<p>Sax, I’m in my mid-fifties and have been in the rat race you describe so disdainfully since I graduated from college. Most of my female friends either took an extended maternity leave (10+ years or more) or started out in more mom friendly careers (early childhood education, nursing, etc.)</p>
<p>I can assure you that I have a less stressful life right now than virtually all of them- and that includes the stressors of elderly and ill parents, financial responsibility for other family members who have fallen on hard times, etc. I had the stress and the balancing act of travel, long hours, etc. when my kids were young (and these women didn’t- even the ones still in corporate or legal type jobs refused to travel or relocate for their own advancement.) And it was stressful for me. Balanced by a job I loved- but stressful.</p>
<p>But I gotta tell you- I wouldn’t trade places with any of them (and didn’t envy their choices back then either). I see women with law degrees from top universities working part time as paralegals or document review clerks at mortgage brokers. I see women with MBA’s getting jobs in “marketing” at health clubs-- basically the person at the front desk who signs you up when you walk in to join. I know lots of women working in department stores or other retail businesses trying to “get back in to the game”. A former investment banker getting a real estate license- which is so sad, the brokers in my area are barely making a living and some of them have 20 years experience and have been members of the “multimillion dollar clubs” for years.</p>
<p>The ones in mom-friendly careers have it better- but only slightly. The one teaching nursery school thinks she makes less than her cleaning person. (and she has a Masters in early childhood education.) The nurse can only get random shift work now- she didn’t keep up with the high end specialties like cardiology and surgery (pretty lucrative) so she’s mostly doing hospice weekend shifts. And these are women with HS age kids- they don’t need to pay for childcare anymore, and the expenses of college are keeping them up at night. One of them got shafted in her divorce, and now has to try to make a living teaching art at after school programs.</p>
<p>I have never been exploited by my employers. I worked hard, I was well compensated for my work, my retirement money is fully vested and will follow me if I quit or get fired or retire. The women who thought I was crazy for staying with it while my kids are small are hostile and resentful that they can’t get back on a professional track now that they’ve been out for over a decade… but they can’t start saving for college and retirement earning $10/hour.</p>
<p>I still maintain that the new grads have unrealistic expectations of the working world. You are not going to get 5 weeks paid vacation in your first job. You are not going to get a 9-5 job which pays 100K per year. You are not going to get your foot in the door if every time you get asked to do something not in your job description you make a face.</p>
<p>Yes- fewer jobs right now than there are graduates. So figure out why the kid in your dorm has a job starting in July and you don’t. Get a plan together. You are mistaken if you think that whining about long hours and how exploitative companies are and how all the good jobs have been off-shored is going to get you launched into adulthood.</p>
<p>If they’re looking in the traditional pillars (namely, auto), they won’t see much of it. It’s a lot more small industries coming back than any large players.</p>
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<p>1) Why would I refer to myself with the denotation of a term used 2 centuries ago?
2) Does the exact definition matter? I can list all my positions on politics in bullets here but that seems like a waste of time. I’m just disappointed there’s so much “you disagree with me so you must be Republican blah blah” here on CC. And they say we’re better educated… doesn’t seem to translate to much.</p>
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<p>Yes because France’s employment situation is something we should copy… The fact is the more people you have doing the work the less efficient it becomes - the number of meetings you need to have everyone on the same page increases exponentially, and increases the layers of management you need. Walking over and telling Bob you’re changing X in Y account suddenly becomes slotting a meeting to update a small team. And of course, the more meetings you need the less time you have to do actual work…</p>
<p>I work 50 hours on a normal week with spikes during busy times up to 80 and it’s just fine. I’m very happy and have the time to do what I want, even during the tougher weeks.</p>
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<p>iPads are produced offshore because Asia has a vastly superior supply chain right, it has less to do with costs than you think. It’s much easier to ship products on time when the screen manufacturer is right next to the processor plant which is right next to the parts plant which is right next to you your plant which puts it all together. The cost differential in labor between manufacturing an iPad in the US vs China is merely $25-40 depending on your estimates.</p>
<p>I think this is true for a lot of college kids- especially those with little to no work experience. That’s why I think it’s very important to get work experience during school, even if it’s not related to your major. A lot of kids don’t want to be stuck working in restaurants or retail stores, but at least those jobs teach you how to operate in a work environment. Some of my friends who never had to work a single day during their college career might have slightly higher GPAs than me, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re better prepared to deal with co-workers, management, demanding work schedules that you might have no control over, and all the other responsibilities that come with having a job.</p>
<p>I hear work study students complain all the time that they have to go work an entire two or three hour shift. I guess it’s not their fault that the jobs at our school usually don’t offer more than 5-8 hours a week so maybe they just don’t know any better. But there were even people at off-campus jobs I worked at while in school who would constantly complain about their schedules. They’d complain if they were scheduled weekends, if they had to work 8 hours instead of 6, if they were asked to stay 30 minutes late. Sure, if you work while going to school you might have to sacrifice weekends or learn some time-management skills so that you don’t get behind with your studying, but with some people it’s like they take the job and then they’re shocked when they’re actually expected to make an effort. So yeah, it’s interesting to consider how students will adjust to the working world.</p>
<p>Working on labs and projects isn’t the same as working at a job, unless maybe you’re on some kind of research assignment or internship, and engineering students aren’t the only ones who spend a lot of time outside of class doing work. Plenty of students learn how to be disciplined when it comes to their studies, but this doesn’t mean that they can translate those skills to having the responsibility of working in a company where you have possibly dozens of co-workers and have to constantly deal with management.</p>
<p>There’s a course at my son’s school on iPhone development. You have to propose a project, and get it up and running in a semester. You meet with the professor once a week and use the Stanford materials to get it done.</p>
<p>The projects that my son did aren’t all that different from the projects that I do at work. Yes, your team is smaller but there is still considerable pressure to meet project milestones and actually get something that works by the end of the semester.</p>
<p>Now it may not be the same as a job but I was responding to the issue of number of hours worked.</p>
<p>" I’ve been to Australia several times and wouldn’t have a problem living there. Same with Singapore. Singapore was an option on the back burner for our son as he would have relatives and a place to stay there."</p>
<p>All the kids I know overseas are in China. Pollution, corruption, etc.</p>
<p>My engineer son is allowed to work at home a lot, and in cafes. The only person who complains about his hours is his girlfriend.</p>
<p>He has plenty of time to pursue lots of other activities. I think the long hours are mainly hard for older workers.</p>
<p>The kids have been made very unrealistic promises by parents and teachers and television shows, but I find a few minutes with a realistic adult sets them straight. As I said, earlier, it is certainly a choice.</p>
<p>There are lots of options, including starting your own business if you don’t like what you’ve been “offered.” Of course, most of us who did that worked two jobs… the one to pay the bills and the start up, way more than 70 hours a week in the first years. I don’t think I understand some of thinking on here, but it has certainly been very enlightening.</p>
<p>I think Blossom is right and I was wrong back earlier in the thread. I’ve just been fortunate to encounter some real go-getters.</p>
<p>Several of those fresh graduates with adjustment problems were engineering/CS graduates from some really fine schools. </p>
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<p>An older cousin’s family lived in China as expats for several years. </p>
<p>Ended up having to move back to the states because the pollution and sandstorms were such that their kids had serious health issues. Heard several other friends who are thinking of moving back from China because of pollution and its effects on their/their kids’ health.</p>
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<p>One thing I’ve noticed with many business entrepreneurs…including my Caltech cousin is that they sometimes don’t seem to realize that not everyone has the aptitude or the desire to run their own business with all its requirements. Moreover, if everyone’s an entrepreneur…where will they get the workers to do work the owner can’t handle all by him/herself? </p>
<p>One big gripe I’ve seen among working professionals of all ages who aren’t senior execs is how they’re increasingly expected to work the same long hours of those on the executive/business owner track without the promotional opportunities, perks, or even a semblance of job security that the older ones in the group remembered when they started out.</p>
<p>Blossom reminded me of my family law class I took ages ago. We discussed family issues and read studies, etc. It became quite clear to me that if a woman wanted financial security, to reduce her risk, she needed to get on a career track AND NOT GET OFF. </p>
<p>Well, I did get off (with the idea that I’d go back to work if the money ran out). Thankfully, the money never ran out and I was able to stay home with the kids. If I were to return to work now, I would definitely be one of the most overqualified greeters at Walmart, LOL! </p>
<p>H and I have been lucky in that we have been able to send the kids to college without debt for either of us. We have money saved up for retirement. We could be living in a much better neighborhood than the one we live in currently and we could have had lots more $$ in our retirement accounts had I continued working. It’s a risk we took when I quit working. </p>
<p>But I see Blossom’s point. It is something that we’ve told the girls–it’s important to go into a situation with knowledge of the risks of getting off the employment track.</p>
<p>ellemenope–we are like you and your DH. It was important that one of us be home with the kids so we planned our lives that way, buying smaller homes, used cars, etc. We live very comfortably on one income and going back to work once the kids are out of high school is an option, not a necessity so there are choices to be had. Just because you work at Walmart doesn’t mean you are there because you HAVE to be there…</p>
<p>Yes, all of us with fancy law degrees (which are basically worthless after the years at home raising children) would just love to be Walmart greeters. In some careers it is possible to stop and restart in roughly the same place…not so with Law.</p>
<p>However, I knew that when I left and cannot blame anyone (still don’t want to work at Walmart).</p>
<p>The same could be said for cutting staffing so much to the bone that all harried employees within a given department could do is jump from emergency to emergency crisis to put out proverbial fires because they don’t have enough staff and hours in the day…even with massive overtime to do much else. </p>
<p>Experienced this myself at a couple of jobs and friends employed in the public sector have had to hone it into a fine art just to keep their departments afloat. </p>
<p>There’s also been several labor and heath studies showing that work productivity tends to drop off once you hit beyond the 45-55 hour/week mark. Doesn’t surprise me from what I’ve experienced and all the brain freezes, mistakes, and harried stressed reactions of colleagues/supervisors who were cracking from the long grinding hours & stress with practically no “downweeks” of 40-50 hours to compensate. </p>
<p>Several medical resident roommates also recounted the dozens of errors they/their colleagues made as a result of working 100+ hour workweeks and being so sleep deprived.</p>
<p>In software engineering, you often work, then take a break while something runs and then work again. Sometimes you’re in meetings for long periods of time. Sometimes you just have to be available in case something happens.</p>
<p>The ability to telecommute has changed a lot of things where you can work remotely - you bring your WiFi with you and can work for half an hour to several hours while running errands or shuttling kids around. That wasn’t available when I was working a gazillion hours - that jobs was a project management job where you had to be available to do things, answer question, make decisions or answer to upper management.</p>
<p>Both. One of the biggest issues was having to adjust to having to work a sustained 9 am - late evening with only having one-two meal breaks(lunch/dinner), a few 10-15 minute coffee breaks, and work which does not allow the same number of breaks in the middle of the long workday to nap/relax/recharge as they had in college. </p>
<p>My supervisor and some of the more senior colleagues had go so far as to wake some up from their mid-morning/afternoon/evening 20+ minute naps and to get it into their heads that such long naps weren’t acceptable in our work environment…especially if they will catch hell from a senior exec who sees them doing this at their open cubicle.</p>
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<p>Wi-Fi was just starting to get introduced into the marketplace in the period I’m talking about. None of the companies I worked for would touch it because the encryption protocol standards weren’t settled yet…and as it turns out…wasn’t very secure.</p>
<p>@cobrat - Yes, but you’re pointing out the extreme. It should be noted that there’s vast differences in the tenor of 80 hour workweeks. The situations you describe are rare in a healthy company. People in my office voluntarily pull extra hours to get things done before deadlines (no overtime), and do so mostly invisibly to the partners (wfh after work or on weekends is common). And this is by far the happiest, most cordial work environment I’ve been in.</p>
<p>I have a MiFi device - it uses the cellular network for a connection. It can be a wireless hotspot for multiple devices or you can do a wired connection if you’re concerned about security. I always use mine with VPN anyways. I only got mine this year - it allows you to basically work anywhere a cellular signal is available. 4G availability is excellent in the places where I need to go but I can work fine on 3G too.</p>
<p>The large hours when I worked them provided a lot more freedom. Some of the work was from home over dial-up modems though there was a lot of time spent in the office. Management was there in the building too and they were available to answer questions or for meetings. But you weren’t tied down - if you had an appointment or errand to run - you took care of it.</p>
<p>I had to work 48 hours straight a few times - basically customer-down issues where the customer being down was costing them a huge amount of money every hour. Those involved travel and a post-mortem meeting with the brass - sometimes hard to do when you feel like falling asleep. Need to throw on the least wrinkled suit for that.</p>