Not paid enough for this

Hello tribe. Here I am again. Another week, another Sibos reflection.

All of us should maybe consider that not giving ourselves completely over to this mission is also OK

I will stop eventually, I promise.

And this one isn’t a Sibos-related thing as much as a thought process that started there.

Because you see… I was moderating a panel. And I threw a warm-up question to my friend Ghela Boskovich who was expecting it (before you wonder if I ambushed her) and who could totally answer it (and did), but her first reaction was a sigh and mutter of “I’m not paid enough for this”.

Now.

This was meant to get a giggle. And it did. It was meant to warm the audience. And it did.

I’m not sure it was meant to throw me into a spiral of existential reflection. But it did.

I don’t know how much Ghela is paid. I could ask. We are friends. She’d tell me. But the number is irrelevant to this exercise.

A job is a monetary exchange. Some of your time (ordinarily defined in a contract and then violated almost immediately) and some of your effort in exchange for money. Sometimes the exchange is defined in terms of output (shelving units or a report). Sometimes it’s defined in terms of input. In our industry, it’s mostly input. We commit to devote our time and all our creative energies to the pursuit of a business’s success in line with their strategy and the specific role we were brought in to perform.

I am sure there are better definitions than this.

But it doesn’t matter. Because whatever the definition, it goes out the window as soon as you sign the contract.

I don’t know many people who have careers in FS and work their contracted hours.

I don’t know any people who won’t go ‘above and beyond’: start early, finish late, work through lunch, fly over the weekend, take a call on Sunday because the client is working… take a call every Sunday because the client is working… take a call on Saturday even though you are not on call because the person who is on call needs your help… finish some work over the weekend because the week got crazy… think about work… all the time.

In fact, I don’t think I know anyone in our industry who doesn’t do all of that to some extent.

And you may argue that they pay us enough for it all. It is still, despite the successive crises, a well-paid industry. On the whole. On average. And these extra-long hours are sort of known as we come in. And it’s a big discussion about whether, all told, it is a fair exchange. But you can argue it is a known exchange. We’ve seen the films. We’ve seen our friends. We’ve seen ourselves in our last job. We know the drill.

What may be less clear, as we go into each engagement, is all the other stuff.

The education part. Oh lord, the education part. How many bankers don’t understand the rudiments of banking? How many of those bankers have the most superficial understanding of the shifting regulatory terrain? How many of those bankers feel it is their God-given right to learn very little about the technology they need to apply to their complicated and arcane estate in order to bring organisations they don’t fully understand in line with regulation they don’t deeply understand in a market that isn’t waiting for them in any way?

There’s more of them than there should be, by the way.

And dealing with all that is a lot.

For the few that have the understanding and information and context and ability to explain it in a way that is both digestible and not patronising… it’s a lot.

And although that should be a job in itself, it isn’t.

It’s something that gets added on top of the other stuff. And it is a lot.

But it would be OK if it wasn’t for the resistance. And the cut corners and the inertia. All of which is understandable and explainable (I mean… I wrote a book about it and all… so yes, it is understood and explained and fixable).

So, after almost two decades of doing this work, going against the grain again and again… being, as I was once unforgettably told by a boss, ‘the canary in the mine’… and given how I love this work but I don’t think me dying as a warning to us all is a sensible way forward… given all of that… I was left worrying if any of us are paid enough for ‘this’.

And although I know it is, for all of us in this tribe, a labour of love, a desperate mission, a weird dedication to the work that we know needs doing and we know we are the right people at the right place and the right time to do it… and resistance be damned. Although I know that, there is no denying that I look around me at my tribe and I see people who give so much of themselves to this work. In an industry that is still seen by the vast majority of the world’s population as the domain of cynics and materialistic cut-throats.

And they are right, those people out there. Even if that is not the whole truth. We are also here. Fighting on.

And although we are probably paid enough in the grand scheme of things, all of us should maybe consider that not giving ourselves completely over to this mission is also OK.

So, take a nap, my tribe.

Read a book.

Go to the gym.

Leave that email for the morning. It’s late, don’t even check. It will keep.

We’ve learned the hard way that this is a marathon, not a sprint. And although the work is important, the task is rarely urgent.

You are not the canary in the mine. The canary dies. That’s a terrible story.

You are the light in the dark. And this will only work when you light the way for the others to join. And they need to join for this to work. So, you may have to hold the light up a long, long time. That is the work.

So be patient. Be steadfast. And don’t forget to look after yourself. Or you will be the canary for all the wrong reasons and then there’s no wins for anyone involved.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on Twitter @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.