I'm wondering if anyone here has enough time to rest and spend quality time with their family before returning to work?
This job has changed me in a way that I don't like. As a result of working here, I'm constantly under stress and without enough work-life balance.
21 replies (most recent on top)
“The managers won't care about your work life balance. They don't care if your family members suffer. They only care for more money on their yearly bonus. They flush you away like toilet paper then get a new employee to work to his/her death.”
All of which makes them just like you, struggling for work life balance… but only with a lot more pressure.
Interesting, did not know that you can retreat here.
Wow… so struggling to raise a family is materialistic? What a bizarre view of the world.
A primal millennial screed against working for a living.
I use to work at BNY for about a year and a half. I quit for a job at Federated in Pittsburgh for higher salary. That job was actually way, way worse in terms of stress. So, I quit that for a remote job with Citi, which was better, but still I was working 50-55 hours a week. What I realized...? You CAN'T get actual work life balance in the United States no matter where you look. You have to go live somewhere else; basically only Europe. If you want to actually live life, but also be able to give back to society via work, then live in Spain, France Italy etc. I've given up on the United States for it's views on work. Having to work your whole life away is NO WAY TO LIVE. Luckily, I'm a bachelor with nothing tying me to the US. Most do not have that luxury. If you attempt to achieve real work life balance, all you will get is ridicule, gas-lighting, anything but real work life balance. Life is too short to work it all away.
Is this Bart Simpson?
Gen Ex onwards have lived their best lives from birth and are having a real young adult meltdown when faced with even minor workloads. Their fragility does not bode well for them, the country and the world.
It would be quite astonishing to me if, throughout my 30-year career, I were to accumulate more than 10 hours of overtime. Let us remember that as individuals, we are often reduced to mere numbers within an organization. No one is irreplaceable, and the pleasant demeanor displayed by your manager is simply a means to ensure your cooperation. My personal insight: leading a modest lifestyle, setting aside 80% of your earnings, and resisting the societal pressure to indulge in materialistic desires such as brand new cars, fashionable clothes, extravagant vacations, and the pursuit of a picture-perfect family with three children and a dog solely for the purpose of impressing others. Embrace a simpler approach to life, and you will find that financial abundance is not a necessity. Even if the company were to offer triple pay for working on weekends, I would never sacrifice my personal time.
Unless you’re on assistance, work is fundamental to raising a family. Raising a family is a wonderful thing but it’s a lot of work and it involves many painful trade offs.
If you do it right rest is for retirement.
I had four months of SUB pay and I'm so glad I did. After being at the bank for that long, I needed time to unwind. BNYM was toxic to me and I didn't like what the job had done to me. I took the time to spend with my spouse and to work on my personal recovery.
I understand the feeling. I was moved over as a lead manager to manage the largest client we have at the bank and tasked with getting us out of the last place ranking we were in. I would work insane hours, weekends, holidays, and sacrificed my own well being. This resulted in getting the team to be the #1 ranked custodian bank for our client. We were awarded JPMs assets as a result (400B in assets) and the pressure continued. Once we converted the assets in my director promoted someone over me with zero qualifications. It was one of his pets. He waited until all the hard work was done because he knew she wasn't capable. This finally forced me to leave the bank. I took a job which offered a 35% increase in pay. I also took two of our best employees with me who both received a 50% increase in pay. Not only that but the 3 of us work from home and have not put in 1 minute of OT at our new company. Bottom line, for anyone working at the dump called BNYM there is much better out there for you. Don't accept the unreasonable expectations and the thankless hours you put in. Only to be chewed up and sp-t out like garbage. BNYM has the worst leadership I've seen in my 22 years in the industry and it will never change.
2022 was a bad year for me. I had a new director who seemed like she really wanted to completely transform the group and being a manager, I felt I had to be on 24/7. Maybe not "online", but I'd certainly be checking emails at the most odd hours of the day and week and work never really left my mind at any moment. She would send emails Sunday night for 9am meetings on Monday. She would see I was online on a Saturday afternoon and would ask me for something. I joined calls that went to 10pm at night! I was so afraid of leaving a bad impression.
Then in August 2022, my team had some RIFs and people on the team were on vacation in general. I had a few vacation days scheduled here and there, not knowing I'd lose 40% of my team, so I ended up logging on late at night to check emails and make sure I came back.
I felt like a total workhorse, but I was so afraid of leaving a bad impression, but it didn't matter. She hired two people at a higher grade level than me WITHOUT direct reports and they were her favorites. I tried to keep a positive attitude but I could only do so much. As a result of hiring those two people, she forced out my manager who I respected a ton - he taught me everything I knew.
In hindsight I was quite the su---r. Ultimately, I don't think I sacrificed that much family time (I was working from home full time until September 2022 so I got to see my kids more often than others), but man it was stressful.
So glad I left this place and found a job that not only paid a lot more, but respects personal time. I'm still stressed with my new job because that's just who I am, BUT, BNYM showed me levels I don't ever want to see again.
It is about GenX on down to millenials. Work has always been 60 hours a week for productive white collar workers and blue collar unionized workers with OT pay.
People who came into the workforce in the last 5-10 years have no concept of normalcy but needing a paycheck has a certain way of teaching them.
It’s not about millennials.
Work has changed. We are all reachable 24/7, and there has been a growing encroachment on personal time.
When many of us entered the workforce, we left work completely behind when we went home for the day. Increasingly, people are replying to texts and emails well into the evening… and much of it has zero urgency.
It’s unsustainable over the long haul. Our brains are always on and we don’t have boundaries like we did.
It’s part of why there is a growing resentment among workers toward their employers.
It took me years to finally push back and say "I didn't have time" when asked why something wasn't completed. I didn't really stress about not getting things done except for the things that would cause bigger issues for me later.
Frightened by the fragility of our millennials.
Watch "Burnt-out The Truth About Work". This should motivate you to quit!
Also, the banking industry is heartless.
This is exactly the reason why I quit three years ago and never looked back! Best decision I ever made!
The managers won't care about your work life balance. They don't care if your family members suffer. They only care for more money on their yearly bonus. They flush you away like toilet paper then get a new employee to work to his/her death.
@bbe, same here. But sometimes you have to do extra to avoid things being a REAL pain.
I felt like that but just decided I’d start only doing what I could do in my allotted eight hours, and do no more and quite honestly don’t care.
This place is a dumpster fire. Everything‘s reactionary and chaotic. And retreated like. Cr-p. We are an expense to management. If they can, they’ll get rid of every single one of us so they can pad there $15 million bonus even more.
Efffff em