What life would look if we said no to work-life balance (and a nod to Amazon, of course)

What life would look if we said no to work-life balance (and a nod to Amazon, of course)

This is a picture from when my oldest son was five years old. I have very few pictures of him at this age. Maybe twenty. Because I was never home. I worked almost 100% of my waking hours. And often I slept only four hours a night.

I did not walk him to school. I did not make dinner. I did not put him to bed. My (now-ex) husband did all of that. In exchange for giving up all my family time, I launched a startup (with two, twenty-year-old guys, of course).

Do you want to launch a startup and have kids? That’s what it looks like. And you know what? It’s fair. Because I had someone else’s money, and they made an investment expecting that I’d move as fast and work as hard as I possibly could to increase the value of that investment.

Do you want to know how I got funded the next time? The investors remembered that I was willing to do absolutely anything to keep the company alive.

The first time I launched a startup, years before I had kids, the investor had already worked with me. He knew I worked long hours and every weekend and I was able to do three or four times the amount of work regular employees would do.

What I’m telling you is that I have been one of those people who worked insane hours and put my company before my life. And I’m here to tell you that there are people who really do want to do that. We should let them.

I know you know people like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg who want to work all the time. But the article in the New York Times last weekend about Amazon shows us that it’s a much more widespread phenomenon than just a few famous billionaires. Amazon has 150,000 employees, and they fire anyone who cannot devote their life to their work. So there are a lot of people willing to devote their life to their work.

To get a sense of how extreme Amazon is, just know that basically people have to be on email at all hours, there are no vacations, and there are no weekends. You are expected to work all the time.

There is a ranking system and if you are ranked low, you are out. Which means you are competing against your peers, but you are also ranked on how well you can get along with them.

There are lots of people talking about how bad this environment is. But I have to say, I like it. I like the honesty. Amazon lays bare some truths about the workplace that other companies try to cover up. But if we could all be honest about work, we could all make better decisions about what we want for our lives.

1. People should pay a premium for a regular paycheck.
If you have ever tried working for yourself, you know that having a reliable paycheck, no matter what happens each week, is a great feeling. The stability of that paycheck ripples into the rest of your life, enabling stability in many other places. Additionally, you get paid without taking on any risk. There are very few situations where we can make money without taking risk. Working for someone else’s company is one of them.

In this way, it makes sense to me that you get paid well, and you get paid reliably, so you need to put the company before your personal life. If you want to give up getting paid well, or you want to give up getting paid reliably, then you can have some of your personal life back. That seems fair.

2. People should stop searching for the holy grail of balance. It’s not there.
We have known for years that there’s no such thing as work-life balance. You can do both at a mediocre level. You can do one poorly and one well. Or you can do an outstanding job at one and not do the other at all. (Please, I’m sure someone will say in the comments it’s possible to do both well. This is not true, because it’s relative since you don’t live in a black hole, and if you’re trying to do both well there is someone who is giving up doing one of those things well in order to focus.)

Since there is no balance, what about doing work and life sequentially? This is what many all-0r-nothing types do. They train for the Olympics and then they go to college after they compete. Or they work long hours for a decade and then they quit to have kids. Or they travel for five years and then start a career.

A sequential life means that you don’t give everything up, but you work for a while, then you take a break, then you work. When you work, you work very long hours. When you are not working you are really not working. How much you like to work will dictate how much time of your life you are working versus how much you are doing non-work.

3. Companies that have A players should be clear about their expectations.
Yahoo won’t let you work from home. Facebook expects you to work through dinner. Amazon requires weekend hours every weekend. The reason these companies can make such demands is that A players don’t mind doing these things. And if you want to work with A players, you have to comply with those demands, too. It’s simply not fair for some people at the company to put the company first and some people to put their home life first.

Which was, by the way, the biggest problem I had when I was doing a startup and I was the only one with young kids. For example, the company paid for two full-time nannies so I could travel with no notice. But it felt unfair to the employees who didn’t have kids. I felt like I gave up all my time for the company, but when I went to one, single, soccer lesson my co-workers thought that I divided my attention between family and work while they did not.

Of course people who want to take care of their family and work at the same time should be able to work. But they should not feel entitled to work with people who will give everything of themselves to the company.

4. Companies should replace caring about being nice with caring about being fair.
Even though I’d die before I’d work at Amazon right now, I think their policies are fair. I don’t see senior management asking anything of people that they are not doing themselves. And of course, anyone who doesn’t like the deal that Amazon offers should just quit.

I also think Yahoo is fair to say you have to work in the office. After all, Jacquelien Reses, head of Yahoo’s human resources, commutes from NYC to California and leaves three kids behind. If you are not that devoted to work, don’t work at Yahoo.

What I really don’t like is companies that function like Amazon and Yahoo but pretend they don’t. Netflix giving unlimited maternity leave? Please. No one who cares about their career trajectory will be taking that leave. We already know that because few high-performers take the paltry six weeks they get now.

Being nice is something that’s important if you have slaves. Or indentured servants. Being fair is a much more reasonable goal when the person has the option to work elsewhere.

5. More people should quit more of the time.
Instead of complaining that companies are not family friendly, how about just quitting? Work to make enough money, then take a break from work. Then work again when you need money.

Many entrepreneurs do this. They pretend to want a corporate job, but they really just need money for their next big idea. More people could do this if they were willing to handle a more erratic salary. Just live off less money and then you will need to be involved in the workforce less of the time. Be better at your job and you would make more money faster when you are in the workforce.

Today people don’t get penalized for quitting to take a break. They get penalized for not making a difference when they are working. Your resume can show job-hopping and gaps and all the other things that used to be death to a resume. But your resume absolutely needs to show that you had significant accomplishments when you were working.

Part of managing a career like this is hiring someone to write your resume to focus on accomplishments. (Nearly everyone who hires me starts out by saying they didn’t really have significant accomplishments in all their jobs. But I’m telling you, it’s never true.)

The other part of managing a career like this is accepting more risk. You quit a job when you’re exhausted, which feels risky. And you also put your personal life on the back burner for a short while, which feels risky.

But I’m not sure there is a better way for us to approach work. And I’m sure there’s not a more honest way.

If I did my life over again, I’d still put work first. It was fun and rewarding to do that. And I’d still stop when I had kids. And when I got bored, I ramped up work and, to be honest, sort of ignored my kids. I think I needed to do that to see that I didn’t like it. I’m not sure how else I’d be able to put work on the back burner now.

I’m not an A player today. And I’m not a top-flight mom. I’m probably mediocre at both. And I think that’s the way I like it. But when my kids are grown, maybe I’ll apply to Amazon.

 

 

99 replies
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  1. Sheena
    Sheena says:

    Wow! A lot of the comments on LinkedIn are extremely sexist and I don’t think they all read the article to the end. I am not sure if they all share the same concern for Steve Jobs’ kids??

    I do think that it would be more interesting to compare productivity and revenue of a companies like Amazon/Yahoo to let’s say a Netflix/Google.

    I also don’t get why Amazon doesn’t employ more people instead of exhausting their current employees. I also don’t think this is as simple as saying, “If you can’t be an A player, quit”. Since we are not living in the 1800s, I have to assume companies care a little bit about their employees. That kind of thinking is probably why depression, suicide, anxiety in teenagers and adults are so prevalent now. I remember reading an article where this 21 year old intern who worked at a financial firm died from lack of sleep. This seems unethical to me and perhaps labor laws need to be adjusted.

    Till then, I am a B player for life.

  2. Chris Chiesa
    Chris Chiesa says:

    Holy shit. Are you insane? Like, clinically diagnosed with a serious brain malfunction? It’s people like you who ruin life for the rest of us. People should be able to get a reliable, livable paycheck while working a number of hours that *does* allow work-life balance. And it *is* possible; my parents did it from the 1950s through the 1980s. By writing what you wrote you are telling companies that it’s okay to demand more than it’s ethically or morally right for them to demand. You’re pushing the world in the wrong direction and I wish you’d cut it out.

  3. Sheena
    Sheena says:

    I really hope we don’t romanticize/ aspire to this kind of culture: “Amazon employees were pushed harder and harder to work faster and faster until they were terminated, they quit or they got injured.” That is really unsettling and an archaic (I hope so) way of doing business- like slavery times archaic.

    And as a customer, I like dealing with companies that treat their workers and environment with respect. I have loved using Amazon in the past and they have great customer service, but I will need to move to Google Play.

  4. Dave
    Dave says:

    I agree transparency is refreshing; so many companies try to portray their lifestyle of work as “work hard, play hard” but the “play” part is hard to find or someone else’s idea of fun. And absolutely, accomplishments and results matter. But what I have observed in many years and many companies is that working harder does not generally get you ahead. There are bursts of consequence…you prepare for a presentation for weeks and then you have 15 minutes to determine whether or not you keep your job and advance or start looking for another job. The employee who is putting in 60 hours weeks is revered–until he’s layed off because the project ended. I could never work in an environment again where people were on my case about whether or not I was working hard enough. Chances are, if the question is being asked, you are not accomplishing enough, and no amount of additional work effort is going to change that.

  5. Mark
    Mark says:

    With this insane piece Penelope Trunk has really shot herself in the foot. Check out the hugely negative reaction to it on linked-in. And the most thoughtful comments here are also those critical of Penelope’s thinking here. My favorites are those coming from outside the US. Having lived abroad now for over 20 years I can say that it is very difficult to see yourself and your country when you never leave it for very long. (And since vacation is taboo in the US, Americans remain ignorant.) Americans and their way of doing business are really in need of an overhaul. Many of us know it, but sooooo many don’t and sadly never will, Penelope included.

  6. VTESI
    VTESI says:

    Agreed with almost all EXCEPT you missed the bleeding obvious – those people doing the crap work at Amazon can’t just “leave” or they would have already done so! In some areas, it’s the only low paid/low educational requirement-job going. So no, many people don’t have the opportunities that you and I and others reading this blog have. Let us not become so successful that we forget how other people live.

  7. Alan
    Alan says:

    Maybe feral children is the future. Their knowledge and behavior has been decreasing every generation. And don’t tell me that writing code is knowledge. Maybe it’s just the next step in evolution to let them grow up to be brutes in a brutal world.

  8. Andre Santos
    Andre Santos says:

    I do understand your style is abrasive on purpose as to get more hits but I still couldn’t disagree more on this article.

    I’m sure there are some cultural differences because I’m in an europe country but still, phrases like this:
    “In this way, it makes sense to me that you get paid well, and you get paid reliably, so you need to put the company before your personal life. ”

    Basically you are reinforcing the “theory” that employees should be extra grateful to have a job and do everything in their reach to contribute to the company well being at the cost of their personal life.

    From my view this is simply idiotic. I’m not the owner of the company, you can’t expect me to sacrifice everything for the company because I’M NOT the owner. If the company does extremely well THE OWNER gets more money, not me. If the company is doing poorly I’m pretty sure I’ll be fired without any major headaches for the owner.

    The owner has the highest risk and also the highest reward, and that’s fine. My problem is if you expect your employees to give the same amount of sacrifices and sweat as the owner. That is simply not going to happen. If people wanted to do that they will risk it and become the owner of their own company. And that is actually fine: the owner can give a few more profit based rewards for the employees that sacrifice everything for the company and can still be happy with their “normal” employees that view their job as it is: a JOB.

    Don’t try to feed that bullshit that employees should be extra grateful and sacrifice their personal life because of the company. Again, I don’t know about you but my experience in my country is that the gap between top-management and bottom-tier is pretty high. Guess who gets paid more if the company goes well? Not the poor employee that gave their weekends.

    Besides the people ALREADY pay a premium for a regular paycheck: they get paid less, exactly because of that security. Everyone I know that went the Freelancer way or owning their own business gets paid more. That’s the difference.

    Besides, I don’t want to live in a world where people give their life, blood, sweat and tears for “the company”. 40 hour per week is enough to get everything done. I feel very sad if a 100 hour week is “normal” for anyone. I’m pretty sure when you are on your grave you won’t think: damm, I should have worked more!
    I’m fine with 100 hour weeks if you understand that’s an exception! Maybe you are starting up your company or something like that, but if you consider that to be “normal” that’s when you should really think about your life.

    And there is clear evidence more hours don’t mean more productivity.
    And now I know why you hate Tim Feriss so much.

    And, by the way, Mr. Bezos disagree with you. So maybe this is only in your head.

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