A family friend recently made an excellent job hop. Better hours, better title, and better pay, with the added bonus of keeping his relationship with his old boss by consulting for them when they need and he has the time.

Meanwhile, he’s doing them a favor and trying to fill his old position. He reached out to me, telling me that my background in accounting + an eye for detail + some savvy ops would be all I’d need for him to train me in.

But he warned me – this was a 60 hour/week job, with one routine task regularly taking 20+ hours of that time.

That sounds objectively dreadful. But here’s why I’m still gunning for it:

20+ hours on a routine, weekly task is an obvious tell that the org is ripe for process improvements.

That’s not a scary problem, that’s an opportunity.

Too many high-level roles are being sucked into mountains of necessary tasks to get done before they can get to work that matters, turning a strategy-focused position into an admin role with 12-hour days.

For some reason, people are just going along with that, with the reason that this is simply how business is done.

If you are going to be spending 12 hours doing work, at least make sure it’s work that determines the future of your company, not playing catch-up with your P&L and assembling 10 other metrics you need to look at before you can take another step.