Is work your life?

I feel very strongly about work-life balance issue but have never organized my thoughts and so this is my attempt to put this in writing. I have worked in London and New York for about equal lengths of time and therefore, have been exposed two very different mentalities in terms of how people view time off from work and needless to say, I totally admire Britishers for their clarity of thought. Let me start with basics, in London I had 26 days of paid leave, whereas in New York, I have 15 days. I don't think the number of days are as strictly followed and it depends on your desk (I think traders need to take mandatory 2 weeks off in some places), your manager, how busy work is in a particular year etc. When I was working in London, I guess I was lucky to be in a team where senior managers had very clear boundaries about balancing life with work. They all took their days off, helped to cover for colleagues who wanted to take time off and we never worked late. I can never forget that my boss once told me as we were wrapping up at 7:30 pm that 'this culture of working late is not good and tomorrow we should finish by 6'!! I was taken aback given I was fresh out of school and had heard horror stories about i-bank hours! Once one of my managers asked me if I needed time off to go home to India as it didn't seem like I had taken any holidays in a long time! Let me qualify by saying that this was a top ranked team and we were very productive. Don't get me wrong, life wasn't a party, we worked hard and I guess everyone knew unsaid rules like everyone can't take off at the same time and you can't take off during some busy times in a year etc.



Now when I was moving to NYC, everyone told me the US is much more competitive and hard and forget about even using the 15 days you get or going home at 6pm. With this background, I was more determined to set boundaries as I don't believe in face time at all. I will stay at work as long as I need to to finish my work but not a minute more. Luckily, I got a manager who was like-minded (yeah, I know, I am probably jinxing it as we speak!). However, I did notice the culture difference. Americans feel proud to tell their colleagues that they haven't taken a single day off in the year, whereas a similar statement in the UK would've met with "don't you have a life?"! One person told me he didn't take a single day off in the first 5 years of his career and my only (unsaid) reaction was why? It doesn't sound like a very smart thing to do in my books. In general the culture is more individualistic as people don't want to be 'out of touch' for long for fear of a colleague gaining ground in their absence. In UK, everyone seemed comfortable that a team member is covering for them.


Anyway, I don't know why the rant because I am quite happy with my work life balance as my manager is an angel in that aspect. And some of my friends who curse me everytime I take off will testify to this. I guess I feel strongly about very few things. I am more the laidback person and had to rack my brains when someone asked me what are you passionate about but thats the subject of another post.