Those of you with stressful jobs or whose DH/DP works in a stressful job

[CatieBlanket]

What do you do? What actually makes your job (or DH's job) stressful.

MNetters are always bleating on about this. They're either Superwoman because the work in a stressful job then look after kids and do housework. Or their husband can't possibly do any housework, childcare because he is Mr Important with a Stressful Job.

catieblanket we were young night birds! Work hard play hard! Then the restaurant he was working in closed so he had a 9-5 warehouse job, then when we found out about babyblondie, he decided to go back to chef ing for more money. Would rather see him, tbh. Sometimes ha.

Why don't you look for something else?

In my case, because I enjoy it - the stress comes in peaks and lows, and I can mostly handle it. And it's very, very, very well paid (typical of a male dominated industry). I'm well respected. It's a safe working environment (office). I studied hard to get here.

Finally, I do a lot of outreach work trying to attract candidates to work in my field, so apart from being personally invested in my own career, I feel a certain protectiveness around I'm dragging up the next generation into the industry. I have a heavy amount of effort invested in that too (my staff, my mentees).

I've seen too many women get plucked (or jump off) the career level several rungs below me to give in now - the crunch time for that would have been a few years ago. When I was so stressed I regularly used to think about how I could walk in front of a car instead of face another day at my job but not die (just get hurt enough that I'd not have to face it, as odd as that sounds).

I survived that mid-career blip, I'm happy where I am, and if I'm not, the only way I'll consider is up, not out.

it's very, very, very well paid

How well, fairyella? Go on, tell us - it's anonymous!

CatieBlanket

I won't give full details of my package, but I'll give you the basic salary banding, it's £80k plus up to around £150k pa depending on the size of the organisation you work for. I'm hesitant to give details of the type of technical department I manage as there aren't many companies that operate in this sector niche with headquarters based in the UK. I realise by MN standards that may not be considered well-paid though? I guess it depends on where you are (I'm not in London or the south east). There's a fairly sizable bonus involved which is part individual performance, part department performance, and part organisation performance too - in my experience, you can safely expect around 30-50% of your salary on top in average years (or worse), in good years much more. I've seen good years, bad ones, and all sorts inbetween during my tenure here.

Hopefully you can see why I'm invested in ensuring I'm paving the way for more women like me here, rather than dragging the ladder up after me (I've met many many people where this is the default).

Another secondary school teacher here. In the last year I have been on the verge of being signed off sick with stress (and I always was so inwardly judgy about those teachers until I was on the brink myself - I was lucky that my lovely colleagues intervened and helped when I really needed it).

For me it's the relentless never-ending workload, the constant pressure from SLT, the knowledge that you're only as good as your last lesson observation (which happens with 24 hours notice - and does go towards your performance management), constantly having to document and justify everything and having to see the lowest staff morale in a school I've ever worked in. Worst of all, SLT have also been trying to get rid of some members of my department, and while I'm not one of them, it has been hideous and depressing to watch.

And while most of the kids are great, I recently did some lessons on blood pressure and also took my blood pressure during lessons with 3 different groups. Was quite interesting to note that with my best class it was 120/80, with one of my worst groups it was 155/95!!

I am planning on leaving teaching in the next five years or less, will miss the children enormously but very little else!

Oh yes, and freelance consultants in this area go for between £500/day - £1500/day in the UK - again, it really depends where in the country, and what "type" of organisation you're employed by.

There's lots of work abroad which pay on par or more e.g. Dubai, where there are certain tax advantages on top. Which I've been briefly tempted by in the past, but decided it wasn't for me.

DH and I are both middle management in large organisations. I think it can be a bit miserable at this level as there are several layers above restricting what changes you'd like to make. So there is a lack of control which can be stressful. I am in NHS to boot so constant restructuring and reinventing the wheel. We both pull our weight at home although I do more childcare (PT).

hope name change has worked
Was for many years a young whippet of a fashion buyer
65 hour weeks normal, more not unheard of
Foreign travel every few weeks
Stressful for hours, for inconsistency of role, for different day every day
Trying to resolve childcare to match above whilst doing the role and without family support = stressful
Dh works away also
I quit despite fabulous salary
I miss it and love love loved role but never want to go back to the pressure, it nearly cost me my family
I have a totally different well paid career still but the thrill of the old role is missing

There's an interesting TED talk on stress: apparently it's your belief that stress is bad for you that's more damaging than the stress of a job.

I'm well paid too (6 figures) and moderately stressed. Dh likewise. In his case he has a long commute, in mine I have a large team to manage and that's always got its challenges

I think levels of autonomy make a difference too - I have quite a lot and that helps.

Here's the TED

www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?language=en

That's interesting Samantha.

I'm a consultant in a field which means I have to travel to places that most people would find pretty stressful. I don't find it so, but I do stress about deadlines.

DH manages a small team of three in his own business. He finds managing even a few staff highly stressful.

It's so individual I think.

I'm the least-stressed parent/spouse ever. DH is the stressy one of the two of us, not because his work is particularly stressful he's just one of life's whittlers. He's very well paid so we're lucky and he loves what he does so wouldn't change it. But owning the business means the buck starts and ends with him, and the fact that he has other people's salaries relying on him is a big thing.

We had a terrible time a few years back and had to beg HMRC to give us an extension on our January tax bill, they gave us a month's grace thankfully (in fact, I'd go so far as to say they were incredible, I'd expected to have to remortgage to resolve it), but since then he's been determined to always have a large buffer in the company account to ensure it never happens again. I think the fall-out from that close-call will remain a stress factor for the rest of his working life. It doesn't prevent him from helping out with the chores and the children, though, he's generally very hands-on. But he snores like a fucker, so karma definitely exists.

I don't think I have a particularly stressful job but have some colleagues who complain about stress the whole time and some that thrive on being busy and hate it when they don't have enough to do and love the stressful times.

I'm a management consultant.

The stressful aspect comes from being told at 5pm that the Board of Directors need a presentation tomorrow at 9am...containing analysis that you haven't even begun yet.

It comes from discovering that the IT team took a shortcut in their development and then can't deliver what you need in time, meaning your client stands to lose 12M pounds (and you have to deliver the bad news). You have to be on your feet always thinking of solutions and ways of getting round problems.

It comes from a huge workload so any urgent work adds pressure because you have no "give" in your day to take care of it (we already work long hours and through lunch).

It comes from the fact that I work 100% at my client site...yet my company expects me to put in many extra hours on internal work.

Last minute demands are definitely the most stressful aspect (and are frequent). That and the fact that our clients pay a lot of money for us to be here, so expect you to deliver, regardless of how many hours a day (and night) you work.

As to why I'm still here...well I was in this job originally because its interesting, dynamic and I have learnt loads.

But the uncertain hours is not compatible with family life (DH does the same job) so I'm currently job hunting for a different job with less pressure and where I control my time more.

DH is a consultant engineer and also a -workaholic- conscientious person. He has always had some international travel - usually over and back to the UK and within Europe, so 1 day or overnight, couple of days at most. But he has just finished a project that required him to spend 2 consecutive weeks a month in South Africa (and sometimes those trips were 3 or even 4 weeks) for 3.5 years. He has a lot of projects on the go at any one time, and is responsible for a large enough team (in engineering terms) here at home.

I am at the top of middle management in the civil service, but have also always been pretty -workaholic- conscientious. The past 6 years, since just around the time the economic crisis started, I was in a section deeply embedded in the crisis and recovery work. So lots of dealings with the political system and heavy heavy workloads, with lots of emails into the night (on blackberry, oh no, couldn't possibly be given a laptop to deal with stuff out of hours) and detailed economic stuff to do. I have moved 3 months ago to a new section where there is still a number of big projects to complete, but there is slightly less time pressure on them (still need to progress them quickly, but not "the Minister needs a speech we forgot to ask for in the next hour while you finish answering 3 different letters on different subjects, chase 4 other Departments and correlate data to produce 5 different trends to consider where we take actions, and tell me what those actions should be"). I don't have huge teams, but I don't have enough to do all we have to do. In that last job, I had the alcoholic (binger), 2 different major health problems for others, the one who wouldn't do what was needed, the one who couldn't do what was needed, the one who micromanaged and constantly changed goalposts, and the 2 who were great and got on with anything thrown at them.

We both work in the city centre, about 12 km away from our home. Commuting is awful - DH cycles while I drive/bus/train depending on what's on, weather, how I feel etc.

DD has Asperger's syndrome and ADHD. So that adds it's own complicating layer.

We live in a city 2.5 hours away from both sets of our parents, but they are near each other so we cover both when we go "down home" for weekends. There is some of my wider family near enough if we are really stuck for help, but we are pretty self sufficient. The neighbours are great though, our cul de sac has a great little community.

But DH is helpful around the house when he's here (and I used to be under orders even when he was travelling to leave the ironing until he was home). We used to have an au pair when he was travelling. We have had cleaners in the past at different stages. And we are both pretty ruthlessly organized in lots of ways. So it works for us.

I do notice that there are a number of men I work with who somehow have their wives convinced that their job is super-important and they can't possibly do school drop-offs/pick-ups but the women I work with who do exactly the same job mysteriously manage to do it...

I have had periods of serious travel too - usually coinciding with DH not having to travel much. It has been swings and roundabout for us luckily. Although the odd time, PIL have had to come and cover me going to Brussels overnight (and home midnight the following day) while DH was in Africa - they got my bed while the au pair was around, and if they stayed the 2nd night, I'd take a camp bed in DD's room on return. I just couldn't leave the au pair with that much overnight responsibility.

Short deadlines are a huge thing in my line, but better now.

DH has to ensure workstreams ahead of time to win projects to be able to cover wages etc. And do his own work. And manage the ongoing work of his team and make sure that the results are delivered.

We've both taken big pay cuts - me far more so - during the crisis. But his job was far more risky at the time. So I couldn't contemplate taking time out of my secure job. Even when I was recuperating from a whiplash that caused quite a lot of damage to my back/neck.

But we get there.

Rather not be too precise, but what stresses DH is mainly the fact that "you're only as good as your last call/trade"- clients have v short memories and if the markets go against you, it's miserable and they're all pissed off with you. That and sheer volume of work/ competing demands on your time/ no respect for time differences and fairly brutal travel schedules (so 6 cities in 5 days, 8 meetings a day). That said, the middle ranks are where it's worst because then you always get delegated the news flow stuff (so you're about to leave and the Fed cuts interest rates and you have to write a note on it, no arguments). There's also the fact that it's relentless and the job is never done- you could always do more. Once you get to the upper banding where DH is now, it's a lot more manageable. He does always make it to parents evenings etc. and he is generally not working weekends at all now and is v hands on with the DC then.

My job is periodically stressful, mainly due to a very lumpy workload and immovable deadlines which involve coordinating a lot of not very organised people to produce things by that deadline, but at least the crunches are predictable. To be fair, most of my stress comes from myself always pushing myself to achieve more/ better.