A manager's stool - four months on

Given four months have elapsed since I took up a new professional role. I’m seeing the back of the shake-off period, yet I am still far from being a seasoned leader.

The experience from Szlachetna Paczka, which according to my predecessor on the area leader stool, should have been a dry run ahead of taking charge of a team in a corporate world, has indeed paid off.

I started my stint with a series of sign-up interviews with members of my team. They were meant to mostly break the ice and apparently they have done that job, but those one-over-one talks were mostly to get to know each other's expectations, working style and concerns.

Being knowledgeable in one's area of expertise definitely helps, but is way too little to get ahead as a manager. Leadership involves making use of soft skills. If people ask me how to describe the nature of the recent transition, I reply my role is about solving conflicts, managing emotions and reaching rotten compromises. My self-insight also reveals my paternal instinct is laid on my team.

The most frustrating aspect on the new role are meetings, or rather their number and senselessness of many of them. Their multitude is an aftermath of remote work in covid times when attending a videoconference was a proof of being busy at work. I aim to skip as many calls as possible (getting away with it so far), aiming to keep those I partake in short and finished with conclusions or homework. I frequently do catch up with simpler tasks in the background, but all in all multitasking, critical not to fall behind really badly, is debilitating.

With respect to decisiveness, I have had no inhibitions rising up to this. Mostly likely because I have long been fed up with senior managers getting paid for decision-making and shunning such responsibility.

Since the beginning of the year I have constantly been overloaded with excessive duties, regularly short of time, learning to live with overdue stuff despite working overtime and not getting extra paid for that (the Polish labour code does not envisage overtime pay for managers).

A bright glimmer of hope is that soon 3 out of my 8 corpo-children will be taken away from me (a new manager hired this month). Sadly, people around her (including me) are short of time to onboard her, which is an absurdity since she can't take over some of our work because of our ineptitude.

All in all, life has become more stressful and fatigue-abundant. Over weekends I keep away from work and my mind is free of work-related thoughts, but even despite that it takes me much longer to regenerate. Long-term weariness is also a side effect of not taking longer holidays since June 2025, a shortage of days off I might catch up with no earlier than in late May.

Becoming a manager (at work)

For many years I would think leadership was not for me. I preferred to pursue the alternative professional development path, i.e. becoming an expert in a certain area, having an independent advisory-profiled position and not having to wrangle with any subordinates.

I revised my approach in 2022 when I took over as an area leader in Szlachetna Paczka. I was in charge of 25 people, recruited by my seasoned companions or myself, found my way around it stunningly well, which was additionally backed by glowing praise towards my management style expressed in the feedback (passed on anonymously to my bosses) past the edition.

I was lucky to have reasonable and reliable people in my team and back then I realised the comfort of being a boss lies in the team you lead. Wise, reliable and communicative people can make leadership a pleasure, while the opposite type of people can turn it into a nuisance and an ordeal.

The generously employer-subsidised (until March 2027) Skoda Octavia has hindered my motivation to seek new challenges outside my current workplace, hence for a while I had been on a lookout for an opportunity window, i.e. vacancy on a managerial position. In March 2025 one of senior B-1 managers decided to quit. His departure triggered a knock-on effect which resulted in a team head vacancy to be filled.

The recruitment process was more demanding than I thought and I can boast of approaching it with carefully-thought-out plan and vision. I believe this contributed most to my nomination. I did not have to prove my hard skills, as I had been doing that for past 11 years. In a modern corporation soft skills matter most and they are examined during interviews. With hindsight I recall those checks as suitable for a senior executive rather than for an ordinary team leader.

I am looking forward to new challenges, yet with some fears at the back of my head. I slightly worry if my subordinates accept me. A crucial detail is that I am returning in a different role to the department where I worked between 2018 and 2023. On top, there is a risk some people I will be in charge of applied for the same position and were rejected. I will need to learn my team members' work style and come to terms with the fact not everybody is an anti-procrastinator, not everybody's business English is as good as mine, not everybody minds neatness of documents as I do (apologies for this one-off lack of humility). I will be forced to attend some dead-end meetings which since the onset of remote working have become a plague in corporations. Their side effect is work piling up and needed to be done overtime for which I will no longer be eligible a compensation (such is the labour code in Poland). And on top, I will need to grapple with office politics...

The new chapter officially starts tomorrow, but customarily for internal transfers, the transition from the current to the new position is actually a process spread over time. Keep fingers crossed for me.

An internal transfer

In six months it will have been a decade since I joint my current employer. With ups and downs and moments of both satisfaction and frustration, the overall balance of that professional relationship is positive, hence I'm soldiering on.

My first promotion (to a "senior analyst" position) came into effect in January 2018 and it involved a transfer to a parallel unit. I have carried on here until now, with one more promotion (I am an "expert" since September 2022) along the way. Six years in one place make up nearly a half of my career and are much enough to necessitate a refreshment. 2023 was the most difficult year on my professional path. An uphill portfolio of clients, instrumental role in an uphill multinational project and uphill mentoring to non-promising juniors have taken their toll on me. The workload at times was unbearable. I worked very efficiently, but could not make it within 8 hours, so I had to do overtime, frequently handling two things at the same time, despite that I got behind with work and assertively refused to take up even more tasks on my back. In December I was sick of it...

At the beginning of 2023 my previous (2018 - 2022) manager took over headship of a newly set up specialised financed unit. We'd got on with each other more than well, so in 2Q2023 we began negotiating my transfer to his new bereau. A green light was in place in late May 2023, with the very transfer delayed until early 2024 to let me sort several things out and to give my managers time to find two FTEs (speaks volumes of my workload) to replace me (they failed to do so).

In the new role, starting over on 1 February, though the transition period has begun now, I will need to learn a lot. I will see the back of taking care of not particularly bright juniors. Hopefully, my workload  declines, to be closer to "reasonable", which will be still a step ahead after what I have gone through in 2023. Combing career development with slowing down appears to be a challenge, time will tell if I am up to it.

Doing overtime :(

Regular readers of the blog might recall some time ago I posted a write-up of numerous goings-on at work. Though things have settled down a bit, my workload remains excessive. As promised by my employer, I got my first overtime allowance for 1Q2023 (actually for February and March only). Not a large amount of money, net-of-tax a four-digit amount, with “1” to the left.

The rollercoaster carried on in early April, so I requested some overtime orders (a manager must order an employee to work overtime). In the first week of the month my request was approved, but in the week following Easter, when I had to toil away intensively for up to 12 hours a day and after knocking off I could not string a sentence together, my request was turned down. The refusal was justified by my managers by the supposed termination of exceptional circumstances which occurred in 1Q2023.

Fortunately, my jaw did not draw open for long, so without second thoughts I instantly came up with three ways out of the absurd situation. First – they keep on paying me for doing overtime. Second – they reduce my workload. Third – I reconsider my career plans. Here they were up to the task, since they offered they would like to choose between the first and the second option and revert to me with a proposal. It ended up with me being allowed to request overtime pay until the end of 2Q2023. They pledged afterwards my workload gets reasonable, a promise I put no faith in.

For the time being I am focusing on surviving by the end of 2Q2023 (no fortnight-long holidays due in late spring this year) and getting a compensation for the inconvenience of working far more than 40 hours a week.

The squabble over my overtime pay has also mobilised me to browse job advertisements for the first time since 2017 and do trying to find out what wages competitors offer. The outcome of short research was that I would find it hard to negotiate a basic salary at the par with my current one and give up on generous (above-market) bonuses (my bonus for tough 2022 was effectively my 13^th, 14^th, 15^th, 16^th and 17^th salary this year). The potential reward for much lower earnings could be potentially lower workload, possibly at the expense of handling tasks below my (pardon my lack of modesty – superb) competencies. Thus I have become a hostage of money…

The recent state of affairs has also made me reconsider priorities in life. I want the frequent sitting overtime to be a temporary measure, while in the mid-term, I prefer to renounce the overtime compensation (which will not make me much richer) and have more time for living my life, not sacrificing it to a callous corporation.

Next post in three weeks, since I am off to Wisła for the long weekend and the shortened working week.

Credit Suisse...

…has become a history. The demise of the legend of the European banking might symbolise a mini-banking crisis witnessed in early 2023. I deliberately underline its small scale, as comparing to the meltdown in late 2008, the current tribulations pose no major risk to the financial system. Nevertheless, the insolvency of the Silicon Valley Bank has reminded about terms such as bail-out, Chapter 11, deposit insurance.

The sixteenth largest bank in the USA had a quite specific portfolio of risky exposures to tech start-ups and venture capital businesses. Many of them no longer thrived as the pandemic officially came to an end, so online ventures had to wind down. Besides, several businesses could not withstand interest rate hikes to level unseen in the USA since 17 years. For one of the banks this turned out to be a recipe for a disaster, while the rest of the banking sector carry on. Investors indeed reacted to the collapse of SVB, but the sell-off on stock exchanges reflected uncertainty, rather than panic.

Credit Suisse going under has surprise nobody keeping track of the banking sector and the takeover by UBS is to ensure a soft landing to the financial system. The lesson to be learnt is to keep away from murky institutions, a label Credit Suisse had worked hard for. On this occasion I recalled being recruited by CS in 2017 and being turned down on account of exorbitant expectations towards my pay. Time has proven that deal was not meant to be nailed down.

The recent opinion of European Court of Justice on inequality of rights in case a CHF mortgage loan agreement is nullified also cast a shadow of doubt on stability of the banking system in Poland. In fact whoever panics is overreacting. The mortgages in CHF are in fact being slowly written down for nearly a decade and most of the burden has been absorbed. As tackling the problem was eventually spread over time, losses could be gradually absorbed by banks. Currently only some banks with the biggest exposures to mortgages in CHF might be in need of capital injection is the ECJ ruling (binding, unlike the aforementioned opinion), but the risk of a Polish bank being on a brink of collapse is low.

Investors feared the turmoil in the financial sector could spill over to the real economy, hence stock exchanges and commodities were in the red in March 2023. If you bet the markets are overreacting, than an opportunity to buy up underpriced assets has cropped up. Lower prices of crude oil and other commodities can also contribute to faster disinflation, which in turn is likely to boost economic revival.

Tribulations at work

For a while I have not shared many news from the corporate front, where the goings-on have been anything, but uneventful in recent months.

In September 2022 I was awarded a promotion. I had not held out for it, I had not strived for it, it came unbidden, although I perceive it as a well-deserved distinction. It involved a below-inflation pay rise, theoretically the same scope of duties, but in practice I am supposed to serve as consultant / advisor to less competent employees. That very change has not been a tremendous one.

In early December 2022 I learnt my manager with whom I had worked for 5 years would be promoted as of January 2023 and would be in charge of a newly created bureau. His promotion was well-earned too and I wished him all the best on the new career path, but on the other hand I regretted our paths parted for a while.

Also in December 2022 the vacancies we had had in our team and which generated additional workload were filled. Instead of hiring one senior analyst, somebody resolved to take on two absolute freshmen (graduates). I heard payroll of two junior analysts was lower than amount claimed by experienced professionals. Whether such savings pay off is debatable, since it takes much more time and effort before freshmen become value-generating staff.

In early January 2023 it transpired that the head of my department would go on a six-month sabbatical starting with the beginning of February. Actually it would not mean a great change, had it not been for a fact his responsibility for co-ordinating a multi-geography project on Poland level has been laid on me.

On 16 January 2023 my new manager had his first day at work. He is an experienced professional, open-minded, communicative, competent man and after three weeks I believe he is one of few outstanding bosses. In the meantime I have to assist him in finding his way around the new organisation, but this effort already pays off.

On the same day I became a mentor for the two freshmen, with a mission to bring them up into card-carrying credit analysts. So far my efforts go mostly down the drain. They lack basic knowledge SGH graduates should possess. This could be made up for with a bit of time and patience, but their brightness leaves a lot to be desired. They are determined to learn, but instead of comprehending causations, they attempt to memorise things, which does not bode them well as analysts. I have already shared my observations with our managers and at least they agreed after a probationary period some difficult decisions might need to be taken.

Under all the circumstances above, my workload is now a bit of excessive – my portfolio of clients is larger than of any other person in the department (and some of accounts are troublesome), I co-ordinate a project, I look after freshmen and help my boss. In return I have negotiated official overtime I register and will be paid for. In a short term, this makes sense and is equivalent to a 30% - 40% pay rise, but within a perspective of a few months I would definitely prefer not to work more than 45 hours a week and spend my off-work time in a more appealing way that doing overtime.

Bullshit Jobs - book review, plus some odd thoughts

After more than ten years into corporate credit analysis, without hesitation I can assure I appreciate my job. Despite some drawbacks, particularly the necessity to work overtime more or less often, it continues to offer me learning opportunities, it is not repeatable and far from boredom. I also believe it brings value added to the society and to the economy.

In simple words my job is to assure that money depositors store on bank accounts is safely lent to large companies. I dabble in traditional banking which is about taking deposits and granting loans rather than devising exotic financial instruments detached from real economy to earn money on speculation. Here I recall a scene from Margin Call film, in which one of characters, a quant who has just lost a job in investment banking, compares himself to a civil engineer whose job has tangible outcomes, such as a bridge. Sadly, the author of the book paints traditional and modern banking with the same brush and claims both are totally useless to the society, thus bearing testimony to his economic ignorance.

I have never thought my job can be socially useless, but several times I thought of people whose jobs brings little value added, therefore a few months ago I queued up in my library to borrow Bullshit Jobs – a bestseller book which dwells on a growing problem of people whose occupation seems to make no sense.

The sight of people whose jobs make no sense brings to mind communist economic regime, in which joblessness was voluntary, yet my no means somebody having a job was doing something useful. Pursuit of full employment was, however, characteristic not only to communism, but to Keynesianism worked up in the wake of the Great Depression in 1930s. Back then, when unemployment was a huge drag on the demand side of the economy, employment was increased at all cost in order to kick-start the economy and to trigger a more natural demand from those finally offered a job. Since that time, low unemployment has become one of key goals of economic policymakers, commonly acknowledged by societies, with demerits of such agenda (i.e. the bullshit jobs) being considered less harmful than higher joblessness.

So when the heck is your job a bullshit one? The author comes up with a simple definition – your occupation is senseless if you do something and nobody notices it. Fine, familiar with the definition, I revisit my position and scope of duties, which have evolved over more than a decade.

Keeping in mind the broader sense of what I do, I notice particular mundane tasks which actually waste my time, such as:
- filling in too many tables to feed the bureaucratic monster of managerial reporting,
- ticking off policy compliance checkpoints – a side effect of regulators’ effort to save the banking industry from subsiding at it did in 2008,
- attending too many meetings, some which are not particularly productive.

While being unable to influence the two former time-consuming activities, I try to take control of meeting into my hands and not let discussions drift into pointless threads. Instead, I ensure that conversations are straight into the point, concise and add value for every participant (I hate it when a meeting is attended by 10 people, but only 3 or 4 open mouths).

I also discern a problem of being supervised by too many managers. If I work on a transaction, it usually needs to be talked over with my team leader, with the head of my department, with the head of my area and with the chief credit officer. One person (me) to do the sheer work, four to supervise me. If I can see excess employment in banking, it is one managerial positions, where array of duties pertaining to supervising, co-ordinating, managing, delegating, facilitating is excessive as well.

I see it eye to eye with the author that companies have focused too much on improving processes and they waste resources on their pursuit to improve something, while benefits are meagre. This happens when you hire people to enhance processes instead of leaving it to ingenuousness of staff for who a process is a daily bread. A perfect example is the implementation of Agile methodology by my current employer. We, normally working people used come to the office, sit at our desks and knuckled down to work. They came to talk about working, design working. As we commented on it, we worked, they talked their heads off about working, their work was to take our work into pieces. Three years into the pursuit of the Agile, I observe the effects of trial-and-error search for improvement, rather than anything which has tangibly streamlined my duties.   

The authors aptly notices the recent decades have brought a substantial increase in productivity which firstly ceased (since 1970s) to translate into higher earnings of rank-and-files and secondly did send employment on decline. As machines took over several mundane and physically destructive jobs from people, not only machine operators, designers and maintenance crews had to come into place. The increase in productivity somehow sparked off a lot of administrative functions without which industries had functioned before. My bank last year hired a well-being officer. I have no idea what that person does apart from posting some useless notes on the intranet. If my employer fosters my well-being they should ensure I do not spend too much time working, so that I am not stressed-out and have time to family, friends, to relax, to do sports and keep fit. I will take care of myself if I have enough time and money. I do not need to be looked after by a well-being officer whose salary decreases my bonus (if the bank’s net income is to stay intact)!

Moreover, new industries have emerged which I consider spongers. Over those more than ten years I have singled out two professions which are very costly, but add little value. First are consultants, who get paid for borrowing your watch to tell you the time (14 years after reading that joke for the first time and having seen effects of work of big four companies and the top-class advisors, such as Boston Consulting Group or McKinsey, I am more than sure their contribution is not worth money they are paid), second are (some, but not all) intermediaries, living off commissions from transaction parties, with special focus on estate agents, whose reputation in Poland has been duly and deservedly tainted.

The author in his book fails to dwell on the phenomenon of pretending and deceit, which functions in public and private corporate world. Employees pretend they work, an employer pretends to appreciate their work. This vicious circle keeps turning, because nearly everyone has a vested interest in preserving it. I believe the author wrongfully points out people whose jobs are senseless are genuinely unhappy. I believe lots of people are glad to be paid for doing little and just some percent (including them) need to see the sense and value added in what they do.

Impressions after reading? The book is too leftist. Despite my restraint to joyfully embrace a free-market agenda, I find it hard to hold dear the idea of the basic income, especially as a measure to root out bullshit jobs. The author has probably not had too deep insights into organisations, as some of his observations are right at the first sight, but at second thoughts, doubts whether his straightforward view of the world is accurate begin to appear. And finally, the book is a reminder humans are social creatures and are not cut out for isolation – this ought to be repeated to employers who have cherished cost savings generated by home office and want to stick to such solution after the pandemic is brought under control.