Trade-offs PR pros must accept about work-life balance

A recent experience got me thinking about the trade-offs you should consider when making career choices.

I was in the middle of an extended trip through southern Italy when Amazon called all its corporate employees back to the office five days a week. Being around a bunch of awesomely chill Italian hospitality workers gave me a pretty sharp contrast with my stereotype of Amazonians.

I’m developing a theory that your satisfaction with your work-life balance doesn’t really have much to do with how many hours you work vs. don’t work. But instead, it all revolves around whether your work situation is aligned with your individual goals. Note that I wrote “individual,” because in my experience as a PR coach, the majority of PR people, when they are candid, will confess they are trying to live up to someone else’s definition of success.

Take this example. Both a high-powered, always-on Amazon PR exec and a half-time social media manager for an Italian beach hotel can love their work-life balance, as long as:

• The Amazon-er values building permanent financial independence above personal time and stress management.
• And the part-timer is fine with lower pay and limited opportunities for advancement.

Dissatisfaction and angst arise when:

• Someone who insists on working from home every day gets frustrated because the best assignments (and thus opportunities for advancement) keep going to the people who show up at the office where the bosses work.
• In contrast, someone who accepts a well-paying job at a tech company known for its demanding culture is miffed when bosses and teammates don’t seem to understand that coaching his daughter’s soccer team means he’s signing off at 3 p.m. twice a week.

In neither of those cases is the worker “right” or “wrong.” Career decisions are simply about trade-offs. Again, the discomfort arises when you try to have it both ways.

And here I must acknowledge the exception – when you develop such an unassailable track record that you have all the leverage, and you CAN have it both ways. No doubt there are plenty of high-paying, permanently remote tech companies lining up to recruit the best Amazon employees who don’t want to go back to the office.

Likewise, I’d bet money at least one of those “best Amazon employees” is using this return-to-office moment to re-evaluate their priorities. And maybe shifting to . . . I don’t know . . . a part-time social media manager for an Italian beach hotel 😊.