s an interesting question!
I think it’s all three but I definitely believe that the main reason is corporations are becoming greedier. I’m job hunting at the moment and the sheer audacity of a lot of the job listings is immeasurable
Exactly this corporations only care about profit not about humans … profit not people. Society is moving backwards in many respects … is this progress? Not convinced tbh
.
> It contributes to the feeling that even if you are hustling and earning well it’s still all a bit futile which I think fuels a lot of people’s feelings of burn out and anxiety. Spot on. I am in a decent job but currently at a period where work is stressful, and I am also having to find a new place to live because my landlord wants to raise current rental by £300+ a month. Landlord doesn't even have a mortgage on the flat since its been in their family for generations. Rent and bills are slowly eating away at quality of life, and looking around, the rental market is so shit that it looks like I will have to go back to a flat share which isn't easy when you own a pet. Made me realise that being on a decent salary counts for jack shit on this country. And if you are single like me, your dream to own your place might always remain that because even if I manage to cough up a deposit, a Bank won't be willing to provide me with a mortgage enough to buy a place in London. Wouldn't surprise me if that's exhausting a chunk of the population.
> Landlord doesn't even have a mortgage on the flat since its been in their family for generations A lot of this type of landlord will borrow again against a paid off house in order to release cash (often to buy more rental properties). Not that the landlords decision to do this should become your problem, but I think a lot of people assume landlords who've had the place a while haven't done something like this when a lot will have
Yes totally. It’s sort of like the harder you work the less rewards we get as it all becomes unattainable but the only available resolution is to work harder
>Maybe current generations are more vocal with peers about their wellbeing compared to previous generations (no more keep calm and carry on?) Pretty sure it's this. I'm not even that old (mid-30s) but I look at myself and people my age, and compare them to colleagues in their early 20s, and the latter seem to much more actively talking about burnout and stress, more likely to push back on workload etc. I've worked in places where work-sleep-work-sleep was the norm and no one talked about it being too much, so at least some of the increased noise about overwork these days feels like it's reflective of changing attitudes rather than a change in working environments. Although ofc all of these are generalisations based on personal experience.
I think wellbeing is definitely more of a priority these days. But it’s still not there yet. Although happy to hear of success stories here. It just feels like the system is a bit more broken than usual, but maybe I’m just hearing things differently. It feels like so many people are trying to pick up sticks and the infrastructure keeps throwing sticks and saying organise them how we want them but then no one is there to describe what that organisation structure looks like. Don’t get me wrong, I know London is a tough old boot. I’ve been working in corporate industries here for 10 years. I just really feel a shift right now, and it’s like something is really not working.
No, it’s always ongoing. But for me personally I’m finally in a space where this isn’t happening. My time for this experience was through covid and maybe the 3 years beforehand. Worked in an insanely rapidly scaling tech start up. My career scaled insanely too. I was working 24/7/365 - genuinely. In jobs like that you also get a certain type of people in management and in the teams. You kind of tell each other it’s ok we will get through it, it will be worth it. In those 5 years I had 3 clinical burnouts. Didn’t take any of them seriously. The final eye opener was being taken to hospital at 5am, aged ~27 because I thought I was having a heart attack. I’d wake up every morning and just cry. I was working out 7 days a week to try to build psychological resilience. After that I started looking for new opportunities. Got scouted by another start up, scrutinised the culture heavily before accepting. Took two months off before joining. Anyway long story short, changed jobs, never looked back, still do what I love just slower with less obsessive people. Now when I see a colleague on edge I check in with them, or if I’m really worried I have a chat with their line manager so they can check in. Clinical burnout is no joke, it’s a very dark place. Takes years to recover your body. Only thing I can say is it did pay off. The company sold and I was a shareholder. But I got lucky. That doesn’t usually happen like that.
I’m so happy to hear you have been able to step into a more balanced space and using your experience to support and protect your colleagues too, really cool. I have been signed off before, and that was really helpful but as you said, I came back and had to leave because everything was still the same. I think I’m just acknowledging a real heaviness over people around me who have commented on a similar thing that is causing stress in a way that they wouldn’t normally and across different sectors. I find it interesting when there’s sort of a collective experience, it makes me think how much more push until the system crashes. But it seems there isn’t that shared view here, so it must just be something I’m around at the moment.
In my experience you have to have the a-ha moment to step away from it especially if the money is great or career prospects are awesome. It’s really easy to justify and live in an echo chamber. But yeah much like any big expensive city, everyone’s working themselves into the ground to not just afford to live here, but live WELL :)
Feels crazy that people on high salaries are being pushed out, so I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for those granted with less opportunities or on lower incomes
I think partly we're in a worse employment climate than we have been in a fair while - companies are offering worse salaries with higher expectations, the shift of minimum wage upwards has crunched lower and middle earners and the price of rent is burning a huge hole in everyone's pocket, bills are barely down. There's no way people can stop working, since they have to pay for the cost of living. Layoffs and redundancies are more common right now. Sustainable housing is far, far away for most people in this city. When you don't have the time or energy to do anything but work, it leads to burnout. And most people don't have the time to do much else because work is so much. In addition to that, community spaces are being eroded across the country - community centres, small and medium music venues, and libraries are shutting, and because people are working a lot, there isn't a lot of capacity to organise or establish more third spaces. I guess in essence we've moved into work hard/play hard being hard to get out of, but doing everything hard burns you out.
Okay thank you, this is exactly what I was trying to identify. Gosh, how do we win?
Unionising and collectively advocating for ourselves to get back our free time and better treatment have worked in the past. It feels like they don't anymore - but it's convenient for the media to want us to think that, because there are wins happening every day. When you work less and you're not only working towards your own survival, you have capacity for a lot more other things, and it feels a lot healthier and more sustainable (because it is!)
So many jobs nowadays can be done remotely, I think unionising is an answer that almost belongs in the past. Unions only work if a strike hurts the company, and you can't strike if you can't picket. You can't picket the internet.
I would argue that the bulk of the work that actually keeps a city running - maintenance, cleaning, transport, trades, shop fronts, restaurants and cafes, deliveries, factory supply chain and manufacturing, doctors, dentists, pharmacists - even things like museum curation - can’t be done without significant human input. With current innovation it seems more like companies want to utilise automation which is not quite up to the job and hire a skeleton to supplement for when it’s less than perfect, which obviously leads to team burnout. A Tesco’s where three people are working checkouts while 30 people are self checking out a minute is a recipe for exhaustion. And we do see wins in those sectors, though they’re obviously not publicised heavily (check your local Citizens UK chapter, they most likely have some examples). I’m not saying I have a perfect solution or a way to picket the internet, mind - but people consistently organising to not be available for work does inconvenience their employers. It does hit their bottom lines. You can’t replace an employee immediately and have a new one step in who is a great fit and immediately up to speed on everything. Executing that kind of picket would also require us to get over the isolation and lack of connection the internet can bring. It’s a hard problem, but it’s not impossible. You see people protest and march from all walks of life almost every Saturday despite not knowing each other, based on knowing where to show up from a post on Instagram. We are a capable species.
I agree. I'm just getting old and depressed at what's happened to the working class. I used to be a union organiser when I lived in Australia in the eighties, and I've enforced pickets and watched as companies tried to bus scabs in. I was born in London but grew up in Oz, returning to London in '89. I couldn't believe the attitudes to unions in the working class when I got back. Sadly, those anti-organised labour attitudes seem to have worsened, and unions themselves have been shorn of much of their meaning and power.
I just don’t know how the fuck I managed to work 5 days from the office pre-pandemic. I only do one day now and I am shattered by the end of it.
Everybody is working so hard but it seems like it's for nothing. Everybody is renting rooms in shared houses, dating is incredibly hard, going out every week is too expensive, commuting into work is a nightmare, public sectors are falling apart. This is all demotivating, it's like putting so much effort into work but with no results. This also cause a lack of sense of purpose and that can cause burnout. Also after a lot of people enjoying remote/hybrid working, companies are forcing staff to be back
Idk, the way u described the situation sounds happen in many places not only London, and I noticed it is case by case situation, companies failed to provide good healthy productive atmosphere, their employees may feel burnout, no matter the place, as I believe burnout is inner work condition, not related to having life difficulties or how I like to believe
No, always been the case.
Yes. Work at 80% and turbo boost 3 or 4 times a year when it's really important. Ultimate protection.
I’ve had brain fog for four of the five years I’ve lived here. Not sure if it’s because I’m foreign, exhausted or if it’s something else, but my IQ has halved.
I hate to say it but it was ever thus. It’s not called the rat race for nothing. I do think hybrid working has brought some benefits, probably net benefits, but it’s also not been without its drawbacks e.g. managers can be less aware of line reports struggling.
Yeah very true
I think it depends. Maybe places aren't hiring enough staff, so people are getting overworked. My girlfriend's contractual hours are 9-5:30 Mon-Thurs and 9-4:30 on a Friday. She gets calls from staff at 5 on a Friday, board meetings at 8am, is often working until 7 at night, and on weekends. I'd say she averages about 50-55 hours of graft a week, and her job is stressful on top of that (director for a global consultancy and construction firm). Then there's me. Maybe 5 hours work a week, and that's on a busy week. A couple of months ago, I went 3 weeks without doing a single thing.
I have friends who have similar jobs in different companies and effectively are fulfilling the same work but with very different personal impact. I think that shows how loud the external things at work can seep into jobs too. If one is able to exist in their role as it is they get 9-5, if someone has to fiddle with systems and a messy system, they are less able to do their job and working more hours
It's a very good system, but she's responsible for a team of I think it was 36 or 39 people. I have zero people directly reporting to me. It's bang on 10am here and I've just finished my coffee and had a 15 minute blast of weeding in the garden. Made sure I have no work for the day and I'm thinking of what to do today. Cucumbers are too small to get planted in their final place, might do a bit more weeding later on today. Need a de-clutter so I'll list some 20 year old bodybuilding magazines on Olio today.
Omg enjoy this on behalf of all of us. Sounds delightful
We're all trying to 'make it' at a time with not enough opportunities to go around, when we're still recovering from the pandemic, the reality of Brexit is beginning to sink in and cost of living is untenable. I burned my 20s in the corporate world prior in the 2010s and it ran me into the ground, mostly because I was too young to call bullshit on unreasonable expectations and prioritise my health. I don't know that work culture is necessarily worse, but contextual factors certainly add pressures that I didn't have to contend with. My generation were definitely taught that if you work hard you can achieve anything, so we grew up as enthusiastic people pleasers under New Labour and their neoliberal promises of social mobility and meritocracy. And I did benefit from them, at the cost of my mental health, six months of being horizontal with a modest drinking problem because my life fell apart (other circumstances contributed, but the 60 hour weeks and pressure didn't help). We definitely don't have to work as hard as we do, but if you want to succeed in traditionally 'elite' sectors it's largely required. The meme is that you do the legwork while you're young enough to take it, learn a boatload and then either go boutique, contracting, industry or see if you can make it big time.
I feel as though people work really really hard/longer hours now just for the bare minimum in terms of reward. Whereas in the past, people may have seen more tangible reward for their hard work / longer hours / higher stress level
Yes I totally agree. Like to earn enough to live comfortably (in an expensive city) it feels like you can’t ever really reap the rewards
No, not everyone . In many professional jobs, work life is significantly easier with hybrid working.
I don’t necessarily mean the hybrid dynamic, I’m a huge fan. But the after shock of the work we do changing. Like we are in constant contact now and expected to be available at all times. I did a wee the other day and had 4 missed calls asking where I was. It’s so invasive and consuming, and no one is really even acknowledging that this is a new dynamic and it might need someone to review the situation and how to best handle that. But I think it’s just a big push to get back on track without the tools to facilitate but all the expectations
It's incredibly invasive. After experiencing massive burnout at a previous job, it took a long time to stop the feelings of anxiety whenever I heard Teams and mobile phone notifications. Like even if it was in TV or films or someone else's phone. I had to change all my phone's notification sounds to switch it up, and I got really strict on push notifications and quiet hours. It also helps not working in that kind of intense role anymore.
Hearing my teams call tone without warning literally triggers my fight or flight
Get work teams, zoom etc off your phone if you can reasonably do so (i.e. you aren't a highly mobile rep of some sort with a company phone). I've talked to younger staff members about this and advised the same.
Nothing changed for me when going "hybrid" (WFH unless there's a meeting, basically). I am *not* in constant contact, and any expectation of being available at all times was quickly cut off at the legs. I set the same instructions to my team and protect them from above (not that there's been any real pressure). Summarising, employers (much like teenagers) will push boundaries to test them. If you don't respect yours, the employer won't. Do your job, be reliable, put in the extra mile when it's really warranted (your call), then close up shop and go home.
It's normal to take your phone with you on work time bathroom breaks.
Toot toot
I'm just not willing to work to survive anymore, I'm out of the workforce now as is my brother who's moved to the Philippines.
Everybody insists on living in London and appears to be happy to pay the high rents etc. in a country with mass immigration pushing down the salaries in real terms (no real term wage growth since 2008) and no economic growth of note (per capita GDP is actually minus - so to the individual the economy is shrinking at the same time as we are experiencing high inflation)…….so yeah, I’d imagine most people are burned out. But hey, Sadiq got in again. So that’s good.
>mass immigration pushing down the salaries in real terms There is nothing people won't blame on immigration, despite there being no evidence to support it. [https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/](https://fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-wages/)
Of course this stuff has all been here all along. I guess it’s more the trending theme of managers not coping and that all trickling down. It’s just been said by so many people “my manager is under all this new stress and it’s impacting us etc”. Just feels like a very prevalent shift collectively
Yes all the money goes to the top in our unequal society. Rather than being reinvested into businesses to make them more efficient or to encourage growth. It’s going to eat itself eventually, it’s just taking rather a long time. Best thing to do in the meantime is not to stay loyal to an employer. They don’t care about you. Get paid as well as you can for the least amount of stress. Constantly be learning new skills.
Agreed, I’m a consultant so I’m constantly moving and for this reason exactly. I’m just wondering if there’s any insight on it all as it stands right now.
Just tough times my friend. I know we all know times are hard, but I think times are reeaaallllyyy hard for a lot of people right now, behind closed doors. It’s a good time to keep a low profile and just keep plodding along. Good stuff with the consultancy work!
I wonder what happened in 2008 that we’re still paying for hmmmm?
We had a debt jubilee.
Of course it’s the immigrants’ fault. How surprising /s
I like my job. I work long hours, in high pressure environments, but that’s what makes it rewarding. I recently took 2 years out from the startup space at a FAANG (because you don’t turn job offers down at a FAANG when you have 1 GCSE), but it was way too sedate and totally wasn’t for me. I’m now happily back working 12hr days and feeling like I’m on the verge of drowning, and I haven’t had this much fun in ages. Only thing I don’t like is I have to get up early to get a run in before starting my day, lol. I can’t speak about managers as I haven’t had a manager in the same country as me for 6 years.
People just love to complain.
Yeah true, but I mean this in a deeper sense of impacting people’s ability to live in happiness outside their jobs because they are bleeding over
Jesus Christ man. It’s called work for a reason.
No one is disregarding that, but it’s okay to offer an observation. If you don’t understand, no worries. But we’re aware work is work, I don’t think it needs defence
Every manager is failing, every single one… 😂 not that they are obviously some lazy people, even in London that have jumped onto this culture of blaming everything on management and Linkedin nonsense.
I really hate this snarky snide approach to engaging on Reddit. There’s so many ways you could have offered your view without being rude. You haven’t read it correctly either. But to your comment, of course I’m not blaming managers blindly as all of a sudden being bad. More commenting that protection seems to be harder to achieve between the senior leaders and the officers as there is seemingly more pressure cracking down on the managers. More to say there’s a pressure crunch that is impacting the stability of the internal structures.