All the smart kids are getting stuck in traditional professions and are miserable

So today is the start of the new work year, yet unlike the start of a new school year there’s no new, freshly contacted text books or new stationery to help ease the blow. Its pretty depressing knowing that you go from almost 18 years of 16 weeks “annual leave” to just 4. Admittedly my arrival back at work has not been as hectic as I expected it to be. But whilst you would think that I’d be hiring a church choir to sing at my desk and rejoice at this fact, the fact that there’s a lot of downtime is not good when you work in finance. I got back to more rumours of cuts across all banks which obviously go hand in hand with cuts to pay etc. But more than anything, coming back from holidays has made me realise how many people/young professionals are literally depressed at work. 

That whole “Pinstripe Prison” theory is pretty true when you think about it but then its not restricted to corporate professions. What I’m meaning is that most young people that are bankers, lawyers or doctors (ie. the professions we all ultimately did because we had the marks), do not enjoy their work. Its actually pretty scary that some of the smartest people of our generation feel “stuck”, become unmotivated and disillusioned. Worst still is the fact that these are the people that on the balance of probabilities, are best placed to think of ideas. Yet I’d imagine most fall into a hole of working the grind and settling down. Its pretty scary when you think of how much “lost capacity” there is in terms of thinking.

I know there’s that whole argument that Gen Y doesn’t know the meaning of loyalty and blah blah blah. But it makes you wonder whether we have no loyalty or rather  Gen Y’s are being driven into the ground by Baby Boomer bosses. Yep there said it! Baby Boomer bosses (BBB) had everything given to them such that now that they’re in positions of power where they know the right people they still need to keep the junior back to 3am in case they can’t pdf a document whilst they’re travelling in another timezone.

Thus this leads me to the conclusion that today’s modern day genius’ amongst us – the ones who not only possess book smarts but also have managed acquire a work ethic not seen before – is not just imprisoned, but also enslaved. And not in the figurative sense either. Be it doing late night couriers to directors’ houses so that they can review things (apparently email and a printer are beyond the capabilities of said directors), or just being told to wait for mark ups which come 24 hours after expected timing such that you don’t sleep until they come, juniors are now slaves.

So much for working hard at school and university to ensure you have a “promising future”. I think the person who shirks the insitutions and goes out on his/her own is contributing more value to society than any enslaved lemming (including myself).

Anyway that’s probably enough ranting for now.