Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work until they have paid back a debt, usually a specific number of years. The arrangement, common until the late 18th century, was unlike slavery in two important ways: it was not predetermined by birth, and it was not lifelong. It was often a way for Europeans to migrate to the American colonies: they signed an indenture in return for a costly passage.
GOLDEN HANDCUFFS
I returned home from analyst training having been bitch-slapped by reality. I considered quitting right then and there, but knew that I couldn’t. The bastards had significant financial leverage on me. Recall the preposterous starting bonus I received? What newly minted, fully broke college grad wouldn’t appreciate a fat wad of cash to get settled with? I was so enthusiastic to get out on my own, I gladly took the upfront money and disregarded the strings. Without due consideration, I had presented my wrists for a pair of “Golden Handcuffs,” a form of compensation designed to retain personnel as much as reward them.
Why handcuffs? A starting bonus is just free money, right? Not necessarily. Say, for instance, the princely sum of $10,000 was bestowed upon all undergraduate hires in 2012. That fat, five-digit chunk of cash immediately shrunk from the celestial to the terrestrial before it even touched our happy little hands. Taxes whacked approximately 40% off the top leaving about $6,000. (The crafty HR fuckers split the payment into two checks, so we received half the total first followed by the post-tax remainder a couple of months later after we had relocated). Money spends fast getting started in a new city, and that chunk all but disappears. The catch? Even though I had only received $6,000, we had to pay back the full $10,000 if we left the firm or were fired within the first two years. They had us.
Logically, I knew what had to be done, but it felt like sitting down to a mountain of shit with a napkin and spoon. I had student loan debt, minimal assets, and an onerous chunk of unearned bonus revenue hanging over me that could come due if I didn’t do as told. On the assets side of the ledger, I had the fancy piece of paper those student loans bought me that signaled I was young, in debt, and fully open for exploitation. I had as much leverage as a popsicle stick under a fucking boulder. I couldn’t leave without crippling myself financially and sullying future employment prospects. I had no viable option but to continue.
The dynamic felt familiar and very bad. I remember sitting on the edge of my mattress on a Sunday afternoon next to a suitcase half-packed for the week ahead. I stared down at the landlord-special low-pile carpet trying to control my breathing. I was beginning to hyperventilate. A panic gripped me that I hadn’t felt since I was a child. My thoughts raced with dire extrapolations, and I felt a horrible tightness in my chest like I was about to be ripped backwards through time and space by my guts. “This can all be taken away,” I thought in horrible realization. The point approached when I thought I was going to either pass out or have a heart attack, but a voice cut through the fear. “No,” It said. “Fuck that. Fuck you. We don’t fail. We fucking fight. Now, get stony! You’re a stone, damn it! Fuck these motherfuckers. Breathe. We’re never going back. Steady now. Steady. Breathe.”
The job was teaching me a hard lesson about the true price of independence. It felt like the only way to learn hard lessons in life was having my hopes and dreams exposed as carefully crafted illusions and subsequently crushed. I had to be more careful. Clearly, I could not trust the massive corporate behemoth that cut my checks. There was always an angle with the firm, similar to a casino. Anything offered was in the best interest of the house not the player, and it was very hard to leave once you walked in the door. Ultimately, the relationship was not zero-sum as both parties stood to profit, but the structure of the organization was an unmistakable pyramid with partners at the top as equity holders in the firm; those of us laboring at the base were dispensable. Hard truths are more useful than pretty lies, and at least I was becoming wise to the game.
SCRAPS
Assignment on my first project was an act of charity as much as a reward for persistence. At the time, partners were struggling to sell work firmwide, and new analysts were last to get staffed. The partner who hired me had hours to spare on an extremely profitable project, so he took me under his wing. Surprisingly, there wasn’t much to do at first. The project was in its final stages. The numbers were in. The decks (presentation materials) had been built. I started as a glorified note-taker, compiler, and errand boy, but did it all to the absolute best of my ability. I studied the work, the company, and the overarching dynamics at play. I took in everything. Eventually, my role expanded. I was comfortable with the client and presented material to executives with confidence. Overall, I held my own.
Oddly enough, this was probably the most meaningful work I did at the firm given the scope of the project, the scope of responsibilities I was given, and the amount of direct interaction I had with C-suite personnel. We had a clear goal that mattered, delivered on that goal expediently, and made a tangible impact. The three senior consultants on the team felt compelled to warn me that my experience on the project would prove atypical. They were cynical but dead right. I never experienced anything close to that again no matter how “mission critical” or “time sensitive” or “high impact” the project purported to be.
When the project was winding down, I made a significant strategic mistake, which didn’t feel like a mistake at all at the time. The team was in a holding pattern, and we were essentially billing from the beach. Essentially, I would go in to the office, do whatever little bits of work I could find for the project, then bill partial hours, usually 20-30 per week, to the project. This felt wrong. My manager was good with it, and the partner didn’t seem to care, but it chafed at my integrity and did not provide sufficient billable hours. If I continued like this, my utilization for the year could wind up extremely low, and I did not feel I could take that chance. Moreover, I wanted to keep doing real work. In retrospect, I should have happily rode this project’s coattails and glommed on to the team for as long as it benefitted me. Instead, I used the down time to search for other projects. Eventually, I found an opportunity in finance that looked interesting, got the okay from the team, then rolled off to make my own way.
DRONES DON’T EAT
The following week, I found myself flying to New York to work with one of the world’s largest banks. The project was presented as an exciting opportunity to break into high level corporate finance. That turned out to be a gross misrepresentation. I knew I had fucked up once I figured out the actual scope of the project: the client needed a massive number of competent bodies to review individual loan documents. I was looking at glorified data entry for a minimum of eleven hours per day. Not ideal for career development, but fuck it. Let me earn this fucking money.
Conditions on the project proved austere. Stopping to eat an actual meal during the day was seen as a dereliction of duty. You were supposed to appear busy all the time. The client wanted drones, so the firm delivered drones, and drones don’t eat. Instead, we ran on chips, diet coke, and an abiding passion for client service. This didn’t sit well with me. Eating fake food at alone in a cubicle in order to work straight through an eleven hour day seemed unnecessarily dismal. I made sure I processed as many loans as the top drone but still took thirty minutes each day to let the low winter sun touch my face, to suck down full and greedy breaths of cold air, to express the full power of my stride, and to taste food. I was still a human being, and there were hills I would not surrender silently, optics be damned.
The otherwise Orwellian project did have one silver lining. One of my friends from the home office, Sarah, was there too. Sarah was a diminutive bundle of nerves with a never-ending stomach ache, but she was also sane, cynical, and enthusiastic about getting drinks. She was too paranoid to badge out during the day for lunch, so we mostly caught up over dinner. She claimed that our movement in and out of the building was tracked and felt sure we would get dinged on our performance reviews if we left during the day. (I thought that was madness, but she was right). So, we commiserated in hushed tones over dirty martinis and old fashioneds, grateful to have at least one flesh-and-blood person we could trust.
EATIN’ GOOD IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Two months later, I did a happy little dance at my desk when I found out the loan processing project was finally winding down. The sprawling debacle required fewer resources, so I put my hand up for something else, anything else, a tour in ‘Nam, just get me the fuck out. I’ll say this of the consulting gods; they lack mercy but not a sense of humor. I was dealt an equally grim assignment, again performing glorified data entry, this time in Bumfuck Nowhere, Ohio. I was supposed to be helping Fortune 500 solve their biggest problems. This work was effectively making me dumber. I wasn’t analyzing data or building decks or presenting to clients or anything tangible. I was rotting on the vine performing quality control checks on invoices under fluorescent lights for eleven hours a day.
I was not the only malcontent on the project. Most nights a crew of us met to drown our sorrows at the only bar in town: Applebee’s Bar & Grill, baby. So much for the glamour of the profession. It’s difficult to drink your way through a big-city per diem on $6 pint-glass triples, but we gave it a go. The wait staff received the difference. The 50%+ tips only served to strengthen the already Herculean pours. I’ll say this of the experience: there’s nothing quite like getting stone drunk at a chain restaurant on a Tuesday in a tailored suit. It approaches perfect misery. I would stagger back to my room after last call, which was thankfully quite early, hang up my suit, check both my 6:00 AM alarms, then pass out. Rinse and repeat.
The situation was unsustainable. My spirit was eroding. Hyperbole aside, I could actually feel my life force ebbing away day by day. I knew I had to force my way off the project, but I couldn’t roll off without something billable lined up. Terrible optics. I was shaking every tree I could, but no one had any leads. Things were getting increasingly desperate until Sarah, my pal still stuck at the drone/loan factory in NYC, came through with a possible out.
There was a Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS) training in Atlanta and that I could attend if I pulled the right strings. Crucially, it had an internal billable code, similar to a client project, that made it a viable proposition. After assuring my project manager I would return, I got his sign off to attend. That is to say, I lied directly to his face. Perhaps more accurately put, I presented him with a false premise so compelling that any disputation on his part appear petty or irrational. I had no intention of returning, and I never did.
GOING HUNGRY
Leaving the client site in Ohio to fly to Atlanta for training felt like crossing a border with forged papers. I left friends behind, but we were all on our own getting out, and I needed to focus on making my chance count. Attending this training all but guaranteed me staffing on a HCLS project. Essentially, the HCLS sector forced attendees onto designated projects as part of a strategic initiative that traded billable hours in exchange for fresh bodies. In retrospect, this situation resembled my first project where the team was already established and didn’t really need another resource. However, in this case, the circumstances proved very different, and the project I rolled on to came very close to breaking me.
Following the training, I received my new staffing assignment and flew to the client site. It was a very odd situation. Leadership was trying to integrate the new resources, myself and half-a-dozen others, and there appeared to be no plan whatsoever. It felt like picking teams at recess, but the game had already started. It took me three days to get assigned a manager. We spoke for a few minutes before she sat me at a cubicle separate from the team and told me I could “hang out here” until someone from the team came by and got me up to speed. No one did. I spoke to her twice daily (when I could find her) and was told the same thing, again and again, circling for nearly two weeks. I didn’t understand what was happening. To sit idle while others appeared overworked stabbed at my honor.
I could only conclude that corporate fuckery was at play. Later, I discovered reminiscent of the Japanense term madogiwa-zoku, where individuals are quietly sidelined within a company. They are assigned minimal tasks or no tasks at all and seated by the window as a way to encourage resignation without direct dismissal. Is that what was happening to me? Was I a fucking Japanese window person? What had I done wrong? What didn’t I do right? I just wanted to do the work I was hired to do. Hell, if my honor was to be degraded in a ritualistic fashion, they could have at least given me a damn window.
In the United States, making someone’s job so unpleasant or humiliating that they feel they have no choice but to quit is termed “constructive dismissal” and is illegal. I wasn’t aware of any of this, but my default mode since childhood is endurance not complaint. To me, having a job meant showing up and working, so I kept showing up and looking for things to do. Eventually, I ran into a colleague working on a different part of the project and started working under her manager as a floating resource. It ended up saving me in the end as the new manager agreed to write my performance review. It had been another grueling project, but I kept my integrity. I had a sense of duty to myself if not the firm, and it kept me trudging forward.
YEAR END
My first year at the firm culminated with a decent raise, agreeable bonus, and some celebratory intoxication. Most of our home office made it. Unfortunately, Jay had developed a rare auto immune disease along the way. He lost an alarming amount of weight, took medical leave, and never came back. He recovered, but we still joke that the firm almost killed him. My other friend, Virginia, also left. She went to work for a blender company, which made sense in a figurative sort of way. Her leaving was particularly difficult as she was the only other person recruited from a liberal arts college, and we seemed to have a similar outlook. Maybe she wasn’t an Excel whiz or a PowerPoint jock, but she read books and would tell you to your face which pursuit was more important as a human being.
Ultimately, the sensitive types were the first to go. Those remaining underwent the yearly “rank and yank” process. In a forced rank system, a company ranks its employees against each other, then yanks (fires) the lowest rated performers. Our firm ranked 1 to 5. Most of the first year analysts, myself included, were rated “3’s” which was firm speak for “meets expectations.” I didn’t object to a 3. It was a fair rating, but it didn’t feel good either. I just couldn’t see the angles yet. I didn’t realize there was much, much more to the game than doing good client work.
My friends Jack and Cubby both got “2” ratings i.e. “exceeds expectations.” They bought the first rounds that night to make sure there were no hard feelings, but no one harbored any animosity. We wanted to see each other do well. Ratings seemed almost pre-ordained. Jack likely got a bit of a boost coming from a school with a stronger network within the firm, but he was also a solid consultant who had found an in-demand niche. Cubby was a good golfer and played semi-regularly with a few partners, but she had also been placed in challenging roles and done extremely well. I was happy for them. I was happy for everyone. It wasn’t us against us, it was the group against the gauntlet.
We had reached a major milestone, but I knew the future with the firm I had projected was pure fantasy. I felt like a fool. I had been naïve to let my hopes climb so high. I had the raw materials to operate at this level, but I didn’t have the stomach to excel without belief in the destination. It was a devastating truth to admit. I weighed my options and decided the most viable path was to stay put another year. After that, I hoped leaving might seem less like a failure and more like a choice. In just one year, I had grown more cynical, calculating, and cold, but I had survived.
Onward. Always.
Half Good Hiker