WSJ Your Money Briefing - How to Get What You Want Out of Work and Life

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

In her final appearance as WSJ’s “Work & Life” columnist, Rachel Feintzeig joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss the biggest takeaways she’s learned from covering careers for more than a decade. They discuss who’s winning the balance of power between workers and bosses, how Covid and Gen Z have disrupted the workplace, and when to know it's time to look for a new job. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And now on to the show. Here's Your Money Briefing from Monday, November 18th. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. COVID, hybrid work schedules, the arrival of Gen Z. They've all changed, even disrupted the workplace in just the past several years. And WSJ Work and Life columnist Rachel Feinzig has guided our readers and listeners through it all.

After a nearly 20 year career at WSJ, she's sharing her biggest takeaways. Any way you feel about work is totally normal. Caring too much or not caring at all, like it's all pretty much fine. You can still be really good at your job while letting it have less of a hold over your entire life and identity

And this isn't a problem for everyone, but I think it's a problem for a lot of us We'll talk with Rachel about dealing with bosses co-workers and knowing when it's time to get a new job That's after the break This podcast is brought to you by CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, offering the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes. CME Group, where risk meets opportunity. After four years of writing the WSJ's Work and Life column and talking about it here on Your Money Briefing, Rachel Feinsig is moving on. Rachel, you're leaving us.

We love having you on the show. I know. It's totally surreal and it's very bittersweet. I've been at the company for almost 17 years now, but yes, it's true, I am leaving to try to pursue some book writing and to spend some more time with my kids. Your final piece is about the most important lessons you've learned while talking to workers, career experts,

and pouring through research. And you say it changed your life. What's the most significant takeaways? One was just this idea that failure is totally normal and any way you feel about work is totally normal, caring too much or not caring at all, it's all pretty much fine. There's different ways to deal with it

and to channel it into still having a life and being good at your job, but a lot of the emotional and internal struggles we go through with work are universal and there's nothing really wrong with them. And then the other big takeaway was just, you can still be really good at your job while letting it have less of a hold

over your entire life and identity. And this isn't a problem for everyone, but I think it's a problem for a lot of us. And it's been kind of illuminating to see that this doesn't have to be a totally fraught relationship. You often gave readers a running score in the relationship or the balance of power between employees and bosses. Who do you think is winning?

So I would say in the moment, it's shifted back to bosses slightly if you're just looking at the last four years. But overall, I still think workers are winning. Like I don't mean to be Pollyanna-ish about it, but yeah, if you think back at the last four years. But overall, I still think workers are winning. Like, I don't mean to be Pollyanna-ish about it, but yeah, if you think back over the last 11 years or even the last 20 years, I mean, some things have gone away.

The kind of contract between employers and employees has frayed globally, but I think workers have also achieved new and different forms of power and flexibility. And I'd like to lean into that sunny side of myself, at least. How does remote work and the way that people's careers have changed due to COVID, how does that fit into the balance of power? It changed a lot. It showed us that another way of work was possible, whether it was people talking about

new flexible schedules, four-day work weeks, working remotely, working from anywhere, taking vacation. There were all sorts of interesting policies that came out of that. Obviously, we've seen a lot of pushback in the other direction, from Amazon to the Washington Post recently. I'm sure some companies will just erase that flexibility,

but it still exists out there in the ether and employees know it's possible and they're going to ask for it. Whether it's one-off deals for big stars or moving to a different company that does offer it, I think it's really changed the way people think about work. AI is one of the things that has disrupted the workplace. In what other ways have we seen disruption in the office? The people in the office are changing. A lot of boomers are sticking around, but we also have these new younger workers coming in. When I started writing about careers, I was the young kid on the block. I was a millennial. I had the CEO mistake me for an intern, and you get used to people complaining about your generation.

And to some extent, I think that just always happens, and that's probably true here, but I do think there's been this kind of shift, and it probably goes back to what we were talking about, who's winning, right? There is this mentality with some of these memes that we've seen around, like quiet quitting or acting your wage, where people have seen

what the work dynamic was like for their parents and they don't want that. And so I think that's definitely something that's changing. And people try to make their lives outside of work better as well. How did the phrase work-life balance become so popular? And what do people really mean when they talk about it? It's so funny, it's one of those phrases,

and there's all these other trite phrases, like people will say things like, it's not work-life balance, it's work-life integration, or you can have it all but not all at once. I think my point would just be that having a big life is a good thing and a privilege, and by a big life I just mean all these different things in your life that you love, whether it's you're a parent or you have really cool hobbies that make you who you are, or all different kinds of friendships and relationships.

I think there's huge benefits to having different parts of your life to lean into. I think it gives us perspective. It can be really hard. I don't mean to discount that, but I like to think of it as a privilege. Some people might say, work-life balance, I could never achieve that.

How do you get it if you don't have that? Some of it is about putting boundaries into place. Sometimes there are just bosses that are really tough. I don't want to put all this on employees. Sometimes it's time to look for a new job. Sometimes it's just a season of your life, and it's okay, this year is gonna be like this, and it's not what I want, but I'm gonna get through it

and take these steps to ensure that I'm moving on to something else with a better culture and a better balance in six months or two years. So I think there are things that people can do, but I also wanna remind people that it's not all on them. It can be a bigger organizational problem too. And you've pointed out how people can not only excel at their job, but also know when it's time to leave.

What kinds of questions should somebody ask to get them to that answer? I had a mentor say to me when I was deciding whether to leave my reporting job and take on the column, she told me to picture my dream job and asked myself whether this next step got me closer to it or farther away from it. I thought that was incredibly helpful.

I also asked myself this time around, what would it take for you to take a risk? I had this sense that my whole life I had been kind of risk adverse and scared of change. I think if you're the kind of person that's like that, it's good to push back on that. If you're the kind of person that tends to just like jump without thinking, you should probably push back on yourself the opposite way. But for me, what I asked myself was,

what would it take for you to finally take a risk? And I realized I had every single thing stacked in my favor and if I couldn't get up the nerve to do it now, I was just going to live a life where I never took any chances and that didn't seem like a nerve to do it now. I was just going to live a life where I never took any chances. And that didn't seem like a life I wanted to live. Rachel, as always, it's a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you very much for being with us.

And thank you for helping us all navigate this work-life journey. Thanks so much, JR. It's been a total blast over all these years. That's WSJ columnist Rachel Feinsig. And that's it for your Money Briefing. This episode was produced by Ariana Osborne with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal.

Thanks for listening.