Ok retirement used to be the last 5-10 years of your life - retire at 65, average life expectancy was 70 to 75. As average life expectancy goes up, it’s now closing in at 20 years - retire at 65, live to 83 which I think is new life expectancy.
It really shouldn’t surprise anyone we can’t maintain this. It was only doable for that brief period of cheap energy. (And yes, we should tax the rich in case anyone doubts my sentiments.)
Ditto. I know someone who actively shudders when they hear the name. He repeatedly thanks me from saving him from what he said was actively destroying his soul.
Deloitte staff don’t act totally dead inside (from my experience). EY staff, though, act like they’ve looked inside the abyss and it stared right back at them. That place must be one soulless meat grinder of a business factory.
Probably, but the article is not wrong, these are huge factors that drive my decisions, and I have flat out told employers in interviews that I take issues with aspect of how companies run. Im sure some roll their eyes, but honestly I dont care, im not going to devalue myself or my ethics just to make them more money.
Without naming the firm, I’m a refugee from public accounting.
Back when I was a staff accountant, and we were all making roughly $60k a year, they brought us all into a meeting in the middle of busy season to discuss work/life balance and mental health.
The solution they offered?
Simply hire a full-time live in housekeeper who does laundry and cooks!
This completely makes sense. People should reject assignments if they are unethical! It’s almost like the young generation is doing the right thing. The horror!
When the government is expected to provide such generous benefits (half his salary in Spain, per the article) it seems that something has to change. It’s even good that some people are working past that age, and continuing to pay into it for others. It seems inappropriate to ask the people who are depending on the pension to reduce benefits or pay more- why not ask more of the true beneficiaries of their labor?
My US-centric view is less rosy, as we get WAY less in pension and limited healthcare…all the while there are literal billionaires who pay no taxes. Keep the benefits, tax the rich.
The problem is less to do with personal goals and more to do with how your company or manager implements them.
My team has their org goals, which is what our bonuses are based on, and each person’s individual goals that they set with me. Those goals have the boilerplate reviews, and we keep it metrics based. Did we miss, meet, or exceed our goals? There’s a formula, which everyone knows before the year starts (because we wrote them as a group and them got board executive sign off on them) that tells us what our bonus metric will be. We sink or swim as a group, myself included. Each person has individual goals related to their unique role, but those are largely “Did you perform at the level expected of your title and salary?” No fluff. No BS. Some of my people write sentences, some give concise bullets, some write 3 word answers. This isn’t the SATs, so it doesn’t matter how the info is provided.
Then we have the personal goals, which are 100% rooted in the question “what do you want next?” For some people, it’s to move into a more Sr role, for others to break into a new discipline (expertise in a particular area, management, or something completely different), and sometimes it’s as simple as “make $30k more per year” or “have more time with my kids in the evenings.” (For the last one, it’s usually easy - we are remote with few mandatory hours so it’s easy to modify a schedule to have free hours when needed) We set personal goals and I coach them to achieve them, but the only person they answer to if they don’t achieve them is themselves. It has zero impact on their performance metrics, bonuses, or raises.
I want to see everyone have the life and career they want, and we use these goals as way to work towards that. Our 1-on-1 meetings are NOT about their tasks. We have the task board and team syncs for that and I can schedule a 1-off chat if we need to address something. Instead we spend the 1-on-1 more or less on whatever topic they want to address. If something is stressing them, annoying them, etc, they have that time to bring it up and we can try to find a solution. One of my people has a goal to move to a city 9 time zones away. They also highly values their work/life balance, so flexing their schedule is likely not going to solve this so instead I’m helping them leave the team for a new job. Ideally I’ll keep them in the company, but if that doesn’t work out and they have to leave, so be it. It’s what’s best for them and everyone else here sees it - that shit goes a long way.
If you’re doing bullshit personal goals and nonsense 1-on-1 meetings, that’s the manager and culture at fault, not the concept as a whole.
Ever notice how “personal goals” are supposed to be focused on work? That’s because companies are using it to extract more productivity from the same number of employees for the same price. They’re trying to exploit human nature through gamifying your workload for a dopamine rush. When this is realized it often feels condescending, because it is.
I'm solidly middle aged, and I don't want to work either. But I don't want to be homeless either, so I'm going to get as much money as I can, for as little labor as possible. That's capitalism baby.
Spent four years in college, went $60k in debt for it, and I still have to take fucking personality tests as part of the interview process for the one fucking interview I get for every 50+ jobs I apply to. Not to mention that entry level jobs are basically nonexistant and professional workplaces only care to get employees that already have experience from God knows where. So that leaves us starting out in our careers with the strategy of “fake it till you make it”, which creates further scrutiny during the interview processes. But no, apparently the problem is that people are too lazy. Fuck everything about the hiring process these days.
“97% of UPS workers represented by the Teamsters voted to authorize the largest single-employer strike in U.S. history if there’s no acceptable contract deal in place by the end of July.”
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