Out of work, and loving it
Extracted this from ST. For those who are taking a break. Have fun.
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Some laid-off Wall St workers find it liberating to get out of the rat race
NEW YORK: -Twelve months without a job. Fourteen months.
Eighteen.
It has been a long, dry spell for many of the suit-clad Wall Street community who were handed their pink slips before hardly anyone was talking recovery.
But sit down with a handful of ex-finance industry workers volunteering to work for free as interns in a city-sponsored retraining programme, and they seem almost... happy.
In the current economy, it is an uncommon reaction to the loss of a job.
But for some finance workers, many of whom spent years working insane hours at high-pressure jobs - often at the expense of more personal passions - the sudden stop has offered a time to reflect and reconsider.
Thrust out of the rat race, some are thinking hard about whether they want to get back in it.
'It's really easy when you take that first job and you start building some work experience, to get stuck in a pattern,' said Mr Matt Gatto, a former Lehman Brothers investment manager.
Mr Gatto, 35, called the 14 months he has been jobless 'exciting' and 'liberating'.
After years of doing little more than work, the one-time philosophy major has taken over much of the child care for his two-year-old son.
He has finished his Master of Business Administration, gone back to the gym and learnt how to cook. And he has decided that, when he does head back to the office, he wants a professional life that is aligned with his personal values - in the non-profit world or in a company focused on social change.
Successful spouses, princely savings and lucrative severance packages have made this sort of self-exploration an attainable luxury for some laid-off finance sector employees.
For Ms Agatha Melvin, a global operations consultant, the roughly 18 months she has been unemployed have offered her a chance to look ahead.
Back when she was working 15-hour days, she had no clear vision of her future. In what she calls the 'pressurised environment' of finance, she had little time to think at all.
Now, after living off her savings for a year and a half, she says she has a renewed sense of what is important.
She may go back to working long days, but she will consider carefully whether the work is worth the hours she pours into it.
This time, she will be evaluating job offers on more than just money.
'Time is a commodity you can never get back,' she says.
Two decades after Mr Arnold Chu made the transition from working in aerospace to applying his maths skills to the world of finance, he is again planning for a transition after being laid off from his job as a manager last year.
His year of unemployment has been a period of emotional highs and lows, he says.
'The benefit of uncertainty is you're not locked into something already,' he says. 'That's one of the liberating aspects of it.'
Finance workers, even those who have seen departments decimated and their industry turned upside down, may find it easier than most to embrace uncertainty, says Dr Caitlin Zaloom, a professor at New York University, who has studied the culture of Wall Street.
'It's already how they understand themselves, to be risk-takers,' says Dr Zaloom.
'To get laid off may just be integrated into a narrative of profit and loss that they have dealt with day in and day out on Wall Street.'
As Mr Chu looks to carve a place for himself in the new financial landscape, he says in some ways he is grateful for the disruption in his life.
'If you're coasting along, there's fewer challenges,' says Mr Chu, who along with his colleagues declined to say how much he made before he was laid off.
Mr Henry Chalian has seized hold of his eight months without a job to, in effect, go back to school. The former relationship manager has attended seminars at JP Morgan's outplacement centre for laid-off employees.
He was admitted to an intensive two- week course at Columbia Business School. And now, he is participating in JumpStart NYC, the city's Economic Development Corporation's programme to prepare finance professionals to work with start-ups.
'I'm sort of getting a master's in my career,' says the 41-year-old, who already has a graduate degree in comparative politics.
After the unexpected time-out, though, Mr Chalian says he feels ready to return to some consistency.
'Right now, stability does matter, because the last few years have been really volatile,' he says. 'I sort of need to be anchored somewhere for a little while.'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUST PART OF THE BUSINESS
'To get laid off may just be integrated into a narrative of profit and loss that they have dealt with day in and day out on Wall Street.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some laid-off Wall St workers find it liberating to get out of the rat race
NEW YORK: -Twelve months without a job. Fourteen months.
Eighteen.
It has been a long, dry spell for many of the suit-clad Wall Street community who were handed their pink slips before hardly anyone was talking recovery.
But sit down with a handful of ex-finance industry workers volunteering to work for free as interns in a city-sponsored retraining programme, and they seem almost... happy.
In the current economy, it is an uncommon reaction to the loss of a job.
But for some finance workers, many of whom spent years working insane hours at high-pressure jobs - often at the expense of more personal passions - the sudden stop has offered a time to reflect and reconsider.
Thrust out of the rat race, some are thinking hard about whether they want to get back in it.
'It's really easy when you take that first job and you start building some work experience, to get stuck in a pattern,' said Mr Matt Gatto, a former Lehman Brothers investment manager.
Mr Gatto, 35, called the 14 months he has been jobless 'exciting' and 'liberating'.
After years of doing little more than work, the one-time philosophy major has taken over much of the child care for his two-year-old son.
He has finished his Master of Business Administration, gone back to the gym and learnt how to cook. And he has decided that, when he does head back to the office, he wants a professional life that is aligned with his personal values - in the non-profit world or in a company focused on social change.
Successful spouses, princely savings and lucrative severance packages have made this sort of self-exploration an attainable luxury for some laid-off finance sector employees.
For Ms Agatha Melvin, a global operations consultant, the roughly 18 months she has been unemployed have offered her a chance to look ahead.
Back when she was working 15-hour days, she had no clear vision of her future. In what she calls the 'pressurised environment' of finance, she had little time to think at all.
Now, after living off her savings for a year and a half, she says she has a renewed sense of what is important.
She may go back to working long days, but she will consider carefully whether the work is worth the hours she pours into it.
This time, she will be evaluating job offers on more than just money.
'Time is a commodity you can never get back,' she says.
Two decades after Mr Arnold Chu made the transition from working in aerospace to applying his maths skills to the world of finance, he is again planning for a transition after being laid off from his job as a manager last year.
His year of unemployment has been a period of emotional highs and lows, he says.
'The benefit of uncertainty is you're not locked into something already,' he says. 'That's one of the liberating aspects of it.'
Finance workers, even those who have seen departments decimated and their industry turned upside down, may find it easier than most to embrace uncertainty, says Dr Caitlin Zaloom, a professor at New York University, who has studied the culture of Wall Street.
'It's already how they understand themselves, to be risk-takers,' says Dr Zaloom.
'To get laid off may just be integrated into a narrative of profit and loss that they have dealt with day in and day out on Wall Street.'
As Mr Chu looks to carve a place for himself in the new financial landscape, he says in some ways he is grateful for the disruption in his life.
'If you're coasting along, there's fewer challenges,' says Mr Chu, who along with his colleagues declined to say how much he made before he was laid off.
Mr Henry Chalian has seized hold of his eight months without a job to, in effect, go back to school. The former relationship manager has attended seminars at JP Morgan's outplacement centre for laid-off employees.
He was admitted to an intensive two- week course at Columbia Business School. And now, he is participating in JumpStart NYC, the city's Economic Development Corporation's programme to prepare finance professionals to work with start-ups.
'I'm sort of getting a master's in my career,' says the 41-year-old, who already has a graduate degree in comparative politics.
After the unexpected time-out, though, Mr Chalian says he feels ready to return to some consistency.
'Right now, stability does matter, because the last few years have been really volatile,' he says. 'I sort of need to be anchored somewhere for a little while.'
ASSOCIATED PRESS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUST PART OF THE BUSINESS
'To get laid off may just be integrated into a narrative of profit and loss that they have dealt with day in and day out on Wall Street.'