The Office Keeps Changing

Nothing really stays the same at work. I started officially in NYC in July. One month in we got a new marketer and then a month later, our administrative assistant resigned. Then in November, we moved and consolidated offices with our parent company. Then last week, one of our senior underwriters resigned. Now there are only 3 of us (underwriters) left.

Her resignation was a little unexpected. I think it was the right move for her so I'm not mad at her, but it will be strange not having her around. She was a Williams alum and we have common friends. Plus, I worked a lot with her and she was a good resource for me to learn from. But with her leaving, there could be more opportunities at work. Since starting in our New York office, I've always felt that we are overstaffed given the amount of workflow we currently have. Now with only 3 underwriters, the workload should be more balanced. My boss confirmed my thoughts, stating that he had no intent to hire a new underwriter. With that, I thought that our account assignments would change (for the better) and that I'd be a lot busier. Of course, that is not the case.

Since starting in the New York office, our basic work structure has been thus: all existing accounts are assigned to 2 underwriters, one senior writer and one junior underwriter (like me). For all new accounts, Greg (other junior underwriter) or I were supposed to get first crack at them and possible get the chance to be the account executive. The senior underwriters were to help us, as need be, but were mostly supposed to focus on managing the existing accounts since they already had the relationships with the clients. For the most part, we were able to stick to this plan, but given the slow amount of workflow coming into our office, we ended up approaching the new accounts on more of a team basis. While this was good for learning purposes, it really didn't give Greg or me a chance to gain ownership of any accounts. Ownership of an account is really key, at least from my perspective, to really having a sense of pride in your work.

So now that we have lost an underwriter, this work structure was bound to change. I assummed that we would split all the existing accounts evenly between the remaining underwriters and that Greg and I would actually get a chance to get the new accounts. Unfortunately, my boss had other things in mind. We redistributed our existing accounts, but Greg got 3 accounts (all pretty small) and I got 2 accounts (larger, but overall, relatively "easy" accounts) and the other underwriter, James, got 5 accounts. I'm less concerned with the number of accounts as to the timing of the accounts.

For the most part, both Greg and my accounts won't have anything to do on them until June at the earliest; James accounts are spread out evenly throughout the year. Our boss said that now being the account executives on these accounts would be a good opportunity for us to step up and have more responsibility, but since these accounts are basically inactive for the time being, I don't see how that makes any sense. Also, with new accounts, we're basically just sharing them between the 3 of us, which, if the past few months have been any indication, James will get the good ones and Greg and I will get stuck with the crappy ones.

I guess I'll to wait and see what happens in the next few weeks. If things don't pick up soon, I'm gonna have to have a talk with my boss.