Wonderful piece by Janan Ganesh in the FT on the life choices made by young bankers and corporate lawyers, and the crazy (work) demands placed on them. I was surprised that he also has junior doctors in his sights.
Yes, the graduates knew the deal when they joined, but the appeal to free will is an argument against almost any labour standards whatever. Nine-year-old Victorian chimney sweeps knew the deal. As for all the talk of character-forging, of battle-hardening: to what end, exactly? The point of a corporate career arc is that work becomes more strategic, less frenzied over time. The early hazing should not be passed off as a kind of Spartan agoge.
The ageing process — as I have lived it, as I have observed it in friends — has convinced me of one thing above all. The deferral of gratification is the easiest life mistake to make. And by definition among the least reversible. A unit of leisure is not worth nearly as much in late or even middle age as it is in one’s twenties. To put it in Goldman-ese, the young should discount the future more sharply than prevailing sentiment suggests.
The first reason should be obvious enough, at least after the past 12 months. There is no certainty at all of being around to savour any hard-won spoils. The career logic of an investment banker (or commercial lawyer, or junior doctor) assumes a normal lifespan, or thereabouts. And even if a much-shortened one is an actuarial improbability, a sheer physical drop-off in the mid-thirties is near-certain. Drink, sex and travel are among the pleasures that call on energies that peak exactly as graduate bankers are wasting them on work.
I don’t know enough to be confident about clinical medicine but I do often wonder how things will look in a decade or so. Many junior medical jobs are awful, the ties and bonds between the beginning, middle and end of medical careers sundered. Many drop out of training, some treading water in warmer climes, but with what proportion returning? Some — a small percentage perhaps— move into other jobs, and the few I know who have done this, I would rate among the best of their cohort. Of those who stick to the straight and narrow, many now wish to work less than full time, although whether this survives the costs of parenthood, I do not know. At the other end all is clear: many get out as soon as they can, the fun long gone, and the fear of more pension changes casting an ever larger shadow, before the final shadow descends.
Medicine remains — in one sense — a narrow and technical career. The training is long, and full confidence in one’s own skills may take twenty years or more to mature. By that time, it is hard to change course. This personal investment in what is a craft, leaves one vulnerable to all those around you who believe success is all about line-managing others and generic skills.
I am unsure how conscious (or how rational) many decisions about careers are, but there may well be an invisible hand at play here, too. I imagine we may see less personal investment in medical careers than we once did. It’s no longer a vocation, just a job, albeit an important one. Less than comforting words, I know — especially if you are ill.