Maya is a new recruit at a large professional services firm. She works on many multi-disciplinary project teams for clients worldwide. Her aptitude at picking up new things and her exceptional work ethic, are serving her well on her way up the corporate ladder. But can she keep the pace up? She’s not the only high performer climbing.
Getting your feet under you
Maya had been on the job for 6 months. After completing her undergraduate degree, she went on a month-long Europe trip then started her dream job. Working as a junior analyst for one of the big corporations, has been top of mind all throughout university. The environment was fast-paced and the work rewarding. There was always something to do; a new project kick-off, a reporting deadline, an analysis to be ran. Maya was proudly, often the first one in the office each morning. When she’d work from home, with the company’s hybrid setup, she strived to always be the first online. At the end of a typical work day, only the cleaners and a couple colleagues would be left in the office.
Already, project managers from different departments were starting to ask her to join their teams. Maya grew excited thinking about her first first work trip and client visit.
Learning the ropes
The firm has many projects on the go at any given time. Anyone can lead a project, and the more senior staff tend to head up the bigger and more complex pieces of work. While employees have directors and managers they technically report to, staff are expected to follow instruction of each of their project managers. This can get tricky if you’re working on multiple projects at once, but most people figure it out.
One of Maya’s mentors at the company, is a senior analyst and associate named Scott. He was a great technical resource on her first project, and since then Maya knows she can rely on Scott for advice. He has been working at the firm for over a decade, and is widely respected.
Both Maya and Scott report to Lars – the department head. But Lars doesn’t spend much time with his twenty-some-odd reports. He’s there more for administrative support and making high-level decisions, including hiring, firing, and vacation requests. If someone has a work-related issue, they’re encouraged to resolve it with their peers, and only to go to Lars if escalation is required. Lars spends most of his time acting as technical expert on key projects, and project managing cases himself.
The blurred lines of personal and professional
‘Hey Maya, do you want to go climbing after work today? 5PM at the gym.’ Maya receives a text at lunch time from a friend of hers.
‘Sorry, I can’t, going to be working late today.’ she replies
‘that’s what you said last week!’ the friends teases in retort.
This was typical during her first few months at the new job. But eventually, these messages slow down as Maya’s availability for her old friends wanes. Now, she spends more and more time with her co-workers. After-work drinks. Dinner parties over the weekend. Taking vacations together. They talk about work when they’re out at social events. Sometimes it’s excitement over an upcoming project, but more often than not it’s gossiping and complaining about this consultant and that project lead. Without realizing it, Maya’s alcohol tolerance surpasses her university days’.
Maya goes on her first client visit, and then is in and out of town every subsequent month for work. At the end of the year, Lars awards Maya with a hefty raise and bonus, mirroring the company’s performance since she came on board. She celebrates with her work friends who are also on a high from their end of year bonus. Everyone from out of town is flown in for the holiday party to celebrate.
Social credit and reputations
“Hey Scott, are you going to the holiday party this weekend?” Maya asks as she passes her mentor and friend in the hallway one day.
She encouraged him to go. Maya didn’t say this to Scott, but she had heard a rumour going around about him, that Scott had fallen out of favour with company leadership. Since his second child was born that year, he wasn’t taking on as many projects, and there was speculation he wasn’t working as hard anymore.
“Hey Maya! No, I won’t be able to make it. My in-laws are going to be in town.” He replies.
“Oh, that’s too bad! You should just come for the dinner portion.” Maya suggests, feeling sorry for Scott on more than one account. “Kind of bad timing for their visit.”
“It’s okay, we’ll get some help with the kids while they’re here. I’ll probably join for a beer on Friday.” Scott almost never joins Friday beers, so that’s a win for Maya. She didn’t know how to help professionally, but she figured she could help Scott build back some of his social credit in the company.
Realizing they should both get back to work, Scott and Maya wave to each other and say their goodbyes.
Moving on up in the world
The holiday party comes and goes. Maya has a blast with her new best friends. January brings even more projects for the company. Maya is given more responsibility, not needing as much oversight of her work. The year flies by in a blur, and another holiday season is coming up. Maya can’t be more excited. The company’s success over the past calendar year means hiring has also gone up. She feels like a bit of a big shot, showing all the new staff and juniors how to navigate the firm.
“Okay, you have to go this year!” Maya shows up at Scott’s desk one day.
But Scott has a conflict again, this time it’s something to do with his kid’s school. “But we should go for coffee and catch up next week when you’re back from that client visit.”
Maya’s main work social group is divided on the upcoming social event. One of the guys, who used to be the life of the party, has a new girlfriend and she’s pressuring him to spend less time at work and work-related functions. Another colleague took time off recently, and they haven’t actually heard from her in a couple months… The busyness of the successful year seems to be wearing a lot of her colleagues thin.
Taking time for catch-ups
Scott and Maya meet for coffee the next week. The rumours of Scott’s precarious position have gotten stale, but she hears whispers often enough to know he no longer commands the respect he did a couple years ago. Still, he’s a great mentor for her, and a good friend.
“Still going a million-miles a minute?” Scott asks Maya.
“You know it! is there any other way?” her smile radiates.
Scott smiles back, but replies sombrely, “you’ll either find a way to slow down, or you’ll burn out my friend.”
“I’m used to ‘burning the candle at both ends’, I can handle it.” Maya reassures her mentor, then teases him, “You should worry about yourself, old man.”
They catch up on what each other are working on, and Maya shares a few pieces of gossip she’s heard throughout the office.
No longer the lowest rung on the ladder
On Maya’s next work trip, she’s with a more junior analyst who she’s showing the ropes. As well as her friend, Evan, an intermediate analyst and the project’s manager. Maya brings up Scott’s comment about burnout.
“Oh ya, Scott had to go on stress leave a few years ago. So he’s super sensitive about burnout.” Evan suggested. “He’s not wrong though, there’s a fine line between working hard and burning yourself out.”
“But shouldn’t we want to work hard?” Maya asked.
“I think so.” Evan replies. “Plus, you kind of need to. Otherwise, you’ll be in the line of fire for layoffs.”
“Layoffs?” Maya asks dumfounded.
“Ya, layoffs are super common. Not just for us, but everywhere! We’ve been lucky the last two years. But in my first year, there were three different rounds of layoffs!” Evan is casual about it. “Fortunately I was cheap labour at the time, so they kept me around.”
Maya is mildly horrified. Her only experience with firing, was a line chef who kept coming to work late at one of her summer jobs. “So, wait. Are you saying, I need to work harder? or are you saying to slow down?”
“Productivity is the most important thing. I’m not saying you need to work harder… but if you kick it into cruise control now, you’ll be looking for a new job as soon as company performance takes a hit.” Evan shrugs, “Vice versa, though, if you keep working this hard, you’ll definitely burn out! And that will also be bad for you. Don’t do that.”
Slightly lost, Maya doesn’t have a response.
“Look,” Evan stops closes the laptop for a minute. “If you want to be successful, especially at this company. If you want to keep getting those juicy bonuses and promotions. You need to make sure your productivity keeps going up, or at least stays the same. Again, I’m not saying you need to work harder… there are ways to work smarter.”
So many things, such little time
When Maya and Scott catch up next, it’s a few months later. Maya can’t remember the last time she spent longer than a week in her own bed, the work trips have been so frequent lately. She’s had to cancel on several social engagements this month, due to last minute ‘change of plans’ from her different project managers.
“I wish I could say ‘no’, you know?” Maya expresses to her mentor, once they finally sit down for a long overdue catch-up.
“You know you are allowed to ‘say no’. One of the major health and safety tenets is the right to refuse unsafe work.” Scott explains.
“It’s not ‘unsafe’,” Maya sighs, “it’s just, a lot.”
“Getting enough sleep; being in the right headspace mentally; feeling comfortable in your personal life. Those are really important to the work we do, that anyone does.” Scott smiles warmly, trying to hide his concern for his colleague. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah, I’m great! But I should really ask Lars about vacation… I have 3 months of banked time. Think he’ll let me take it off consecutively?”
“Ha, no. But you should still ask him.”
A chat with the boss
Making sure to go in to the office on the days Lars is usually in, Maya finally finds him alone at his desk one morning. Knocking quietly on the doorframe, she announces her presence.
“Hey Lars, I was wondering if you have a minute?”
“Hey Maya! Yes, come right in, sit down.” Smiling widely and gesturing across his desk at the seat facing him.
Sitting down, Maya asks, “I was wondering. Would it be okay to book some time off?” Lars was knodding and smiling, so she continued. “I’ve been traveling a lot for work lately, and have racked up a ton of banked time. Would you be okay with me taking a longer period off… say like 3 months?”
Lars let the question hang in the air for a while before answering. It was probably a few seconds, but for Maya it felt like minutes had passed in silence between them. “3 months is quite a long time to take off.” He furrows his white eyebrows. “Have you asked your project managers about it?”
“Not yet, but two of my projects are wrapping up soon.” She thought in her head, that the other two projects had mainly junior work left too. But after Evan’s warning about layoffs, Maya was worried about becoming redundant. “I’ll speak to them about it, but I think the timing will work out well.”
“Well, it’s important to take time off.” Lars stated. Despite the fact that Maya hadn’t seen him take a single day off in the 2.5 years she had worked for him. “As long as your PMs are okay with the time, and you have enough of it, that works for me.”
Feeling relieved, Maya thanked her boss for his time and went back to her workstation.
One does not simply take time off
The first project manager she would have to ask for permission to take time off from, was Evan. This was her biggest, and longest lasting project. Plus, her and Evan were friends, and Maya thought this would be the easiest request.
“You want to take how much time off?” Evan snorted when Maya asked for 3 months. “You know we’re just about to start phase 3, and I need someone of your calibre for that.”
“I thought, I could kick it off, and then it’ll mostly be junior work for a while. I’ll still have my phone with me while I’m off. And then by the time I come back, I’ll jump right in to the stuff you need me most on.” Maya rambled off the solution before Evan had time to push back more.
Sitting back for a moment, Evan eventually agreed, “Okay, but I’ll need you checking emails weekly, and joining some meetings. Just one or two probably.”
Maya thought Evan would have been more supportive about her vacation plan, it was Evan who had inspired her to look into traveling South America in the first place. But realizing she was going to leave them in a bit of a lurch, Maya was grateful to find a compromise. “Ya, that’s fine. That’s great! Thank you!”
The other project managers were similar to Evan. They lamented losing Maya’s expertise for that long. So one by one, Maya agreed to call in to the odd meeting here and there, and promised to be checking her email.
The customer is always right
Her trip was fast approaching, and Maya worked through a month of weekends to ensure she was caught up and even ahead of all her projects. She wanted to minimize the amount of work she’d have to do during her vacation.
At 3PM on the Friday before heading out, she refreshed her inbox.
Hello Maya, we’ve encountered some discrepancies between your report and our primary consultant. I’m wondering if you can run the data again and just confirm your numbers are correct. Thanks, Bill
A bombshell. It would take hours to re-run that dataset. In a mad rush, Maya forwarded the email to her junior colleague and asked him to pick up the analysis: ‘just text me if you have any questions’.
What Maya didn’t know, was the junior analyst was about to sign off for the day. He replied with, ‘sure sounds good!’, then promptly shut his computer down for the day.
In a tizzy, Maya left the office, packed for her trip, double and triple checked all her visas. When she finally got to her first destination, it was late Sunday night, and she was ready for bed. If she had more energy, she would check her work email. But she was even too tired to collect the wifi password from the hostel desk.
Heartattack in email form
Monday morning, she woke up to two missed calls. Panicked, she connected to wifi and found two more emails from the client. The first one:
Hey Maya, just wondering how that analysis is going. Our team is up against some tight deadlines this week. Thanks! Bill
and then a second that followed immediately after
Maya, I saw your vacation responder. I’m cc-ing Evan just to make sure this gets prioritized.
Then another email from Evan.
Maya, what the heck??? I tried to call you TWICE. This client is way too important to piss off. Tell me you’re on it.
and from Evan to the client
Hey Bill, thanks for looping me in. We’re on your request don’t you worry! Maya’s out of town right now, so she might be a little slow to answer emails, but she’s still available and has been in touch.
Maya spent her first full day of vacation back and forth with Evan via email and on the phone with her junior colleague who was processing the data. She would have just done it herself, but the hostel wifi was too unstable to handle her using a VPN. Maya made a note to test the wifi first at the next location before she booked in.
Work never sleeps
The rest of the trip was similar. Panicked emails from clients, panicked emails from project managers. Meetings late at night or early in the morning to account for timezone changes. She managed to pack in a lot of touristing and adventure, but it was a blur. Looking back at her phone pictures, she had a hard time remembering which country or town or site she was at in each of them.
“How was South America?” Scott asked Maya once she was back.
“It was really cool, but I wish I’d had more time there, you know?”
“You were there for three months! What, you thinking of moving there?”
“No, it’s just, there was so much work stuff to do while I was there I wish I’d spent more time exploring.”
“I see,” Scott nodded, “next time, you should try and completely shut off from work. It’s much more enjoyable.”
“Anyway, it’ll be a while before I can take vacation again. But hopefully I built up enough credit this time, that it won’t be so difficult getting approvals next time around.” The projects were all moving along well, and one of them was miraculously ahead of schedule. No clients had left either.
“Maya, the work’s always going to be there you know. You’re allowed to take a break sometimes.”
“But if I take a break, who will get the work done!?” She was joking, but both Maya and Scott knew it was only half a joke.
“Someone else will pick it up, or they won’t.” Scott decided to answer seriously. “What does it matter?”
Maya tried to take Scott’s advice, but the more she became part of the company, the harder it was to listen to what he had to say. It was counterintuitive to the world she lived in. What her friends were doing, what her managers were doing, what they all encouraged. A quarterly report came out unfavourable. Then another. And before they could go on their next coffee catch up, Maya found Scott’s desk emptied out one day.
Lessons learned
This is a fictional story, with fake characters and scenarios. But rooted in real life workplace experiences, it’s a story we can learn from as leaders and managers.
Summary of takeaways
- Find diverse mentors. Maya found mentorship in both Scott, and Evan, in this story. Even though Evan and Scott had different perspectives, priorities, and experiences at work, much of their advice to Maya was complimentary. This helped Maya see and understand their wisdom more easily, hearing similar things in different ways.
- Be mindful of your sacrifices. In this story, Maya let go of many friendships in return for a better social credit at her firm. Caught up in the excitement of the new job and impressing her senior co-workers, she stopped fostering existing relationships. She made the choice, intentionally or unintentionally, of establishing herself at the company over any personal life outside of work.
- One person’s fun can be another person’s nightmare. To many people at this fictional company, the holiday party is the event of the year. Drinking, and dancing, and socializing for a whole weekend on the company dime is peak fun. For others, this is their worst nightmare. Appreciate your take might not be the same as someone else’s.
- Advocate for yourself. No one is keeping track of your mental capacity, or if you need a vacation or not. No one is going to book breaks for you in the corporate world. Maya learns the hard way that the only person who can advocate for her time off is herself.
- Developing trust with your coworkers is hard, but well worth it. In this story, there is a low level of trust across coworkers. They may all act like friends, but everyone is looking out for themselves, sometimes at the expense of others.
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