Work/life balance

This is kinda related to the remote work thread. Brushed off the resume, haven't found anything yet, FWIW. This time, I'm looking for a survey of if anyone else sees things the way I do AND YET has a management career. 
 

My perspective: I have always been super protective of my personal time. 40-45 hours a week is plenty of time for my job. My family and I get the rest. I'm an effective employee so they need to hire someone else if there's more to do than I can accomplish in that 40-45 hours. Being salaried, there may be exceptions due to emergencies, but that is not to be the rule. However, I've put in a lot of 50 hour weeks this last year, which was okay for a while but is now very old. 
 

I'm about to have yet another "come to Jesus" meeting with the higher-ups about how the predicted repercussions of my unmet calls for assistance are about to come to roost. I've been in need of assistance for a year and have gotten "I'm sure you can do it"s instead. I've even laid it out clearly that X, Y, and Z will not be done. Assuming they pay attention, this should be a painful meeting.

All that to ask: do I have an entirely unrealistic expectation of a managerial career in the tactical support side of IT?? Or even management in general? Is my perspective lending weight to the idea that I need to find a single contributor role? FWIW my last position was basically the same job, but I had the help I needed, so I wasn't always having the humiliating experience of coming to meetings unprepared, missing deadlines, having to tell people "yes, your request is on my list, but I'm probably not getting to it today", and otherwise just ignoring any problem for which there are workarounds. I'm not sure if I was lucky at the last job and will rarely have it that easy again, or if I'm getting Stockholm syndrome this time and just need to get out ASAP. 
 

Worth noting that I'm not necessarily looking to advance really far, really fast. We're living beneath our means, and also I recognize that everyone "above" me has an unacceptable (to me) level of time spent on the clock, so I'm potentially happy roughly where I am.

I'm exhausted so I hope this makes sense

I'll post more later because ironically enough I'm busy with work at the moment (I'm on PTO tomorrow, so doing some advanced work).  However, I'm in leadership and find that I have a very good work/life balance.  Just like you, to me it's essential and if I couldn't achieve it I would look for another job in a heartbeat.  My employer knows this.  I tell my staff the same thing for their lives.  If they can't achieve a good work/life balance, I want them to talk to me and we'll figure out the cause and what we can do about it (performance issues aside).

I'm right there with you man.
 

The new normal at my employer is take on more work, make more promises about getting it done faster than the same work took before and then expect current staff to figure out how to do it. Stretch and work longer is simply expected. Oh and we're "a family". 
 

The resultant stress isn't healthy at all. 

In reply to P3PPY :

You ask about a managerial promotion track- have you really, honestly, asked yourself if that's what you want?  Do you really want to manage people?  Does that position also come with directing the development track of the company?  Basically, when you look at your supervisors and managers, do you see yourself in their position?

That should be answered before the real worry if you are still in line for that or not.

Then the question becomes- once you head down that path, and you start managing people in your model, will you end up with clashes of the current management (where ever they end up) because you lead in a different way than they do?  There's a lot that feeds into office politics, and that's one of them.

(you also have to realize that all of your actual work skills will be pushed into the background as you have to let the people who work for you do the work- some struggle with that, others can use their skill to lead really well.)

Not taking that path- I can't help other than making sure you ask yourself those questions.

Can you explain more your role and responsibilities? Assuming you have a team, but not enough? I am thinking it's your job to get the team to do the work, for you to identify if that's do-able or not, and report if you are on/off track to the Lumbergs and if off what the plan is to get back on track, or repercussions if not possible. Sounds like you are doing that and this come-to-Jesus just sounds like what should be a *regular* expectation setting meeting. If these aren't happening every month/quarter that is part of the issue. 

The goal for a manager/leader that's looking to kick-ass is be able to get the team to do everything required, and be able to start to "add value" by doing additional things that will help the business that are not directly tasked to you. People that can deliver like that are kept around/promoted over the long term. OR it's not valued and you eventually see the Bobs come through. You still have that experience for your CV for the next role.

There has been a lot of great advice above and I won't repeat it in a slightly-less-great format.  I'll just say "ditto".

I work in a profession that can absorb as much time as you are willing to give it.  I've been up front with every employer that 40-44 hours a week is all I am willing to do except in occasional, special circumstances.  Deadlines are deadlines, and I get that.  But  I've turned down good job offers in dynamic companies where the business model was built on regular 50-60 hour weeks.

DW works in the corporate world and she has been living in your shoes for years.  In her lab of 100-120 people, she is known as a person who can figure E36 M3 out and get it done, so everybody - either officially or unofficially - comes to her with stuff they can't or won't deal with.  So she is in effect an unrecognized one-woman support crew for the entire lab.  In addition to that, she does have actual full time duties.  She used to be part of a team of 4-5 in her real role, but they eventually whittled that down to only her, plus with the unspoken expectation that she would be the 'fixer' for almost every other oddball issue that cropped up.

Eventually, she started drawing a firm line.  Every time management came to her with a new task, her answer unswervingly became, "Sure, I can do that.  It will probably take X amount of my time.  Tell me what things you want me to stop doing to make up that difference."  Eventually they did hire another person to help with her main duties; though he's not as good or as efficient as she is, at least she's not doing the work of 4-5 people all by herself.

But they do still keep trying to pile more on her plate - both management who don't understand what they're asking, and lazy E36 M3 coworkers who just want someone else to handle all their problems.

A lot of the work/life balance is going to come from overall corporate culture.  There's a local business services provider in town that the CEO once said in an interview that "we don't have any knothole dads working here!".  By that he meant that his employees didn't have "spare time" in the evenings on a reliable basis to be able to plan a family life.  If you're working in a place like that, then you might be out of luck there. 

On the other hand, the company that I've been with for the last couple decades is really good about making sure that we all get time away from work to be with family and to serve the community.  Mid way through last year they implemented a policy wherein they add one paid day off each quarter and it's basically mandated that you take it.  The rationale was that everybody was getting worked a little harder since there's that tendency with work from home and they wanted to be sure we weren't burning ourselves out.

If my memory is correct, you're a technical guy managing technical people, right?  So there's an expectation that if your team can't get things done, you're not just the manager but another doer who can pitch in.  I've been in that position and there can be a lot of pressure brought on from above and/or from yourself.  When there's a task that needs to get resolved and all of your people are stacked up already, is it your management that is pushing you to just go do it yourself or do you feel like you can go ahead and meet the deadlines if you pull yourself away from your management tasks and just do it yourself?

It is also possible that you've simply created an expectation through your performance that they can keep piling stuff on and it just gets done.  I tried for a very long time to get one of my dearest friends to understand that, but it never seemed to sink in.  He would always complain that stuff would get dumped on him at the last minute and that sales reps would just call him up directly to get things done because they waited too long to engage my team.  They knew that I'd push back but this guy would pull an all-nighter to get it done for them and cover their failure to follow the process with his heroics.  So they just came to know that they didn't have to follow the process.  Now, I think at some level he really liked being the hero, but he was working something like 70 hours a week and over weekends and everything and I couldn't get another headcount because we're all salaried and all the work was getting done and deadlines were being met, so everything must be fine.

Assuming that this is just a case of the management team not really seeing what's going on and the toll that it's taking, I would start looking at new requests/projects that come down the line and start pushing back slightly.  If it's an ask that will take 50 hours and your team is already up against the wall, see what happens when you come back with an answer that you simply don't have any availability to start that until whenever.  "Sure Bob, I'd be happy to make that happen, but my team is totally swamped with the TTP project and won't have the cycles to start on that until Febturday.  Is that alright or should I pull them back from TTP and let that deadline slip a little?"  If the response is simply a "gee, well that's TFB for you, we pay you to figure that stuff out, get it done", then you know what kind of company you work for and I'd get out of there ASAP unless it's one of those things where you're making enough money to retire by 50 and buy an island somewhere warm.  You might be surprised, though, to find out that they've got little to no idea how stacked up your team is because until now they've never felt any pain from it.

wae said:

It is also possible that you've simply created an expectation through your performance that they can keep piling stuff on and it just gets done. [] ...and I couldn't get another headcount because we're all salaried and all the work was getting done and deadlines were being met, so everything must be fine.

Those were DW's thoughts.  She told me a number of times that until stuff starts failing and not getting done, management just doesn't need to bother understanding that they are asking too much.

Work/life balance is exactly why I haven't bothered applying for numerous jobs that I have been recruited for the last few years. I always crack up when I see people taking vacation, but saying they will be checking Email/Slack. I sure don't when I'm on vacation. I don't even get on a computer past iRacing. 

I'd like to move up in my company, but I suspect I may end up getting bored and leaving before then. I have the disadvantage/advantage of when I was hired 5 years ago, I was by far the youngest person in the group hired with my title. By nearly 10 years of age and almost as much experience. 

But I'm also nervous to jump because of said work/life balance and the fact I like the people I work with.

I check emails while on vacation, heck, I even do a little work. 

Then again, I was just on the other side of the country for 16 days. 

Nobody is forcing me to do work while on vacation, it just makes my life easier when I do get back at it. 

Alternatively, I've talked with people who work on vacation and they are legit "putting out fires." Like, hey, I'm Hawaii, about ready to go the beach, but instead my employer is telling me that I need work on this 8 hour issue or it'll look badly on my future with the company. EFFF THAT

As a SW developer/architect, I found my life got a lot less hectic when we started using Agile SW techniques.  We calculate how much time we have, list what's required of us, estimate what each task will take and say "OK, here's the list and the budget.  What do you want done?"  Having actual numbers goes really far.  Now we're not working until 2AM a couple days in a row at the end of each product cycle.  That was not sustainable and our reputation hurt us when we tried to add people to our team.

If you intend to draw a line in the sand then the question is whether your employer will value you enough to accomodate you. Only you and they know the answer to that, and it will be clearer after your meeting. Your desire of a 40 hour work week is admirable, but perhaps not realistic for a management position. I do think though that you could argue that working longer hours for the same money is effectively a pay cut. Or drop a rung and be one of the guys who is just paid for producing something for 8 hours every day.

My wife works 16-18 hours a week and I cap my hours at 35 hours no matter what. I have, and probably will again, just do 3 6 hour days a week.

The only thing in life you absolutely, cannot get more of is time. You only have so much, spend it wisely

Man can I relate to a lot of this thread, and there's a bunch of good advice here already. I'll try not to repeat much.
 

I've been with my employer 8 years now, since I was fresh out of college, officially been in management in some capacity for ~3 years, unofficially more like 4-5. In the first few years of my tenure we lost a lot of good, longtime employees and with them a lot of knowledge, long standing systems broke down...looking back on it now it was a real cluster berkeley and I honestly don't know why I stuck it out through all that.

So with that, being one of relatively few capable people left, I became that go-to guy referred to above that everything gets piled on. And I took it like a champ, I got done everything that was asked of me and more, mostly through brute force and sheer determination much of the time. While that certainly earned me the opportunities I've been given and we're a small enough organization that my efforts didn't go unrecognized, in hindsight it also enabled perpetual understaffing in our technical group and covered for a lot of bad and lazy behavior from others. Furthermore, it simply was not a sustainable or repeatable way of doing things, and without my physical involvement or presence, things tended to break down in a hurry. Don't mean to toot my own horn too much here or come across as arrogant, but it's the honest truth. 
 

Earlier this year though, between what I dubbed the project from hell and some other stuff outside of work (that's another post for another day that O won't derail this thread with,) I had a bit of a come-to-Jesus moment. I was averaging 60-65 hours a week and had set a PR 17.5 hour day, was giving up a week plus of vacation time each year simply because I felt too busy to take it, both managing a department as well as being the primary "doer", working on a project for a genuinely sadistic customer with an ever rising bar that could never be met. Eventually, when it became clear there was never going to be a satisfactory resolution, we hit a tipping point and for the first time in my career we had to bail on the project.

That played hell on my psyche and I did a LOT of reflection on my approach to work and what I truly wanted out of both my career and life in general. The answer was affirmatively Not This. The other piece of the puzzle was our new Ops Manager (and now owner,) who had come on board full time in early 2020 and recognized the systemic chaos that had developed throughout the organization.
 

So, with his encouragement, I took a step back from the "in the E36 M3" type stuff for a few months and instead worked on creating systems, documenting our processes, and really taking an approach that would allow work to go on should I get hit by a bus. That allowed me to delegate more effectively and I was also allowed to hire a couple more guys (one of whom in particular was a real 10/10, just absolutely perfect fit.) And that applies not just to my engineering department, but company wide as well - looking back, we've come a long way in the last 12-18 months.

The two biggest things for me personally were developing tools to gauge workload, which allowed me to push back on timing demands from sales and customers more effectively, and honestly just learning how to say No better, or at least place my own constraints on a yes. Can't do it all the time of course, but that one simple word is a remarkable tool when wielded judiciously.

So now my normal week is more like 45 hours, I'm much happier overall and more pleasant to deal with, and, here's the kicker, we're producing much better results. The pushback is still an ongoing effort with certain people and of course there are still times when the hours have to be put in, but I now feel like that is the exception rather than the rule. I'm on vacation this week skiing and haven't taken one single call, email, or text, aside from a goofy pic from my boss of some of my guys from the Christmas party I missed.

So yeah, that's a lot of words and was kind of cathartic for me typing it all out, but hopefully there is something useful buried in there :p 

pheller said:

I check emails while on vacation, heck, I even do a little work. 

As part of my whole work/life balance thing, I refuse to check e-mails or do any work while on vacation.  When I'm off work I'm off work.  If I take a week off, then yes on Sunday night I'll probably browse through my e-mails and pick the low hanging fruit so that it's not as awful on Monday morning.  

Tomorrow I'm on PTO for the LeMons race at Road Atlanta.  In no way, shape or form will I even be thinking about work.  It can wait until Monday.

EEk, this could get political fast.  I'm a Director of Engineering.  I don't expect my employees to do more than 45ish in a regular week.  That's what I do, although I frequently take and make calls to Korea in my evenings, but at my level there are compromises I accept given my position.  Sure, there are crunch times with testing or delivery where we're all doing much longer hours, but they tend to be short bursts 2-3 times a year and I make sure I take care of people who are doing that by allowing people to take off early, come in late in the non crunch times to keep their work life balance on the happy side.  Happy, not overworked, or exploited employees are far more productive at 45ish than overworked people doing 60+.  Any business built on expecting people to work 50-60 hours a week is a business that's exploiting you, either for their own gain, or because they are poorly run and aren’t charging correctly for their products or services.  While I love my adopted country, the level of worker exploitation at all levels is criminal.  It’s amazing how many other developed first world countries can mandate 35-40 hour maximum work weeks, in many cases with overtime simply not allowed, and still compete with US companies on quality and price with their products.

pheller said

Nobody is forcing me to do work while on vacation, it just makes my life easier when I do get back at it.

This

I go into the office early Saturday mornings a couple times a month.  6am-8:30?  Maybe to 9:30am when Costco opens?

My big OEM runs a Sunday night status report so the planners are all over late orders on Monday so Mondays suck big time.  

It's my choice to go in and it helps feel better about getting caught up for Monday.

Lately I focus hard on Friday afternoon and plow through work so I can not come in on Saturday.  Being in sales and working on Friday afternoon is unheard of.

It sounds to me like you need to go get yourself a sweet union or government job with an hourly rate and fixed start and end times.

Want me to work more hours?  berkeley you.  Pay me.

Want me to work on Saturday?  berkeley You.  Pay me.

Personally?  I go on the other end of the spectrum but its all about different personalities.

Fun project?  Sure I will work this weekend.  

Chance to make a big sale?  Yeah I will put in the extra hours.

Travel the world on the company dime? A 6AM flight is just fine.  

Then again no one asks where I am, I come and go as I please, I talked to my boss for 5 minutes this week and only see her for 1 day a month give or take,  I have a nice expense account, so on so forth.  

In my view, once a career reaches a certain level, the expectation shifts from working X hours to instead doing a JOB. What that job is can vary widely, but no matter what it is, it shouldn't take more than 40-45 hours on a  regular basis.

I changed my thinking to this: I am the CEO ans CFO of a very small company: Myself.
I have one very demanding client: My Employer

Based on that, does the workload and financial compensation make sense when viewed in that light? In other words, if a contract between two companies was being drawn up for the work I do, would a legal team, group of shareholders or even a business minded single owner look at what I was doing vs. what I was getting paid and think: THIS IS A GOOD DEAL?

This is even more of an important question to ask when an estimated 50% of employees are considering a career change because the answer to that question is a resounding NO.

There is a definite point when you're killing yourself to make somebody money with no benefit to yourself. It's bad business well before that point.

Can't help ya,  I'm at 106 hrs in the 8 days since I returned from shoulder surgery.  But I'm not in management either. 

I'm in management; we've talked before, I have a traveling job where I manage a district in NE Ohio, PA and NY. Drive 3-4,000 miles a month (7000 in November) and put in a LOT of hours. However, my company won't let me travel on Sunday or FRIDAY. I am "allowed" to be on the road mon-Thur. I was told to not put in more than 50 hours which is hilarious for the job as assigned. I answer calls anytime on any day because I need to and it's what I signed up for. Emails? All day, all the time. Texts? Same. I love the stimulation and honestly being home all day Friday working from my office, Saturday and Sunday I probably work away from home LESS than I did when I was store level. 
 

Work life balance is important but it's different for everyone, tell them what you need but be prepared to honor the line in the sand.

This is good stuff, I unsurprisingly don't have a lot of time to write much, I am getting ready for work right now. To answer some of the questions, I'm basically like the IT general contractor for our location of our company. I have one tech but he's only part time, at the last place I had a full-time tech. It's a contract job and they underbid staffing because they did not understand the demands model. Or because they wanted to win the bid and figured they'd just make it work. We went from 8 administrative (non-production) staff positions under the old regime to 3- and while they're slowly refilling the other ones they didn't think they needed, yeah, my kicking butt is making it hard to justify that they need to refill IT. 
So my goal was to make sure I wasn't being unreasonable in my work expectation before things really hit crunch time in the next couple weeks and everything that I've had to put off fails. And I think that's what I'm hearing. 
 

This also reminds me that I'm a very entry-level manager, perhaps heavily weighted for titular alone??, and need to carefully find the next job as a stepping stone to figuring out the biz side. And yes, at this position, as wae said, it's a lot of "if your team is too busy you need to be in there too"

Duke said:

DW works in the corporate world and she has been living in your shoes for years.  In her lab of 100-120 people, she is known as a person who can figure E36 M3 out and get it done, so everybody - either officially or unofficially - comes to her with stuff they can't or won't deal with.  So she is in effect an unrecognized one-woman support crew for the entire lab.  In addition to that, she does have actual full time duties.  She used to be part of a team of 4-5 in her real role, but they eventually whittled that down to only her, plus with the unspoken expectation that she would be the 'fixer' for almost every other oddball issue that cropped up.

This is the position I'm in. Of the five operations offices ours is the one other offices come to with problems, and in my office I'm one of the ones that gets to fix other people's problems. It doesn't help that there's no longer an incentive to become management here anymore. I generally put in 55+ hours a week, and am expecting to monitor my email and slack when I'm not here at night, days off and vacations.  As a result no one is applying for these positions so with retirements and illnesses our workload just increases. 
 

The biggest mistake I've made here was becoming management and there's no way they'll get me to go any higher. In the past year two of my three managers had strokes and an interim one developed heart problems. 

I've probably told this story before but it's worth posting again.

I used to work with a gentleman. He was a super dedicated guy. Everything he did was geared toward retirement. And I do mean everything. 50-60 hour weeks were the norm. Minimal vacations. He spent basically zero money on himself or his wife so he could retire like a king. And he made it. He retired early, at 60. Bought a nice boat and did some fishing. Took a really nice trip with his wife. About 6 months into retirement he died of a massive heart attack. He had spent most of his life saving and planning for a future that didn't exist.

That left a major impression on me. I decided then and there that I was going to enjoy my entire life and have lived accordingly. I do the fun stuff. I don't worry excessively about work and there is more to life than money.

I am self-employed. I'm sure I could be a real shiny happy person to work for, put in the 60-80 hour weeks, drive everyone that works for me to do the same, and be a wealthy man. Instead, I work 35-45 hours a week. The guys that work for me work 35-45 hours a week and seem to enjoy the job. While they are technically paid by the hour, I guarantee them 40 even if we don't work it. If the day's work is done by 2, the phones get forwarded to the on-call person and we go home.

Today is a shop day. We are cleaning up the place, ordering pizza for lunch, and probably going home early. I'm going camping this weekend with my parents, eldest son, and grandkids. I won't be answering my phone or checking emails. A customer call me this morning about a door repair. It's one of a vestibule and it's not his secure door. It's two hours south of me and it's also going to wait until Monday. We are knocking off early. 

I'll retire with less money but it will have been worth it.

In reply to Toyman! :

At age 59 I challenge myself.  How much do I need in the bank? $1,000,000 enough?   $2,000,000?  What's my next gig?   Do I want to be in this rat race until 70? (No) 

When do I start enjoying it?  Right now I don't have health insurance figured out from 62-65.  When I do I'm packing it in at 62.