agonyaunt | Ask a manager: our highly-paid, overworked junior staff keep leaving just as we get them fully train

Ask a manager: our highly-paid, overworked junior staff keep leaving just as we get them fully train

Yanked from here: https://www.askamanager.org/2021/10/our-highly-paid-overworked-junior-staff-keep-leaving-just-as-we-get-them-fully-trained.html

A reader writes:

I work in an industry that is well known for long, hard hours, especially at junior levels. It’s one that has been all over the newspaper the past couple years for difficulty retaining junior professional staff and attempts to roll out more work-life balance. That said, it’s also (a) very well paid at the junior level, think 23 years old and making $275k-$200k; and (b) very competitive.

We’ve been having issues with junior staff, who each went through a rigorous interview process where the lifestyle was made clear to them (100-hour weeks, in the office every weekend, two year program), quitting after 6-9 months. That is typically just when they are getting useful in what is effectively an apprenticeship program. Some are leaving us for competitors with bigger brand names, but others are making the jump into corporate jobs, usually in finance with mid-stage start-ups. We have raised pay twice in the past six months and have been in the press for a fair bit of success lately. But we can’t do our jobs effectively without junior resources. It’s a huge amount of work to get a 23-year-old working at a professional level, and because it’s client service if they aren’t available evenings / weekends then I have to be (high level manager bringing in significant business). That’s equated to me working each of the past six weekends to try and get junior staff more time off than I ever got when I was coming up, only to have the fourth team member this year quit.

So, obviously we can’t *force* anyone to keep working, but what else can we be doing to keep people for the full two-year program? We already defer most of the comp to year-end, with some smallish amount withheld for 12-24 months. I’m thinking of something along the lines of a contract that would acknowledge that the training provided has value that must be repaid if the person doesn’t stay for 24 months. Or making the majority of the salary and bonus contingent on staying for the full 24 months (i.e., you make $10k per month before bonus, but if you leave before 24 months you must repay $6k per month). I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way and nobody pretends otherwise during the interview process. And, again, I’m doing similar hours in my mid-40s, with a family. This isn’t a hazing process, it’s just what the job is like. Ideally it gets better, although with the junior team working less than I did it seems like that might not be the case any more.

It sounds like labor conditions have changed and your company will need to adapt.

For whatever reason, what you offered in the past was attractive enough to keep people there for the whole two years, but now it’s not. (I suspect the reasons are a combination of our current job-seeker’s market and a broader shift in what workers consider acceptable to put up with, particularly among younger workers. Both of those and especially the latter are good for society, although they’re causing pain for your company.) You’re getting people signing up thinking they can do the hours, but then realizing that 100-hour weeks are soul-crushing and seeing opportunities out there that they like better.

To keep them, you need to be able to compete with the other options they have. That doesn’t just mean money; it means lifestyle too.

You’re looking at ways to penalize them for leaving … but having exhausted, overworked people who are there only because you will bill them if they leave is a recipe for demoralized and resentful staff.

What if you hired more junior staff, had them work fewer hours each, and lowered the pay accordingly? Everyone might be happier with that in the long run. It’s more people to supervise, and that’s more work … but it’s not more work than training people who then leave just as they’re becoming useful. It would also give you a far healthier workplace and would give you access to a pool of candidates who you miss out on entirely right now because they won’t consider working those hours.

Don’t get too attached to “it’s always been this way.” It’s not serving you anymore. And lots of things were always a certain way until someone looked at them and said, “We can do this better.”

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Is there a reason LW is being so coy about the job? Other than the "23-year-old," which I suspect is camouflage, I'm just...dude, you're a lawyer. We get it.

I can't tell you how many times I've run up against, "this is how we always do it" in my career. The one for me was the foreign language requirement that nearly torpedoed my Ph.D., which was utterly stupid because like 90% of all new scholarship in my field was in English, and what wasn't was in ancient Greek.

So to LW, I say: fuck that noise. What you've "always" done isn't working, but you seem determined to stick with a failing model just because you've lived with insane work outs. Do something new!

(Investment banking, in fact, as is clarified in the comments. Otherwise carry on.)

ah, yes. it seemed like investment baking to me, too, as someone who was a 21 year old at a hedge fund. (I left! Also I never made money like that!)

As a person who works in a law field. 27 is typical just out of law school age. 25 if they were precocious/ graduated from either high school or college early.

yeah it sounds to me a lot like a law firm. but the age is too young. And investment banking was brought up in the comments. Which sure. I can see a undergrad going right into a big job like that. But also yeah, they need to change and adapt bc it ain't working anymore.

Right. I knew the ages were wrong for law school. I thought perhaps LW changed it for the sake of not making making any clue bells if a colleague saw the column. I was wrong, of course, but then, I started reading Agatha Christie in second grade, and it kind of warped my thinking. :)

both my brothers were investment bankers, and yeah -- they went into it right from undergrad & were making $150k+ within a year (back in 2001). but the hours were horrific. they do different financial work now, for better pay and with much better hours, so they can actually do things like, you know, spend time with their kids.

Drive by fuck foreign language requirements

It was SO STUPID. Even very, very few of the lit majors had any real reason for being fluent in another language,* and the choice of what language to use almost always had absolutely no connection to their other work. French and German were the two default (anything else had to be approved, but I never heard of someone being turned down when suggesting Spanish or Latin).

The whole thing is basically a vestige of a time when a great deal of scholarship was happening in those languages, and reliance on translation was dicier. When a small group of students (self included) challenge the relevance and necessity, we got a whole lot of, "But learning a foreign language is such a good thing," which, yes, true, but that doesn't mean it belong as a requirement to obtaining a Ph.D in English. I mean, it's valuable to know how to change a tire, but we don't have a timed tire-change requirement for Physics Ph.D. We could never get a straight answer to, "How does this relate to my degree, especially to the point where it can derail said degree with one two-hour test?" that didn't come down to, "It's what we've always done."

Just had a flashback to my Ph.D. program in Chemistry, with an Israeli fellow grad student being really annoyed that she had to take a German class to qualify for the language requirement. (My lousy 1 semester of college french was accepted). I mean, late 1990s (as now), Chemistry publications were written in English. (Ironically, a bit of German might've been helpful for me to read one paper which I looked up for my dissertation, and I suppose Russian might have helped when I was looking up the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction as part of the background for my oral exam (but not really, as the reaction has been described a lot since then)). At least they got rid of the requirement finally, I think.

Wow, yeah, that's a horrid requirement. It's also just...I mean, I'm assuming your fellow grad student was already multi-lingual. I have to wonder if the people who enforce these requirements have ever even asked, "Why are we doing this, again?"

Oh, yeah. She was fluent in English, as well as Hebrew. But Hebrew didn't count. Nor did Chinese. I just went and looked, and unfortunately the catalogue I kept ('93-94) was after the requirement was dropped for Chemistry. But I remember French and German were OK. (As far as "why are we doing this", I guess the good thing is that they did drop it by 1992 or 1993; why they kept it so long... well, I did get my degree at an Ivy League school.)

Edited (Forgot to close my ( -- need to avoid compiler errors.) 2021-10-29 10:48 (UTC)

Yeah, French and German were the default here, although I got approved for Latin just by asking, and a roommate did the same with Spanish. I ended up taking a class in Catullus for mine, so I can't really regret it, but still: I'd taken three years in high school and one as an undergrad. Not sure why I needed it for a PhD.

ETA: Although I did have the fun of translating "Nobody fucks with guide" in Sentinel fandom. Someone even embroidered it on a pillow.

Edited (addition) 2021-10-29 13:44 (UTC)

Oy, seriously? Not even a faint thought of trying to figure out that the culture is the problem and Millennials and Zoomers have zero interest in breaking themselves the way GenX has? Why does it require an advice columnist to suggest that maybe the way "it's always been" is BAD?

this give me serious The Kids Are Alright vibes. (And I've been thoroughly happy that the current labor market means that all our junior people at work don't work the hours I used to at 23.)

The OP is in the comments at AAM, Ctrl-F for "Vaca", and their comments are so sad, they have been brainwashed and it's genuinely horrifying to witness. The cognitive distortions are ...wow.

Wow.

Checked that out. It's probably inappropriate that I want to start singing Disney Villains songs at Vaca, "Poor, Unfortunate Souls!" 👀

Seriously, I'm so *proud* of these younger generations tossing tables, quitting jobs, and not taking the crap my generation did. Just because crap landed on my head doesn't mean I think everyone should just *deal with it*.

Did NOT go into accounting and a CPA like my father and brother, because I couldn't deal with it, but I like USA tax season still! 🤣 Tax season was the only time clients were happy to talk with me, because I could run standard taxes, and then all the credits and deductions available for middle and lower class that too many people forgot.

I've been saying for a while now that Gen Z is just not fucking around. My generation (upper X) got sold so many bills of goods, starting with the idea that if you follow the prescribed school -> college -> job path, a satisfactory life will follow. We were encouraged to pursue liberal arts degrees because "employers" liked people who could think critically/write/whatever. No one mentioned the growing number of targeted tech or business degrees. We were told there's be all these great jobs as the previous generation retired. No one told us that the Boomers would keep a stranglehold on those management positions through their 70's and 80's, and that when they finally did retire, what was needed were tons of healthcare workers.

I'm glad that GenZ is pushing back against this. Meanwhile, my kid is coming home nearly distraught that the debate club was sticking to weird topics like, "Is Taco Bell's chicken taco sandwich or a taco," because, and I swear this is true, "That kind of debate won't help me get into college."

Please keep in mind, she started high school ten weeks ago. And it kills me, because she's not doing debate for a line on her CV. She's doing it because she likes to argue (and you can stop looking at me like that right now, and because she WANTS to engage the big issues that teachers are so worried about. I see a future where she and like-minded peers just pinch the bridges of their noses, heave a collective sigh, and tell the rest of us to just get out of the way, already.

Have 15yo, can confirm. There's a reckoning with history happening right now as they're becoming politically engaged, and if we can support and catalyze that, we will be better for it.

Holy shit those comments are horryfing.

it’s ALWAYS been that way
'And our motto is "what does not kill you, makes you stronger!'
AAAAARRRRGGHHHH.
There is a telling scene in the mid-1990s TV hospital drama series Cardiac Arrest concerning this as it appertains in medicine with junior doctors: the sleep-deprived Andrew Colin's 'Do you feel lucky, punk?' speech in to the administrator who has told him to suck it up and deal over lack of relief and extended duty (3 days and 3 nights without a break), who then ends up on his ward with a threatened heart attack.

I SO wanted to respond to OP with, "unfortunately for you, Lincoln freed the slaves".

*upvotes*

Red flag workplace, all over.

Money does not make up for being at the beck and call of the workplace and most particuarly for the younger generations. And good on them, I say!

My favorite newsletter, Money Stuff, wrote about these issues a couple times a while back. The immediate context was about complaints from the junior bankers at Goldman Sachs, but it applies to investment banking in general. Main piece here, an additional thought here (at the "Wall Street culture" subheading).

It is apparently an issue for that whole industry that people used to put up with two years of that because having made it through was a valuable elite credential that would open other doors for them, and now people are starting to see it more and more in terms of being a job, which leads to heretical thoughts about maybe getting weekends off or demanding better pay.

That article just makes me even more baffled by LW, because according to that article, the expectation is that you suffer for two years for access to the jobs you can obtain afterwards—-but LW is mad that, after suffering for two years, people are. . . moving on to other jobs, instead of staying on to suffer indefinitely? It makes it sound like LW is incredibly out of touch with the industry.

Oh, geez. 100 hour workweeks means 14 hours of work every single day without a single day off. Expecting two years of that schedule is ridiculous. No wonder folks are jumping ship!

Hey LW, I'm working 65 hours per week for $65k/year and previously spent 11 years working at a family business where I was verbally abused on the regular. Please hire me, I will definitely withstand the 2 year training program, especially since that level of pay will let me hire a housekeeping, order all of my meals pre-made, and help me pay off my mortgage and car loan.

You need a union. Probably another job AND a union.

I am not a fan of unions in general, had too many times where they fucked up timing, cost, etc on jobs we were running to the point that my former company refused to work with union shops anymore. I know this sounds callous, but it was things like "we can't do this indoor carpentry work today because it drizzled for 35 5 minutes this morning."

The job I have now isn't too bad and a big part of me working at many hours as I do is because I keep forgetting that I am not expected to cover all departments at this company the way I needed to at the last one (I legit have PTSD from my decade at my family's company). Working on the healthier balance, getting there slowly

I'm really sorry that people have treated you in such a way that you honestly don't see how fucked up what you're saying is.

The situations you're describing aren't normal. You're still being taken advantage of. Your current boss is actively harmful to you.

I don't expect you to be able to hear what I'm saying, but it would be wrong for me not to say this.

(And as an aside: think about why you consider it wrong that workers who had more rights than you did refused to tolerate a job site you are describing as abusive. Please think about that.)

You don't know enough about my situation to hear what I'm saying. I work independently and from home at my current job, and there are tasks that were my responsibility at my last company (which I only left a few months ago) that I can pass off to support staff at my new company. But I'm so used to doing it all by myself that I just do it anyway. I don't feel taken advantage of by my employer because I know this is something I'm doing to myself.

You also only have a slight snapshot of my last job, and you're making assumptions anyway. My boss was not always directly involved with the subcontractors we used - the head project manager was, and he was not a 70-year-old toddler throwing daily hissy fits because he didn't understand how to use a computer. And again, there's no reason to refuse to do an entire day of indoor work because there was light rain outside for half an hour.

Maybe you're so blinded by your thoughts and beliefs that you refuse to realize that people can have other opinions than you do.

"my boss who was was mildly inconvenienced on a nonemergebcy timeline by union safety standards and used that mild inconvenience as an excuse to abuse me" is not the argument against unions that you seem to think it is.

The problem was your boss, not the union.

Are you not getting that these were two separate issues? My boss and the senior project manager were different people. FFS.

And it's still not the argument against unions that you seem to think it is.

Right now I work scheduled 50 hours a week and sometimes more like 55-60 if we're short handed or have something going on, and I really cannot imagine working double that. What are you even doing with all that money you're making when you're working practically all your waking hours? Why?

I agree with the advice that the best thing they can do is to hire more people for fewer hours.

Gosh, why on earth wouldn't these kids want to ruin their health, their minds, their relationships, and their lives for that sweet paycheck?

Cry me a fucking river, LW. You enjoy breaking your back, your heart, and your soul for the dollar, but some of the rest of us don't. Give me a decent wage, time off for my own sanity and that of my loved ones, and fight like hell for my rights and equality, and maybe we'll start talking, but until then we're going to milk you dry and leave you to cry.

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Ask a manager: our highly-paid, overworked junior staff keep leaving just as we get them fully train

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