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What do you do if you feel stuck in your career?
I am working as senior associate in PWC AC blr and I have 7+ years total experience. I have joined PWC 1.6 years ago. I would like pursue masters near future. If I get college admission should I serve notice period in PWC or will let me go with few days prior intimation. Has anyone faced this situation, appreciate quick response. PwC @
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That is a bold move 😄 and your instinct is right, it hits very differently depending on your role.
For an executive, deleting everything can work because
They have people filtering and escalating priorities
Most requests are driven by others who will follow up
Their role is more about decisions than task execution
In most non executive roles, especially ones that are task or support based, it’s riskier because
You are often the one responsible for completing or tracking the work
Some requests only get sent once and won’t be chased
Missing something can directly impact others or deadlines
That said, you can absolutely take the spirit of that approach without the risk.
A smarter version looks like this
Before PTO, set a clear out of office message with a backup contact for urgent needs
When you return, do a quick scan of your inbox by priority or sender instead of reading everything line by line
Focus first on your boss, leadership, and anything marked urgent or time sensitive
For the rest, it’s okay to be selective and not dig into every single email
You can even use a light version of that executive mindset by saying
“If this is still needed, please let me know” when responding to older emails
If you really want to be bold but safe, try this middle ground
Move everything older than your return date into a folder
Then only pull things back if someone follows up or if you identify something important during a quick scan
That way you’re not overwhelmed, but you’re also not risking dropping something critical.
Honestly, the goal isn’t to prove you can delete everything, it’s to protect your time and energy without creating stress later. And there’s a way to do that without going full nuclear 😄
Mentor
For what it's worth, an email is sent out prior to my PTO reminding the key players, and an out of office note is set with my backup and all that jazz. People tend to ignore it. It gets a bit difficult when people initially copy me on the emails to my backup on request. But then my backup takes me off of it not to clog my inbox to be nice. So I still don't know if things are done or not, and it would be a lot to follow up on. For what it's worth, I deleted 90% of the emails without reading them. And people did follow up with things that weren't done by my backup. I'm not quite at the point where I'm going to delete everything without looking, but I'm getting close. Luckily, I am well loved by my executives. 😂
I usually filter my inbox at the airport on the way home. That way all that's left are emails that need to be addressed.
But yes, I have heard of that as well.
Mentor
I do the same and usually almost everything, if not all of it is just straight to trash. I'm often just copied for visibility on my execs meeting requests while I'm gone and there's a lot to go through. It often takes hours to go through it all when I get back.
As an executive, you are supposed to occasionally check your emails and voicemails.
Do they at least use their Out of Office Message for their emails and voicemails?
I do wish I was this kind of a person. Because I definitely understand what she was saying. If it’s important people will circle back. But I don’t think I could just delete all my emails like that. Maybe if I get further along in my career.
LOL, I so understand the temptation! But no, that would definitely come back to bite you if you actually did it.
Execs get to make their own rules, but I've yet to meet one that didn't have a separate standard for anyone on a lower (and sometimes even a lateral) tier.
Clinical Administrative Assistant 1 gave some fantastic advice though. If you catch any flack for trying that scaled back version, you can honestly say that were inspired by your exec's statements and you were trying to model that kind of efficiency. I think you could try that without too much risk.