[Closed] Importance of work/life balance

Would be for me. I could earn way more if I worked in London, but at what expense to my personal and family life.

Everyone I know who has worked for a 'top' consultancy never did less than 12 hour days every day, it just seems to come with the territory. Mind you, one did retire at 40 as a multi-millionaire, so there are up sides...

Thanks, and when I roll the travel up this could be long day.

You are not committing to anything be going to the interview. Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye, maybe the potential earnings are so massive a set x years are worth it. Go to the interview and scope if out.

2 hours?
Never. Quite simply wouldn't do it.
I have before on short term projects - Pinewood, etc but as an actual job?
No.

Four hours travelling on an eight hour day is tough enough.

big consultancies in London

There's the problem.

Much the same with a lot of big company city jobs. Even smaller trendy start ups who locate in London to have the cool city life but that means working all hours even if some of that is in a coffee shop. Seems cool at first to be having meetings and such outside the office, but then it turns into you're expected to be responding to calls and emails, doing work online wherever and whenever you are. Small companies out in the sticks tend to be full of people who have families and clock off to go home and have a life.

That's why I steer clear, even though I could earn several hundred a day more than outside of London. Commute costs and no life outside work is not worth it.

I recently left one of the big consultancies in London and I had a daily commute of around 1.5hrs each way. There were many positives (money being one of them) but I didn't have a life in the week until I went part-time. Some people can make it work but there are always reasons why you need to stay to finish that piece of work, or speak to that client or work with your team late. Daily delays and cancellations on the commute don't help. Definitely worthwhile for a few years to gain experience and to work with some excellent people but you have to be made of the right material to make a long career out of it (imo). Your experience may be different - have the interview and find out. What field/area?

I hated the whole consultancy way of working, felt like a load of dogs yapping round the table waiting for someone to throw a bone, fighting for it then being their masters best friend to get the next bone. And putting in people who were barely one step ahead of the client but charging for them as if they were experts. If you're not driven by money then walk away.

Finance systems implementations

It's always worth attending the interview. It's perfectly fine to say 'no' to an offer.

I'd be f- er, damned if I was going to subscribe to a 2-hour each way commute though, unless a) it was a monumental amount of money and b) it was a short-term thing and I had an exit strategy.

Finance systems implementations

Won't that be mainly on client site?

Yes but they expect that during the non project times you will be in the office. On previous companie, I worked from home. Not sure if it's worth going through the interview process for something you do not want. Time and cost.

A number of the firms have taken to "agile" working in a big way which could help (virtual desktops are really rather good these days). I guess it depends how much you want it and what your longer term plans are. Good luck either way.

My wife works for one of them. She commutes from Newcastle and spends 4 days down there in a hotel. She currently has her work laptop out preparing for a meeting on Monday.

She earns twice what I do per year. Not sure per hour...

Finance has a reputation of working long hours - if they are paying top dollar for consultants they will expect them to work even longer hours.

Attend the interview, see what happens.

Which company or are you not prepared to say?

I've handed my notice in because of constant work work 7 days a week 0630-0100.

No work life balance.

I don't have a job to go into but I'll never teach again.

I am planning on moving out of provided housing, 100m from work, to one 15km away, which will cost me to live there to improve my work life balance.

Sounding stupid, but I am trying to make the opportunity of working at home, when I need to , be it evenings or weekends, so that I can see my family more.

100m from work, means it is too easy to stay in the office until 9pm everyday. That 15km away means I have to go home, if I do go home, I'm not going to head back to the office for a couple of hours.

I'd move house or job rather than doing a 2h commute. Spending some weekday nights in a hotel would also be worth considering, along with some working at home.

I wouldn't move house to somewhere I don't want to be though.

Moving into London would screw up my riding for a start 😀

I'd go down for the interview, and ask them directly about it. Get their feel for it.

For a couple of years, experience, money, contacts etc etc it could be worth it.

Frankenstein - Member
I've handed my notice in because of constant work work 7 days a week 0630-0100.

No work life balance.

I don't have a job to go into but I'll never teach again.

130 hour week? Even by the standards of media scare story teaching workload reports that's pretty extreme. What kind of pressure cooker horror story school do you teach in? There are LOADS of schools (the vast majority in my 20 years teaching experience) that require nowhere near that level of burnout. If that truly is the amount of work expected of staff at your place you are definitely better off out of it, but you don't necessarily need to give up on the profession totally.

130 hour week? Even by the standards of media scare story teaching workload reports that's pretty extreme. What kind of pressure cooker horror story school do you teach in?

Yes, that's mental. We had Ofsted in on Thursday and Friday and I still did nowhere near that many hours.

Read the threads on here about relationship split ups and decide if that's a risk you want to take. Even with staying in a hotel for a few days it is still a lot of pressure. The job would have to be the job of a lifetime to make it worth it. The fact that you are saying the agent is keen to get you there rather than you really wanting to go suggests that you shouldn't even interview. Remember that agents don't get paid for finding the right job for you or even the right candidate for a job. They get paid for getting someone in, end of.

Depends on the school.

Last school was almost zero paper work.

Current school has far too much admin, expects half books marked each week not just tick and flick.
150 exam papers. Perfect lessons.

My Ofsted(s) went great but I taught normally not pulling rabbits out of hats.
New VP rips into every lesson across the school. Demoralised staff. 3 from department have left.

I'm applying to teach abroad soon. Thought of my own business but not sure what.

I'm putting on weight, nearly f'd my relationship. Working everyday for peanuts as is the pay of monkeys!

Rather work in London for a lot more cash with less hours and commute easily by train/tube.

Go to the interview and see how you feel. You can find out a lot about an organisation by visiting the building, meeting a few people and even, if you're observant, just getting a sense of the culture as you walk from reception through to your interview room.

I've been for 2 interviews at Barclays over the years (in Canary Wharf) and both times the people just struck me as really hard-faced, nasty people + the office was a tip - paper all over the floor and and atmosphere of pressure and politics...

I've been working in London for 20 years and just left this year on account of no longer being able to afford to live there (housing costs) - most of my time was in financial services and I have a lot of friends who work in the City. To say Finance rinses people and has no respect for work/life balance would be fair I think - the culture is not supportive of workers as people with lives to lead and health to maintain. Look at what happened to both Martin Wheatley and Antony Jenkins when they tried to straighten out financial services culture - both thrown out..

I've a couple of friends in the City who were good enough to do very well but even of them, one is now out of Finance and the other's left the UK and on the ex-pat circuit so they got out in the end.

Also, people I know who've worked in Consultancy say the same - the reality of the job is high stress, long hours, politics and the carrot of Partnership dangled in front of you when in reality very few people get there.

Now I don't mind working hard and love(d) the energy and ambition of London but after only 2 months of moving out I'm much calmer, getting lots more sleep and have so much spare time I don't know what to do with it. My commute is 30 mins easy riding through quiet lanes and I'm home by 6:30 pretty much every night. I worked till 8pm a couple of weeks ago to meet a deadline and my boss was rather upset with me! I'm in a bit of a quandary tbh because I'd still rather be in London... irrational.

So if your standard of living is currently something you're happy with - enough cash, living somewhere you like, good health (incl sleep), time to invest in your relationships and good work/life balance then I would ask yourself what you'll gain in this job requires you to sacrifice these things.

It's nice earning a lot of cash but at the end of the day so long as you have enough to live the life you want to live, and provide for your pension and have some financial security, why do you need more?

For my money one big reason why economic growth and inflation are so low is after 2008 we've all realised the 'working all hours for loads of money to buy shiny things' isn't a good deal in the long run and a lot of people are just taking it easy and making do with what they have and focussing on quality of life. Which in my opinion is a GOOD THING