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2020年08月01日 03:49
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坐落还是座落-僰怎么读
White-collar sweatshops batter young workers
By Laura Vanderkam
Nancy Collins remembers when she hit rock bottom. She was in Australia for her investment-banking job at JP Morgan, trying to seal deals on two projects at once.
She thought she could handle the stress. After all, co-workers had dubbed her previous boss the "Prince of Darkness" for making people work until 3 a.m., and she knew she was good at what she did. But then, one night after weeks of 18-hour days and constant travel, she staggered home at 7 a.m. Not to sleep. To shower. As she stood in the water, she started crying. At age 25, she was having a midlife crisis. "I started thinking, there's got to be more to life than this," she says.
JP Morgan isn't the only firm driving its young employees insane. Salomon Smith Barney. Goldman Sachs. High-end consulting firms such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group and many tech companies do the same. All hire the brightest Ivy League grads and make them a deal: We will pay you $$60,000 or more a year and give you glimpses of corporate luxury, from ritzy hotels to jaunts on the jet. In exchange, you must work 70, 80, 100 hours a week through the best years of your life.
Forget accounting, these white-collar sweatshops are corporate America's most successful scam. Give a kid a signing bonus and a $$500 bottle of champagne, and he doesn't notice that he's working for $$12 an hour. For years, exclusive firms have kept labor costs low by squeezing blood out of their hires. It's not exploitation. These kids are savvy enough to know what they're getting into. But they're also smart enough to wonder whether the lifestyle's worth the cost. As massive layoffs force the question, corporate bean counters should shiver at what the answer could do to their bottom line.
Since moving to New York a few months ago, I've marveled at Wall Street's and consulting companies' work-til-you-drop attitude. A friend still in a meeting at 10:30 p.m. asks whether we can reschedule drinks. A party moves from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. on a Friday to accommodate late workers.
People complain. Oh, they complain. You worked 80 hours this week? Well, I worked 90. You slept four hours? I slept at the office and showered there, too! The dirty secret is, many sweatshoppers actually like it. This generation vied for status in college by comparing workloads. Many of them then dove like lemmings off the cliff into corporate America. A high-wattage job fills an almost religious need to be part of something bigger than yourself, and 16-hour days mean you don't have to deal with the messiness of life.
So people bought in throughout the boom. They skipped love affairs to save time and caught cabs back from the beach on Saturdays because the client needed that report. Ryan Sawchuk, whose co-workers at had to remind each other to eat, watched people bring sleeping bags to the office. He worked 12-hour shifts in the
warehouse during the holidays and then did his real job, too. It got to the point where, according to Sawchuk, CEO Jeff Bezos told the Amazonians that since the company was no longer a start-up, they didn't have to work 90-hour weeks. Seventy-hour weeks were perfectly acceptable. And 65, once in a while, were OK.
I can't comprehend working anywhere for 65 hours a week. It's doable, I suppose, if you know you'll climb the corporate ladder to three-martini lunches soon. You sacrifice your 20s to the company, believing it will make you rich and powerful later.
Or not. For thousands of white-collar sweatshop workers, these next few weeks will be their last. Last week, the financial media reported that Morgan Stanley would lay off 2,200 employees worldwide. Lehman Brothers is trimming 500 jobs. McKinsey recently decided not to keep any of its second-year analysts. These layoffs continue the past year's trend. Russell Eckenrod, 23, recounts working 80 hours a week for a consulting company during Christmas last year, only to be laid off three weeks later.
Talk about a reality check. Turns out the folks who took you on the corporate jet will shove you out on the street faster than you can recount missed autumn afternoons. I'll never cheer a layoff. But every cloud has a silver lining, and the job-shedding at sweatshop firms is forcing brilliant young people with a world of options to consider that maybe they'd be happier somewhere else.
Nancy Collins ultimately started her own company, Global Adrenaline, which leads adventure tours to Africa and the Arctic. She values her JP Morgan skills, but "I'm much happier," she says. When she works Saturdays now, the decision is all her own.
Sawchuk left the four-cups-of-Starbucks-a-day Amazon lifestyle for other pursuits. More will follow as people realize comparable money can be made elsewhere and that when you are young, time is the most valuable asset you have. Why sell it all for $$12 an hour?
This complicates the sweatshop bargain. If people don't lust after glamour, these firms lose their lure. They can find less-savvy employees, but then they'll lose the brainpower that attracts clients in the first place. Or, the firms can accept shorter workweeks and pay for overtime. It won't be easy: On Wall Street, at least, worker compensation is 50% of expenses. Try throwing that into a third-quarter statement.
But so it goes. A deal offered doesn't have to be taken when you realize the emperor has no clothes. I remember a summer 2000 recruiting event for investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, for instance, on a Hudson River cruise boat. We rising college seniors flocked to the open bar as the recruiters showed us the Manhattan skyline and the cruising DLJ lifestyle. Pursue that deal with us, the message went, and all this will be yours.
I thought of that cruise the other day as I took the No. 6 train to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a beautiful fall morning, the kind too beautiful to mis
点凌乱的生活。
于是在整个经济繁荣期人们纷纷涌向其中。他们为了节省时间把爱情神码的统统忽视，在周六从海滩上打的回来只因为客户需要那份报表。Ryan看到人们把睡袋带到办公室，而她的亚马逊网同事甚至不得不提醒对方吃饭。假期里他要在仓库每12小时倒班值守，然后去做他真正的工作。老板告诉亚马逊人，他们已经不是刚起步的小公司所以不用每周工作90小时，只要70个小时就可以接受了。65个小时就谢天谢地了。
我永远不会领教到每周工作65小时的滋味。我认为这是可行的，假如你认为你能在公司平步青云，不久就会享受到丰盛的午宴。你把你的20多岁的年华献给了公司，那么相信这会使你以后变得富有而有地位。
也可能不是。对数以千计的白领苦劳力来说，接下来的几周将会成为他们工作的终结。上周财经媒体爆料摩根士丹利将在世界范围内裁员2200人。雷曼兄弟也正在削减掉500个岗位。麦肯锡也决定不再聘用一些精算师。这裁员延续了去年的趋势。一个名叫罗塞尔的23岁年轻人在上年圣诞为一家咨询公司每周工作80小时，却在三周后被扫地出门。
看看事情的真相吧。结果就是那些拉你作公司专用直升机的人会很快把你赶到大街上，让你都来不及品味那秋季的午后。我绝不会为任何一桩解雇叫好。但是有失必有得，摆脱血汗工厂的压榨，其实也是给了那些绝顶聪明的年轻人更多的选择，来让他们思考下也许在其他领域他们会混的开心点。
南希科林斯最终开办了他自己的公司，一家提供非洲北极探险路线的机构。他很珍惜在摩根学到的那些本事，但是他觉得现在更快乐。现在是不是周六工作完全有自己做主。
桑切克摆脱了那个在亚马逊网一天要靠四倍星巴克撑下去的生活方式去追求其他。更多的人将加入他们的行列随着人们渐渐意识到钱哪都能挣到，在你年轻的时候最宝贵的资产是时间。干吗要每小时12美元贱卖掉呢？
这让血汗工厂的交易变得复杂了。如果人们不渴求虚荣，那这些公司也将毫无吸引力。
他们可以雇佣没那么睿智的员工，但它们首先将因为失去吸引客户眼球的智囊团而丢掉客户。或者，公司接受缩短工作时间和付加班费的条件。这并非易事：至少在华尔街，员工薪水是一半的开销。
然而事情就是这样了。当你意识到一切都是虚的，这桩交易就没必要实现。我记得2000年夏天在哈德森河游船上有一个像唐纳森一样一类的投资银行的招聘推介会。我们这些被认为有前途的毕业生被见识了招聘方为我们描绘的曼哈顿胜景和DLJ式的生活方式。意思很明显，一旦同意这桩买卖，那一切就是你的
了
前几天我乘地铁6号线到布鲁克林桥时我又重新考虑了下那游览推介。那是一个美得不能错过的秋晨。我走向钢筋骨架中间又回望了下华尔街的摩天大楼，想象在里面工作的人们。这和那天在船上看到的没任何区别。
同样很赞，但是在这看是免费的。