4 of our analysts packs their bags and proceeds to leave at 5:15, senior manager, walks by them and says: "huh, didn't know that the analysts were taking a half day today..."😂

Yay A4. Good job and so true. There is a schism between the "old school" who slogged thorough it and feel every one else should too. The rest of us know it is not worth the price. There was a great article on this in the Journal awhile back about the same thing happening in banking. The partners could not how people would not want to work 16 hour days to make it to the top. One of the "new group" flat out quit and was going to learn programming. So your talent just says no. These partners have to learn that the world has changed. It's not always age related either, I think it depends more on mindset.

Lot of different things going on in this post. A few of my experiences... Had a one on one with my manager when I was an analyst and expressed Id love to take on more responsibility than just the meeting minutes. Later that night we had a happy hour and we're playing a bar game and he made a killer shot. Looked at me and told me to "take the meeting minutes on that". I know it probably had nothing to do with what I said earlier and he was trying to be funny, but as a manager you need to be more careful because I for sure took it personally. 2) always- no matter what level- ask if you can help with anything before you leave. It's part of being on a team And 3) leadership- how can you be mad at people for leaving when they're done? If you want them working more give them more work if it's necessary but otherwise let someone enjoy their personal life. They'll actually work harder for you if you respect that there's more in their life than this job

Douche of a senior manager

The old way of thinking needs to change. If they're done with their work they should be able to leave without being judged

Observation here. I learned (am still learning) after a series of leadership positions that you as the leader might think a comment to a subordinate is funny (which I still find myself doing) but subordinates may not share the same opinion. They may view it as an observation masked by humor.

Trust me when I tell you that an analyst/consultant will NOT think it's "funny". Even if they understand you're joking, it's still going to impact what they do next time (aka, not leave early to avoid the "joke"). Trust me. Source: I was an analyst and worked with dozens of them.

New ROWE v. WADE: Results-Only Work Environment versus Work-As-Defined-by-Effort.

Nothing wrong with that assuming that they are done. I'd much rather my folks leave and have some work life balance than stay and pretend to work to appease me while secretly resenting me for being a douche.

ROWE is Results Only Work Environment. Basically as long as shit gets done, I don't care how long you work. And pretty sure my team gets that it's good natured ribbing...and if it causes them to think twice about leaving early...so be it.

"Good natured" is easy to say when you are the one in the position of authority. The other person generally regards it as intimidation.

Call me old school but I still think that if a SM, Partner, Manager or anyone on the team is staying late because they have work to get done, a real team member (and even more the younger professionals) should show a better sense of teaming by asking whether there is anything they can help with before leaving. Easy to leave at 4:30 when you feel like you are done ....but the rest of the team / one or more members have a bunch of other things to work on. Can be fairly upsetting when other members of the team (specially those that should be eager to learn the lost = Staffs) don't care enough to take over additional tasks or or simply are not interested to go the extra mile. The courtesy of asking in itself says a lot....

Joke or not there's a hint of truth and you're being passive aggressive. Have the balls to say yeah you shouldn't leave early, or just don't say anything at all.

^i agree with the above. No matter how well intentioned the joke, as an analyst, I will think it is an indirect way to give feedback and will most likely not leave like that again. There are things that can and can't be joked about when you're a manager

This type of thinking is why the office structure is dying. In 10 years very few of us will work in offices, and posts like this make me think that is a good thing. It's abusive to say someone should "find" work to do until 6:30 in the evening. If they are that busy then fine, but if not why the hell would someone want to be in the office for 10 hours? What does that prove? I don't want any of my folks working 10 hour work days on a regular basis, regardless of level. If they are then I'm doing something wrong.

I'm not advocating taking off at 4pm every day. I usually work 8:00-5:30. And I still feel like I have to go qualify that I want to run before it's pitch black out etc. In my analyst days I asked "how can I help" and still continue to. But there still are a lot of SM's who pass judgement of "sneaking out" before 6

I say shit like that to my team occasionally. But do it in a joking manner since I've been very clear with my team that I operate with a ROWE mentality.

While I don't agree that people should stay just for the sake of staying, I would definitely wonder why multiple people were leaving before 5 if they hadn't checked in with me first. I may have been walking over to see if someone had bandwidth to help me with a new request and now the team is gone? That's not cool.

To the people saying "if an analyst can't take a joke and stays because of my 'humor', I'm OK with that", you're the reason younger consultants leave the industry. Tell yourself a thousand times that it's a joke and they should understand that, just know that's not how it works in the mind of an analyst. Find other ways to make jokes, not this one.

I think people need to understand it was a joke, we are on a team that makes jokes like this all the time. For example, the SM is local and has a 6 year old daughter and the analysts rip on him about how his daughter isn't real and just an excuse to leave early

If a joke makes an analyst feel compelled to find work and stay busy until, say, 6:30, I'm totally okay with that

"If you're not doing anything, don't do it here"