DW Community Catch-up Thread
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I am so sad summer is only one more month. We’re calling it bummer summer over here. It’s looking up, though.
That’s exciting, @Anonymousse. Hope it works out!
What you wrote about wanting flexibility reminded me of a former teacher I follow on TikTok. She left the classroom in her early 30s to go work at her local Costco and has documented some of that transition on TikTok, down to the grief of walking away from her passion but wanting a certain lifestyle she couldn’t seem to achieve as a full-time educator in a red state.
I’m truly curious what work norms will look like down the road. Younger folks seem to be accepting burnout and soul-crushing jobs with zero flexibility less and less. I’ve seen online that more and more companies are trying to get workers to come back to the office full-time (this has not happened to me or even anyone I know IRL) and those same companies are also having a hard time filling open roles. Like, what did they expect?
Very cool @anon! Good luck!
We have a summer student who is in college, I think just finished first year. The senior partner brought her in. I am pretty sure she is getting paid. Admittedly she is doing grunt work like covering reception or scanning. But one week she just stopped showing up without telling anyone because she wasn’t happy that she wasn’t doing “real work”? She’s back now. I don’t know what the partner and her had arranged when she first started. He probably didn’t, haha. But I feel like an “old person” (haha typical millenial), like this is a good way to get your foot in the door or a reference.
Wow. No-showing is so inappropriate under most circumstances. I’m surprised she was allowed back after that. I don’t think I’m an old fuddy-duddy for thinking those things, either! I wonder what she expected to be doing. Most internships aren’t glamorous. Neither are plenty of first full-time jobs, even when they require a college degree. I’m sure there were ways I was less-than-professional at my internships, but I never thought it was okay to not come back to a job without saying anything!
@copa, not sure if you read Eater, but they tracked and mapped all the restaurants in The Bear. The only one I haven’t been to and desperately want to check out is Kasama. It’s so close to our house, not sure why I haven’t. I’m on the waitlist for reservations.
I don’t think our company can actually make people come back full time. For instance, someone on my team is in the middle of nowhere Arkansas so even before Covid, worked from home full time. During Covid, I hired someone more local, but it’d still be an hour and a half commute for her, both ways. So I don’t know how I can have one person on my team who can is WFH and then ask another to come in. This is company-wide. PLUS, here, our lease is up next year. We currently have two floors. One floor is full most of the time now. The other is about half empty. We don’t have adequate meeting room spaces, so that’s a must for a new place. Rumor has it they want to go to one floor and we’re going to be full on hoteling. Leadership is saying they want people in the office more, yet they’re making strides to cut real estate. Those are two opposing viewpoints, IMO. It’s weird.
One of the big reasons I don’t look for a new job is because I’m at the point in my career where I have a lot of flexibility. I’m afraid if I switch companies just to be compensated a little higher, I’d have to take the time to prove myself to be able to be more flexible. I guess it’d have to get pretty bad at my job for me to make a switch. I do have about a half dozen companies I can call if I ever need to leave, so that’s a little reassuring at least.
@ktfran – I’m in the same boat, maybe I could get a bit more money if I went somewhere else, but I’d have to do so much more work! I get away with a lot of nonsense because I will deliver and I partner well internally and externally. Plus my company has a retirement program where I can pay them to stay on the health insurance until medicare kicks in. I get golden tier health for very little money but you have to be a certain age and with the company for x years so if I leave…. that benefit goes with it and I’d have to work longer.
A lot of my clients are asking their folks to come back to the office, but saved so much having all of the consultants work remotely that I don’t know if they’ll ever ask us to regularly be onsite again. My typical pre-covid travel costs were roughly $5K a month between flights, cars, hotels and expenses.
Oh, and while I get giving the intern the grunt work – if that’s all she was doing then whomever was leading the program failed miserably. I have had interns and I put them to work doing actual work. I have a woman now that is in school and is part of our apprentice program. I sit with her and I go through the business reasons why we’re doing what we’re doing. I give her the background and help her understand how to improve what she’s doing and give her context that helps her refine her work, apply it to her classes and use it on her next role (or job). That’s part of my job – making sure the next generation is ready to kick ass and take names.
So we are also planning to reduce our office space in 2024. Going from two floors to one. I’ll be losing my closed-door office, which I’m bummed about. And yes, I’m also kind of in that boat. I have good benefits, usually excellent work/life balance, a lot of PTO (omg the PTO here), flexibility, a boss I work well with. My job isn’t soul-crushing nor am I burned out from being overworked. I can afford my hobbies and travel (my truest love). I absolutely hate hustle culture and The Grind. We generally have very low turnover and I know exactly why. I’m open to something new, but any job search has been fairly passive, at least for now. Even the job I was a finalist for that I mentioned on here recently, I’m not sure what I’d have done if they’d offered it to me… there were definitely cons to consider.
@LisforLeslie I’d have killed for a mentor like you at any of my internships. My first internship in college was when I was 18-19 and I was a marketing intern… well, they were short-staffed in the customer service department so they had all of us interns answering the help line! I learned nothing about marketing that summer. That company went under in the recession a couple years later — they worked exclusively with the auto industry.I mean, I’m not going to say that all the work is awesome but at least it’s good to understand why we have to do stuff or why it’s important. But lately when I get frustrated I just blurt out “We gotta do this because the client is experimenting on humans.” I find it brings an air of gravitas with a slight whiff of disgust ending in a note of solemness.
Oh man, internships! That is not a good look to just stop showing up, even if she was just answering the phone and making copies. I remember my first internship – I was hired by one partner in a 5-person firm and then 2 weeks after I started that guy retired and left. And the other partner never seemed to like me- he probably was annoyed the other guy hired me without talking to him. The three other people were nice and would give me stuff to do but I had no idea what it was supposed to be like working in an office.
I’m currently going in to work 3x a week (tu-thurs) and frankly I like being able to talk to people or meet up in person. My office is small (28) and we have a small satellite office where I’m currently the only one here at the moment! I feel more productive but it’s also nice having a couple of days to wfh where I can putter around the house at the same time.
I was the only person at my office yesterday, too. I hate when that happens. What’s the point of getting up earlier, getting office ready, packing a lunch and snacks, etc. to sit in an office alone? I had to make a return to Nordstrom so I guess at least my office’s proximity to our flagship store made that errand convenient. Summer is our slowest period so I didn’t even need that kind of quiet to be ultra productive. We have one high-level director out of my office (the rest work out of our HQ) and he opts to come in every day, so I’m sure he’s there alone one or two days/week. I have one friend who opts to go into her office every day, she said she can’t focus at home even when she’s there alone.
I had several internships when I was in school and I don’t think of them were particularly well thought out. I know that’s not everyone’s experience. Even my first full-time job, I was in a newly created role at my organization and it felt chaotic with folks not sure what they could/should assign to me, and some not wanting to let go of any portion of their work. I’m glad to be past that stage in my career.
