Two people were vying for a managerial role. A 45 yo with 3 children and a 30yo with no children.
The first clocked 40 hours a week and no more, but during those hours, did a ton of work. No slacking!
The second clocked 50-55 hours a week. Routinely staying up til 7pm . No slacking. Delivered 20% more as a result of all his extra work.
Their boss thinks the business would suffer more from losing the second guy and promoted them. It reminded me of those video game crunch stories, where people would feel pressured to work an extra 2 hours a day to finish the game on time because other people were doing it and they didn’t want what I described above to happen to them. Those people report ruined relationships, bad parenting, elevated stress and anxiety, depression and more.
So is what happened above wrong? If so, where is the line? Who, if anyone, is the villain in this story? All 3 are nice blokes . Nobody was threatened with losing their job or forced to work long hours at the end of a gun.
I remember, 20 odd years ago, sitting in a meeting where our CEO told all the directors that he was concerned because some of them were working long hours in the office. He told them that he wanted them all to be out of the office at a reasonable hour every day because, “It sets a bad example for the staff. They think that they should do it too, and there are far more important things in life than working long hours, particularly for those with families.”
It is unthinkable that anyone in the upper echelons of the organisation would express similar sentiments today. In fact, now that we are working from home so much, I routinely receive requests at night and on weekends, usually from one of the directors.
This part I don’t get, who is the 3rd person? I only saw two described.
Anyway, on the larger question, life is a series of choices. Both people described may be making the choice that is best for them. If they both have the same level of ability and are at the same place/position in the company, I suspect that the older one has been consciously making this choice for quite a while, and the younger one is also making the choice to work longer hours, probably specifically to get ahead. I don’t see that as contributing to toxic workplace culture. Maybe you can explain why you think it does.
Also, the trouble with a managerial role is that, although it usually comes with more money, it also comes with more responsibility that may make it no longer possible for the older person to go home after 40 hours and to not be also working while at home. Is that person aware of these kinds of likely changes, and do they still want the job anyway? Then they should be putting in the extra time now to prove they are up to it.
Probably the worst boss I ever had gave me a mediocre score on my annual review because I was only doing my job (he acknowledged that I was doing it well). He said if I wanted to get a higher score and be considered for promotion I should also be trying to do his job. That was a toxic workplace environment, for me. Fortunately, he left and I got re-shuffled to another boss.
It doesn’t seem to me any of those involved are doing anything wrong. If you want a promotion, you must make efforts to stand out, to show whoever makes the decisions that you are in some way the better choice. How you do that depends on the job and what talents you have and what sacrifices you are willing to make.
The go-getter is using his status as someone who can devote extra time to the job. He gives up whatever he would ordinarily use those extra hours for, and proves to his boss that he will do that and the company will benefit because of it.
Other people can use their family connections, their good looks, their having graduated from a classy college, their being willing to undertake special training or courses that will bring advantages (I know a man whose thing was learning languages. The company was wanting to expand into Yemen? He started learning Arabic) or even something that seems out of left field, like becoming a stellar golf player and schmoozer.
Meanwhile Mr. 40 Hours Only apparently wasn’t doing the same, or something of equal benefit to the company like developing advanced skills at whatever. Of course he ‘lost out’ for that promotion: there was a ‘better’ candidate at the next desk over.
What if your boss had given you a B on your review instead of a C (?), and nothing else had changed? Would your workplace environment have been toxic then?
I ask because, ironically, one of the reasons the 40 Hr worker were given for being passed over for that promotion was that they didn’t try to do their manager’s job
Since I was used to getting A+ from previous managers, a B wouldn’t have been much better.
I think this idea is one that is propagated in management books, and I think it’s very misguided. There’s more to management than encouraging people who want to take over your job. I speak from experience.
What I’d want to evaluate was their managerial skill sets, not how hard they worked at a non-managerial task, or how little of a not work life they do or do not have.
Who shows better ability to take a complex task and break it down into delegatable tasks? Who has better analytical skills? Who understands our company’s big picture, strategy, and mission? Who is better working with others and fostering a sense of all being valued members of our team?
Maybe it’s the person with no other life, but my default bias would be to expect the slightly older worker with a family to better demonstrate those skills.
What is the culture that management is trying to build? Who are they trying to recruit? What do they want to be in 5? 10? 15 years?
If they go with the 50-55 hr/week guy, that is going to perpetuate itself. He’ll hire, “nurture,” and promote people who will also work 50-60+ hours/week. Sooner or later, that’s who the company will be. There will be less work/life balance. The company will not be able to attract or keep people who can/will only work a 40 hour week (for whatever reason). On the other hand, it will attract and keep those who have no problem throwing in large amounts of overtime because it’s worth the rewards that they see (65 hours/week gets you promoted).
On the other hand, promoting 40 hour/week guy is going to create a different culture. The 50-60+ hour/week people will leave, there are companies that reward that kind of drive and yours isn’t it. The workforce will likely be much more settled. Work can and will get done, but there’s going to be less dynamism. 40-hour/week manager will see to it that things get done, but he’s also going to enforce boundaries.
There aren’t any villains in the story - but there are choices and there will be consequences (both good and bad).
One thing to note - around here, when the leadership at startups that worked 60+ hours a week started to get married and have kids, the culture of a lot of those places changed.
My sister was working 100 hour weeks when she started training as a junior doctor. Getting paid for something like 10 hours a day (which adds up, even on training wages), and expected to work something like 16.
As it happens, the junior doctors here are in court now, trying to get paid for the unpaid overtime (much shorter hours now, but evidently still not alligned)
I would agree with the OP in the context of the specific way that (s)he’s framed it.
But, much more often IME, that is not the way crazy hours work. I’ve personally only ever seen:
Tired workers doing poor work. This includes the aforementioned games industry, where crunch time often meant firefighting the bugs that were getting introduced during crunch time.
General loss of efficiency and motivation such that a 12 hour worker was doing essentially the same amount as an 8 hour worker.
Employees doing literally nothing at all. For example, I have worked at at least one place where the culture was that you didn’t leave before the boss, and the boss liked to stay late. If our tasks were done for the day, and there was nothing we could really start in the evening, it ended up being the case that people were just trying to look busy, waiting for the boss to fuck off. I didn’t last long there.
This is a very good point: I want the best possible talent working for me and staying with the company for a long time without burning out. The best possible talent often values a work-life balance. They sometimes have partners and children and value that time more than a few more bucks. The marginal value of extra salary decreases and the marginal cost of that time increases at a certain point. A workplace that values that balance is sometimes better able to attract and keep that level of talent.
But still befuddled why anyone thinks anything stated in the OP informs as to who would be be the best person to promote out of their current position into a managerial role. Just as the best free throw shooter is not the best coach, the most productive worker is not the best manager. Managing is a different skill set than producing the product or providing the servivce.
I agree there isn’t enough info but most skills can be learned and the person with the most time to learn assuming equal capability should do a better job.
I’m not sure I agree about managing being a different skill set than production. The worst managers I’ve had were those that only had managerial skills and didn’t understand production. I had an engineering manager argue with me once that you could change the radius of a circle without changing its circumference he was a terrible engineer before his promotion but he was good at “people skills” so he was selected over better engineers due to having a more managerial skill set. When I promote managers I generally want the best person at their current job who is willing to learn a new skill set. Which I think is where people should be doing their bosses job is coming from those people are trying to learn the next skill set before its relevant to them so they’ll have a shorter learning curve.
I agree with DSeid. Lots of people get promoted because of their ability as specialists, which doesn’t necessarily translate to managerial skill. There’s not enough to know which one is better at management but the first guy already strikes me as being better at managing time and switching between tasks, which are at least some of the attributes of a good manager.
I will also throw a gender take at this. Right or wrong we still live in a world in which women do the larger share of childcare and other responsibilities. Choice, expectation, whatever. Much of the best possible talent available to my company will be these women who value that time more highly than do some males. I want that talent at my company at all levels and well represented at all levels, demonstrating to potential new talent that there is a potential path to the top for them here that does not require sacrifices they do not want to make. It is in my company’s best interest.
I would put forth that his arguing with you about that shows that in fact he had horrible people skills and poor management skills.
My father ran a small reupholstery business. He did not know how to reupholster; he knew how to sell. But he also knew how to hire people who knew how to reupholster and how to manage the team of them, listening to them as needed.
Ehh, he was arguing because he was trying to agree to a request from the geology department and I was harshing his ability to say yes to everyone and be a people pleaser.
There are lots of people who get lucky and have a support staff that carry them. But if your father had no idea how long good upholstery took, what the materials cost or how to tell good upholstery from bad then it was just a matter of luck that his first hire was good and did good work. I try not to hire for luck as a primary skill set.
Yes, something was wrong, and the line is someone doing overtime when it isn’t necessary. I would not promote someone to manager who has no work-life balance, and certainly wouldn’t want such a person to manage me.
The villain is the boss who didn’t say, after the first month “Fuck off, I’m not signing off on 15 hours of overtime. Give it a rest, Pointdexter.”
Then again, I also live in a country with sane labour laws.
(much shorter hours now, but evidently still not alligned)