This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode: ‘What I wish I’d known when I started my career’
Isabel Berwick
Hello and welcome to Working It from the Financial Times. A few months ago I came across some of my old diaries from when I started work. They were pretty embarrassing. Listen to this.
I don’t feel very comfortable at work. The conversation is banal at best. God, I bet they think I’m a total weirdo. On Monday, they had their editorial conference and I couldn’t really hear or understand. I was so shattered, I kept doing the 3:30pm snooze. I could feel my head rolling. That must have been, well, impressive. God.
I was 23 when I wrote that. I like to think I’ve changed over the decades since then that I’m no longer a frankly judgy and insecure colleague who’d rather take a nap than do my job. But it would be nice to be sure. With that in mind, I sat down with my old colleague, Michael Skapinker. Michael gave me my big break at the FT and he managed me for several years. He probably knows how I’ve changed at work better than anyone. He should also be able to tell me some home truths about what I was really like to work with. But since he’s now a dear friend, I’m hoping they won’t be too brutal. Here’s my conversation with Michael.
So Mike, we worked together for quite a long time. And in fact, you employed me. You gave me a big leg up in my career. I’m going to tell you what I remember about you. What do you remember about me?
Michael Skapinker
You go first.
Isabel Berwick
(Laughter) So I can remember being interviewed by you and a colleague called Graham Watts. It was a pretty big step up for me. It was to become deputy editor of the FT Weekend magazine. And I was so impressed with the questions you asked and also the fact that you both accepted the fact I was working part time, which at that point was very unusual in the FT and not accepted. So I felt that you were both enlightened men. I didn’t think I was going to get the job, but I was impressed.
Michael Skapinker
OK. Well, let me tell you how we saw this from our point of view and I think I can speak for Graham here. So we’d noticed you actually quite a while before you applied to be his deputy on the Weekend magazine because you were working for FT Money. And every Monday we used to have a meeting of all the section heads and sometimes the editor of FT Money couldn’t be there, and you would stand in for him. And you made an impression on both Graham and me. And we both remarked on it because some of the people who come in as a sort of standing in for the editor, they don’t quite fill the seat. They kind of shrink back. They think, I don’t know if I belong here. And you were quite confident. I know if you felt that way, but you certainly seemed to sort of be quite happy to be there. And also, you were funny, which never does anybody any harm. And Graham and I both thought, keep an eye on her. She’s going to go somewhere.
So it eventually came down to two people, to you and one other person. The clincher really was I often ask people when I do an interview what they’re reading, and we were both reading the same book, me and the other applicant. And I thought, you know, if we choose him, we’re going to have three of us who all pretty much the same. And you talked about all sorts of things we didn’t know about. You talked about magazines you’d read, and, you know, you read women’s magazines. And I mean, this is nearly 20 years ago. We weren’t talking about diversity that much in those days. But I think Graham and I realised we needed somebody different to us if this was going to work.
Isabel Berwick
I think I’m more self-aware now than I was 20 years ago, and I’m sure you are too, Mike. And when I think about what are my faults at work, I think about one particular incident and we had a big bust up Mike actually, didn’t we, over an article about the Six-Day War? And I was insistent that you had to add in an explainer because I had never heard of it. And I think you said to me Isabel everyone has heard of the Six-Day War. And I think that was a generational moment, actually. But I was very obstinate. And now I look back. I think that sums up a lot of the issues I’ve had at work over the years. You know, I’m obstinate and sometimes I completely fail to see the other person’s point of view. Would you agree?
Michael Skapinker
No, I wouldn’t, actually, because I actually think that was a valuable conversation to have. So you then became the deputy editor of The Weekend and then Graham retired. So you became my deputy and you were a spiky deputy. And you didn’t tell me to put an explainer in that article. It was the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War. You told me to . . . we shouldn’t run it. You told me it was crap. (Laughter) And you said to me, and nobody here has heard of the Six-Day War and I don’t even know who won it. And I thought about it and I thought, is this too complex? And we introduced some more explanatory work into it but I decided to run it.
And because I knew I was coming to speak to you today, actually just before I came in, I reread it. It’s a piece by Harvey Morris and he wrote this piece on the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, which is I have to say, reading it again, magisterial. So you were right to challenge me. Those challenges were important. They were absolutely essential. But on this occasion I thought, yeah, we’ve got to make this a little more accessible but I knew that we should run it. And you know, when you’re the boss, when you’re in charge, you really do need to listen to people. But then to manage is to decide. And that’s what I decided.
Isabel Berwick
I hope I’ve learnt to listen a bit more and be a little less judgmental since then. But I think that’s that really goes to the heart of the . . . Anyway, yes, I’m really mortified. That’s really thrown me. Right. So when I first started work, I was lazy and not very committed. It wasn’t a very busy workplace, but I really wasn’t doing very much work and I might even have taken the occasional workplace nap. Do you recognise that from our time working together or had I got it together?
Michael Skapinker
I don’t recognise it in the slightest. You were absolutely on the job. Like I say, you were working three days a week, you had family responsibilities, you totally did the job. And I think it’s something people can learn today. You know, work should be aware of your personal problems. Your managers should try to manage around them. But I think you were a perfect example of whatever’s going on in your life, just get the job done.
Isabel Berwick
Yeah, I think but I think it’s interesting to talk about when we look back at the start of our careers, we imagine that we’ve always worked very hard and been on the ladder, but I was actually very shocked at how bad I was when I first started out. And I think it has, it allows me to think more kindly towards people who fall short at work. OK, I’m going to read you this.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
No one is remotely nasty. It’s just I feel very much on the periphery. Lots of office gossip whispered about people I don’t know and lots of in-jokes. They all go out to lunch, and I feel I have nothing in common with them.
Michael Skapinker
So once again, you’re describing somebody earlier on. And I think we all have the feeling when we come into an organisation and we all feel outsiders to some extent or other that people are in on the joke or people are in on the gossip that we are not aware of. Once again, Isabel, when it came to me meeting you, by that point, I would say then, and I still say now, if I want to know the gossip, you’re the person I come to.
Isabel Berwick
(Laughter) No longer sitting on the edge of the office. I think it’s interesting, though, because what I would say to my younger self is just chill out a bit. These people are all friends with each other. They didn’t know me and I wasn’t giving them a chance.
Michael Skapinker
This business of taking things seriously or not taking things seriously, you do need to take it seriously. And I think one thing that puts off more senior people is not when you make a mistake, but when you don’t care that you made a mistake. How could I have done this better? Is actually the best question to ask, and I wish I’d done more of that. It would have saved me a lot of time and a lot of trouble.
Isabel Berwick
So, Mike, you know, we’ve become friends since we worked together. I think what I learned from you was, you know, you can be a human being and a great manager and a great journalist and all of that, you know, you don’t need . . . I’ve had some terrible managers in my career, and I think you were the first senior person I really related to. What, if anything, did you learn from me?
Michael Skapinker
Well, I learned a lot from you. First of all, I learned a lot about different subjects from you. I also learned from you to marshal your forces. When we did have clashes, what I found is you’d won allies in advance, and it was something I wasn’t very good at, actually. I would have been a far more effective manager if I’d taken my time and tried to work out where people stood and how to get them on your side. So I learned that from you.
I learned from you that while you’re taking things seriously, you can joke at work. I mean, you were a laugh. You were good fun to be around. And I think that’s something worth knowing.
I’ll just say something else about being friends. We weren’t friends when I managed you, because if you’re a manager, you can’t really be friends with the people you manage. You’ve got too much control over them. And one of the things we haven’t talked about is later on in our career, things flipped and you were my editor. And I was writing a column and you editing it, and you sometimes had to tell me that we’re not running this or we’re not having this, and I accepted that was your role then.
I think we became friends after we stopped managing each other, and I think it’s cause we’ve built up that respect, but also because I think we both respected the fact that we could both be outspoken and sometimes take it too far and maybe recognise that in each other as well.
Isabel Berwick
I think that’s a very wise thing to say. It’s no coincidence that you’ve become a counsellor and a coach, Mike.
Michael Skapinker
I don’t know. It’s not something that I would have thought at the time, but as I’ve said to you before, you were the person who initially sparked that idea when I was giving you some advice and you said to me, actually, you should charge for this. So that was the beginning of my thinking that’s what I should do.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Isabel Berwick
Reading those diaries made me wonder, if I could speak to my younger self, knowing what I know now about work and about life, what advice would I give? And what advice would my colleagues give to their younger selves? I asked a few of them exactly that question and talked their answers through with Michael. Here’s how it went.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So, Mike, I asked some colleagues here at the FT what they wished they’d known when they started their careers. And I want to play you a clip from Soumaya Keynes, who’s an economics columnist and podcast host here at the FT.
Soumaya Keynes
I wish I had known just how important experience is. So I think when I started my career, I had in my head this idea that people were just naturally gifted at some things versus others. And actually now I realise that being good at something is just as much about innate talent as it is about, you know, returns to the work that you put in.
Isabel Berwick
Mike, were you good at your job when you first started? What did you start off doing?
Michael Skapinker
So actually, my first job was as an English teacher in the Greek port of Piraeus. And I don’t think I was particularly good at that, but I drifted into journalism and what was I good at? I think I could write. And I was fanatical about the news. As a kid I’d read the newspaper cover to cover every day.
But I think it’s absolutely right — experience does matter. And obviously you get better as you do it and you get better when you listen to people who’ve been doing it for longer than you. But I think you have to have some basic talent in any job you do. But I think it’s absolutely correct that unless you’re prepared to work hard, unless you’re prepared to learn, it means absolutely nothing.
What I wasn’t good at — and it took me many decades to learn it — is that the boss is the boss. And that was a lesson that came to me very late in life.
Isabel Berwick
Oh, me, too. So have you ever been frustrated by somebody who had a lot of innate talent but just didn’t knuckle down?
Michael Skapinker
Yes, although it wasn’t just a question of knuckling down. There are some people who have got an enormous amount of information and understanding in their heads, and they just struggle to get it on to the page. They struggle to get it down. So that can be frustrating. But, you know, if you become their manager, that in a sense becomes their job and you’ve just got to learn to play to their strengths.
Isabel Berwick
So I think working hard is a lot easier when you love what you do. So here’s a submission from our columnist Jemima Kelly.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Jemima Kelly
I wish I’d known that you do your best work when you’re enjoying it. If you’re not enjoying the work, it’s quite difficult to kind of be in this what’s called flow state, which I think produces the best result.
So I think it’s quite easy when you’re starting out in a career to feel that you really have to be very, very serious and kind of not enjoy it. And I was definitely brought up with this kind of Protestant work ethic of like, oh, you need to just work as hard as you can and it’s got to be kind of painful. And I wish I had known that actually, it doesn’t. And maybe the stuff that you really enjoy can yield the best results.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Isabel Berwick
Mike, what do you think of what Jemima said there?
Michael Skapinker
So, Jemima’s point is a very interesting one. I remember years ago a cab driver got into his cab and I said, you know, I’m going to the Financial Times. And he said to me, my daughter’s thinking of becoming a journalist. Do you think it’s a good idea? And I said to him, well, I love my job. And he stopped me just there. And he said, I love my job. Do you know how few people sit in the back there and say, I love my job? And I don’t know what it would be like to do a job that you didn’t love.
So I think Jemima’s right. You do your best work if you love it. And as I’ve said, I’ve been very fortunate to love it. As for taking it too seriously, I think you’ve got to take it seriously to the extent that you’ve got to do the job. You’ve got to, as I said before, show you can do it. So I think it’s a combination of that.
Isabel Berwick
Yeah. And I think some jobs are more pleasurable than others. Do you think you did your best work when you were loving the job itself?
Michael Skapinker
Absolutely. I mean, the part I didn’t love was when I first became a manager and I came into a very difficult situation and I didn’t really know how to be a manager. It took me a good couple of years to work that out. But when I worked out how to do it, I really did love it.
I think it’s difficult when you’re not really sure what you’re doing when you’re a novice at it. But if you can find a job you love, I mean, the rest is pretty easy. You’re going to be good at it, obviously. But if you love it, then every day is just a pleasure coming into work.
Isabel Berwick
Yeah. And actually I really like that Jemima mentioned flow because when you find that flow, it really is something very special, isn’t it?
Michael Skapinker
Yeah, flow is what it’s all about. You can also get into flow with the team when you’re all working together and everybody is sort of doing something that you’re all enjoying and getting it right.
Isabel Berwick
So Mike, I’m going to play you a clip from Stephen Bush, FT associate editor and columnist and newsletter writer, about what he wishes he’d known when he started his career. Take a listen.
Stephen Bush
The thing actually I really wish I’d known at the start of my career is the most important professional decision you will make is who your partner is. Because ultimately, having a partner who understands your work, who’s supportive when you need to work late, who is someone you can have a trusted relationship with, is especially important if, like me, you end up in a relationship where you have an ethical screen.
But I think in any occupation, if you are at the start of your career and you love your job and you find your partner a bit annoying, but, you know, maybe it’ll be fine. I guess my advice would be it probably won’t be fine.
Michael Skapinker
Yeah. Somebody who understands your work is a great reward. Obviously, you can talk about it. You become partners in it. One of the things I found as a manager is when things go wrong in people’s personal lives, it really does affect their work. So I’m not just talking about problems in their main personal relationship. I’m talking about problems with their children, problems with their parents, problems with their nieces, nephews. People have all sorts of terrible things happen to them. And they need to tell you this because it’s going to affect their ability to work in the next few days or weeks.
And that’s quite a lot to take on when you first become a manager. You’re given people’s confidences and they do need to remain confidential and you need to work out a way that the work can be done often without telling other people in the team why it’s happening. So I think Stephen’s broader point is true. I think, you know, having a settled personal life is very helpful. Personal lives do not remain settled forever. You know, very few people are lucky to get through life without some drama in their lives. But I think his general point holds. Yeah. And, you know, it’s a matter of luck as much as anything else.
Isabel Berwick
So one thing I think a lot of people worry about earlier in their career is prestige or status. And a lot of people feel they’re not good enough or they have imposter syndrome. So I want to play you a clip from Claer Barrett, the FT’s consumer editor.
Claer Barrett
One thing that I wish I’d known when I started my career was the fact that I hadn’t gone to Oxford or Cambridge university wouldn’t hold me back. I didn’t even apply to Oxford or Cambridge, partly because I was more interested in playing the saxophone and drinking in the White Hart in Hemel Hempstead.
So when I started on business magazines, everybody who I was coming across of any calibre was Oxbridge, and they had all of these connections and I really regretted then not doing it for years and feared that it would hold me back. Well, hopefully I’m the living proof that it hasn’t. We will bring something different to the table. And now that I know that, hopefully you knowing it too, will help you.
Isabel Berwick
So it’s interesting, Mike, because I did go to Oxford and I know very well it’s no guarantee of being clever or indeed good at a job. But you obviously didn’t and you came new to this country in your career. How did that affect you? What do you think about what Claer said?
Michael Skapinker
Well, it’s interesting that we’ve known each other for all this time, and we’ve been friends for a long time. And you didn’t even know that I went to Cambridge university.
Isabel Berwick
Oh, did you?
Michael Skapinker
So I came to this country first as a student at Cambridge.
Isabel Berwick
Ah Mike. I thought you went to uni in South Africa?
Michael Skapinker
I did,